Category Archives: Names

British Culinary Specialty or Twee Slang for STD Symptom?

Which of these is a neep? (Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons. List courtesy McSweeneys.)

Warning: don’t read this while you’re eating. Unless you’re a humble British chef.

Custardy lumplots? Head cheese? Either of those sound appetizing? If you can’t eat it in the company of your grandmother, then believe me: you don’t want it. See if you can tell which of these delights below are designed to be swallowed, and which will send you running to your doctor. We’re posting today’s inspired list from McSweeneys: see the full article for the answers …

BRITISH CULINARY SPECIALTY OR TWEE SLANG FOR STD SYMPTOM? Continue reading →

Isis: from goddess to terrorist state. What’s in a name? Update: from Isis to Daesh?

Isis: she is the epitome of femininity, an Egyptian goddess worshipped as a mother and wife, a patroness of nature and magic. A friend of slaves, sinners, artisans and the downtrodden, she’s a protector of the dead and a goddess of children and motherhood. Her name, meaning “woman of the throne”, is bestowed on thousands of girls taking their first breaths around the world; last year it was ranked as the 575th most popular girl’s name in the US. But now the gentle moniker of the fairer sex — in the form of a screaming acronym — has been hijacked by the world’s newest and most frightening embodiment of organized terror: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (commonly referred to as ISIS). Will Isis ever be able to throw off this new shroud of terror and regain its womanly strengths? [And see update re. the name “Daesh” below.] Continue reading →

16 movie title bloopers

He did? Get game? Or does that mean he has got game — currently — whatever “game”-without-an-article means? As in, “He’s got that thing called game”? Or did he get that article-less game last week, on the same night that he got milk? Maybe it becomes apparent when you see the movie (which I had the chance to do this evening when it popped up on my TV guide), but I think we can safely say that its title lacks clarity — unless game is an abstract quality that he acquired some time in the recent past…

Here are 15 other movie titles that could have done with a good edit. If you can’t work out where they went wrong, check out their copy-edited versions below. Continue reading →

From soup men to grammar nuts: is the name Nazi OK?

In a bizarre story coming out of Russia a couple of months ago (and no, it wasn’t in April), government officials in their zealous drive to purge the country of any symbols or supporters of fascism and Nazism went after a language pedant, probing his links with “grammar Nazis”. According to the Moscow Times, “prosecutors in southern Russia … summoned for questioning Alexei Pavlovsky, the head of Bonus Media, which supports the local branch of the popular Total Dictation educational project. The project tests how accurately people can transcribe a text read orally. “They asked me first about the dictation, about my other civil initiatives, and then politely inquired about what I knew about grammar Nazis, and whether they were financing my activities,” Pavlovsky wrote on his Facebook page.”

It does make you wonder just how right or OK it is for the word Nazi — a name with such abhorrent associations — to be appropriated for more benign or jokey purposes. Continue reading →

In the news … (May 22)

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky. Stories about language usage in the news this past month include unexpected Latin translations; an inappropriate exclamation mark; a famous fictional advertising exec showing off his grammatical prowess; a grammatically correct bank robber; football fans ranked by spelling and grammar ability; a punctuation-free doctoral dissertation; and a very expensive web site name.

Continue reading →

Charlotte Windsor

The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a baby girl, and her name is Charlotte. HRH Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. Charlotte Elizabeth Diana Windsor is fourth in line to the throne after her grandfather Prince Charles, her father, Prince William, and her brother, Prince George.

The name Charlotte is of French origin, meaning “free man”, and is the female form of the male name Charles. There are nice family connections for the Windsor family, with Charlotte being the middle name of her aunt, Pippa, and one of the princess’s grandfathers being called Charles (the Prince of Wales). Continue reading →

How do you pronounce Boleyn?

In a scene towards the end of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s riveting production of Wolf Hall (part II), which has recently been transplanted from London’s West End to Broadway, one of the king’s guards strides downstage and announces loudly and gravely the name of his newly arrested charge: “Boleyn!” (And just in case the history books haven’t spoiled it for you yet, I won’t specify which member of the Tudor family bearing this name is about to be escorted to their new lodging in the Tower of London.) Curiously, in pronouncing the identity of his Boleyn prisoner, the guard places careful emphasis on the first syllable, so that the name rings out over a hushed audience in the Winter Garden Theater in a way we’re not used to hearing it: “BULL-uhn!”. Continue reading →

Naming that app (applr, app.ly …)

At the time of writing, there are just over 915,400,000 live websites online — and counting, according to InternetLiveStats.com. New apps and sites are being added to our cyber-world by the second — and as fast as the new hopefuls pop up on our screens with their snappy vowel-less monikers, so do hundreds of Zuckerberg-wannabes surrender their lowercase domain names back to GoDaddy, hanging their bearded chins in their youthful hands and wondering what went wrong. Well, one thing that helps make a good site is a good name. But what gives a cyber-name its magic? Continue reading →

A doozy of a Daisy

A daisy isn’t just a flower — or a girl’s name. It’s a traditional long drink — a spirit base with lemon juice and sometimes soda, sweetened with grenadine, sugar or a fruit syrup –and it’s been enjoyed in its various brandy and gin incarnations since the mid-19th century. According to WebTender Wiki (yes, there is one), a recipe for Brandy Daisy was listed in Scientific Bar-Keeping by Joseph W. Gibson in 1884, and Esquire professes to have another such recipe from “Professor” Jerry Thomas dating back to 1862, calling for curaçao and fragrant Jamaican rum.

Why is the cocktail called a daisy? Continue reading →

The Oscars: word trivia

Words aren’t something that spring to mind when we think of the Oscars: maybe gowns, bling, best performances, best direction and best pics. But there are a lot of interesting words going on there too: in the speeches, and in the movies themselves. For example: Who stole the show at the Oscars in 1999 when one of the winners declared that “I would like to be Jupiter. And kidnap everybody and lie down in the firmament making love to everyone”? Who said the immortal words “Frankly, my dear, I dont’ give a damn”? And perhaps more to the point, who wrote those words? Who has received the most nominations for best screenplay writer? Who gave the shortest Oscar acceptance speech? And has anyone named Oscar ever won an Oscar?

Answers to these and other Oscar word trivia questions are below. And as for Sunday, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night…” Continue reading →

Glossophilia

1. n. The love of language