Another lustrum, another haircut. A lustrum is a period of five years; I’ve known that for about three lustra, but until now I never thought to look up why it’s so called and what the Romans used it for (which are the same question).
The first meaning given for lūstrum is ‘a purificatory sacrifice’ – which seems appropriate for a haircut.
New toy: Dictionnaire Étymologique des noms de lieux en France, by Dauzat & Rostaing. I’m a bit disappointed that it lists only towns, not rivers, but that’s a detail. (Many river-names are too old to analyze anyway.) It’s fun to sort out the traces of Aquitani, Basques, Gauls, Romans, Franks, Normans – have I forgotten anyone?
One thing puzzles me, and I’m hoping some classicist in the legence will shed some light (or pass on my question to someone who can). In all my reading about naming-practices, I have been given to understand that the Romans had a very small stock of personal names. And yet in just the first 32 pages of Dauzat/Rostaing, the following “noms d’homme lat.” are invoked:
Abus, Absentius, Abundus, Acatius, Accius, Accinius, Aco, Aconteus, Acrius, Acrisius, Adius, Agius, Alarius, Albus, Albanus, Albius, Albinus, Albinius, Albucius, Alinnius, Allus, Allarius, Allenius, Allius, Allinius, Alonius, Altinius, Amantius, Amatius, Ambillus, Amius, Amilius, Aminius, Ampellius, Ancus, Ancius, Anicius, Anitius, Annus, Annius, Anno, Ansius, Antenus, Antius, Antianus, Anticius, Antinius, Antistius, Antonius, Antullus, Aper, Apicius, Appius, Apponius, Apuleius, Aquila, Arbennius, Arbussonius, Archontius, Arcius, Arcisus, Arculus, Aredius, Arenus, Arguenna, Armalius, Armarius, Armatius, Arvinius, Ascius, Asius, Asperius, Astus, Atius, Atilius, Attius, Avitus, Axius, Harpilius, Hilarius, Rantius
— and that’s not counting the asterisked (unattested, reconstructed) forms. So. Ought I not to be surprised at this list? Are they Roman nomina or prænomina (they do smell genuinely Latin to me) or perhaps names of retired legionnaires from all over the Empire? Some must be nicknames: Aper ‘boar’, Albinus ‘Whitey’, Absentius.
Later: I am told that Dauzat was not particularly competent; if I remember right, it is said that he often failed to recognize an obvious Celtic root and instead contrived something absurd.
Yesterday I leapt over a shrubbery, twisted my right ankle (mildly), and landed hard on my left knee. Somehow this stiffened the muscle(s) behind the knee. I think of it as a learning experience: like, I never noticed before how strong my habit is of putting my pants on right leg first.
Today I bought a Danish-English dictionary published in 1953/4. To my amazement, it uses aa rather than å; I thought å came in at the same time as ø (former oe) and æ (former ae).
Ian Frazier visits a typewriter wizard (Atlantic Monthly, 1997). Martin Tytell has stories to tell about converting typewriters for other alphabets:
There he received his hardest job of the war – a rush request to convert typewriters to twenty-one different languages of Asia and the South Pacific. . . . The implications of the work and its difficulty brought him to near collapse, but he completed it with only one mistake: on the Burmese typewriter he put a letter on upside down. Years later, after he had discovered his error, he told the language professor he had worked with that he would fix that letter on the professor’s Burmese typewriter. The professor said not to bother; in the intervening years, as a result of typewriters copied from Martin’s original, that upside-down letter had been accepted in Burma as proper typewriter style.
(Link found at Jonathan Borwein’s Quotations Page, which is mostly about the sciences)
not French, dammit (not that there’s anything wrong with that)
In the first few minutes of my new temp assignment, two people said: “You must be Antone? Antoine?”
Learn new words from the (US) Dialect Survey Results. (I wish there were some factor analysis.)
Ken MacLeod’s novel The Sky Road is set at least a few centuries in the future. I once argued that there’s a limit to how far it can be, because the protagonist plays some voice-recordings from our time without mentioning the strangeness of the language. But now it hits me: Maybe English won’t sound any stranger a thousand years from now than the Queen sounds in Glasgow (where part of The Sky Road is set) today.
Speaking of books, does the Mafia in Snow Crash engage in any gainful trade other than pizza?