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CALL ME BECKY

I learned in Glamour magazine that "Becky" is a black "code word" for "white woman" (it seems that only "Becky" salons do Brazilian waxes). It certainly is a name that would not conjure up the image of any woman of color, even though there surely are black women named Rebecca. But this begs the question of how we recognize that certain names today are most certainly black American. How can we know that some combinations of syllables in an unfamiliar name are probably a new creation, specifically from black American culture? And further, that they are probably not African names? I once knew a black woman named Drusilla who wished she didn't have an unusual name. She was rather pleased to learn that Drusilla, while it is unusual, is actually a very old name (Latin actually, a feminine form of "Drew" meaning sturdy, or else a clan name meaning "fruitful" depending on which source you read). But my friend Dru assumed it was a recent invention along the lines of Shaniqua or Tanisha, perhaps. (By the way, Starbucks has been promoting Akeelah and the Bee, a new movie about a black schoolgirl who enters a spelling bee. If you can get past the excessive flash-graphification of the web site, you'll find some clever spelling games there.)

There are lots of peculiar names among "my" people. A genealogy mailing for Calhoun County, West Virginia, included the name Notley Gern. I would like to have known Notley. And I would really like to have asked his parents, the Gerns, how they came up with the name Notley.

Here are a few others I've collected:

Ruffner White

Shade E. Anderson (bet they called him Shady)

Creed Lamb

In the nineteenth century, it was common to choose names from the classics and from history (such as a relation of mine who was named Columbus) and from the Bible.

EAST IS WEST AND WEST IS EAST

Charlie M. passed this on in a list of you-know-you're-in-Ohio stuff, but the place name pronunciation phenomenon exists everywhere in the States:

Don't take Ohio place names literally. Upper Sandusky is below regular Sandusky. Circleville is square. East Liverpool has no counterpart to the west. Also, if a town has the same name as a foreign capital...Lima or Berlin or Louisville, for example...you must not pronounce it that way lest you come under suspicion as a spy. Hence, it's not LEE-ma as in Peru, but LYE-ma as in bean, and it's BER-lin, not Ber-LIN, like in Germany. Louisville in Ohio is pronounced Looisville, not Looeyville as in Kentucky.

There's also a Medina in Ohio pronounced Me-DYE-na, but one Texas pronounced Me-DEE-na. I get the Americanization of foreign names, but not the geographical funniness. You'd think, for instance, if East Liverpool were named for Liverpool, England, it would have been West Liverpool (and I bet there's a New Liverpool somewhere). All those immigrants with a huge country to be named (or renamed, rather)! What fun. It's possible that some of my forebears settled in a spot in the Carolinas that was named Pumpkintown, for obvious reasons.

MIKE'S SHEWINGS

Mike Sykes wrote about shew:

As recently as 1951, when I sat Part II of the Cambridge Maths Tripos, virtually every question was of the form "shew that ...", meaning, of course, "provide a mathematical proof that ...".

Also, Fred mentioned the book title, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, although that is a medieval book. Shewings would mean evidence, or else the mystical revelations "shewn" to Julian. I don't think "shew" has been used in America for a long time.

Mike said regarding get:

The British, as far as I know, never ever say 'gotten', but I have an idea Americans wouldn't say "I've got a cold", but rather "I have a cold" (which is arguably more correct). Or "I gotta horse!" ~ the cry of the racing tipster.

We do say "gotten" and my high school Spanish teacher, who also taught English, was always annoyed when anyone would say "I got" without the modal ("I got a new dress" instead of the present "I have got" or past participle/present perfect "I have gotten"). But got is a legitimate simple past, meaning acquire, rather than have. I'd say either "I've got a cold" or "I have a cold." (And don't we say racetrack tout in the U.S. more than tipster?)

Mike wrote about phile:

I wonder whether the origin of Anglophiles and Francophiles has anything to do with the fact that there aren't a lot of the former in France nor of the latter in England! After all we were enemies for hundreds of years before the Entente Cordiale more or less patched it up. [Barely a century old ~ and how come it's a French term? Harrumph.] Come to think of it I suspect that when applying either term to someone else it's mildly pejorative (c.f. 'liberal' as used by some Americans ~ by the way, UK at last got a look at The West Wing Live Debate Episode last night ~ The West Wing, Seventh Season: 707 "Live Debate Episode", and in my simple way I thought it was very well done.).

I suppose I'm a Francophile ~- not sure though, in every country there are folks you would and others you wouldn't want to know. Which reminds me of the famous "I love the human race ~ it's people (or was it only Lucy?) I can't stand!". Who first said that? I first heard it as a Snoopyism, over 35 years ago.

By the way, what would be the opposite of a phile? Not a phobe, though I did find "Anglophobe" in dict.org. We have misogynists, who dislike women, and misanthropes, who dislike people in general, and misandrists, who dislike men (heard much less than the others, by the way). So ~ misangles and misfrancos?

LA RAZA

Sue S. wrote:

Awhile ago you wrote that the translation for "la raza" meant the race. I did not know that, since I'm not a real Spanish speaker. I always thought it meant "the people" because that's how it's loosely translated here [the Southwest]. It implies workers, disenfranchised, poor, politically powerless, etc. Ordinarily it's used whenever there is a grass-roots movement of some sort or some local rabblerousing situation has occurred. I think the terms migrate with the people and keep on migrating. Do the words evolve to meet our needs or do we evolve to meet the definition of the words?

Yeah, it means race, but is used as you say. It's become a political word. If you say it means "the people", you're implying that others are not the people. We use words (or they evolve, if you think that's evolution) to suit our needs, but then our understanding is manipulated by the words as their meaning changes.

PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC

New at my CafePress shop: Protestant Work Ethic shirts, plus a new tote bag with P.W.E. on one side and the (now larger) Parvum Opus killer Catti logo on the other. The new Protestant Work Ethic items are printed in a great antique type font:

P.W.E.

Learn it.

Live it.

Love it.

Not just for Protestants anymore.

The phrase "Protestant work ethic" was perhaps invented by Max Weber, in his 1969 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This may be one of those books I was supposed to read in college but didn't. But as I remember, the early Puritan/Calvinist colonists created the P.W.E. because they believed in predestination, that is, God planned at the beginning of time who would be saved and who would not. Now this was a problem because it meant you couldn't do anything to help your situation, so why not do anything you like? Their answer was that someone who appeared to be good might not be saved, but someone who was a flagrant sinner was obviously damned, so you'd better hustle. (Like the joke, "Jesus is coming. Look busy!) So it was in your best interest to work and pray, as it says in the Bible (James 2:20: But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?) although the Biblical meaning is probably something other than doing a job or doing business.

SOMETHING NEW! Check out the new "I Eat Dead Things" T-shirts for dogs and people, and the Protestant Work Ethic items in the Parvum Opus CafePress shop, plus a new Parvum Opus mouse pad! Now you can buy neat products with the Parvum Opus / KeithOps Catti logo at CafePress.com/parvumopus.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

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