I wonder: Minbar, name of a planet in Babylon 5, could be Elvish for ‘first home’.

Honda Prelude; Hyundai Sonata; what other cars have musical names?

Can you speak Buffy?

Now the witty diction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been accorded the academic respect that it deserves in Professor Michael Adams’s Slayer Slang (Oxford University Press). Under headings such as ‘The Attraction of Prefixes’ and ‘Folk Etymologies’, Adams, a historian of lexicography, admiringly picks apart the language of the show. He also provides a densely annotated glossary of its peculiar words and phrases.

(Grauniad; passed along on Anarchysf by Mal Function)

The log says נפגעי תקיפה מינית linked yesterday to one of my math doodles. Do you read Hebrew?

On the Straight Dope site: Semantic and geographic wanderings, over the past two centuries, of the words fag, faggot.

Is the phrase “some are more equal than others” older than Animal Farm?

Aha! When this blog was young and innocent, I asked how the heck Madison came to be a favorite name for girls.

Rick Heller cites a NYT article with the answer: a movie that I never saw.