Two unexpected eponymous etymologies:
1) I just learned that the Japanese puppet theater bunraku (文楽) is named for Uemura Bunrakuken (植村文楽軒, 1751–1810), the puppeteer who established the Bunrakuza theater in Osaka. (The OED, bless its heart, simply says “A borrowing from Japanese” in its 1972 entry.)
2) I recently was confronted with the unexpected Russian verb сникерсну́ть [snikersnut′] ‘to eat Snickers; to speed up [from the advertising slogan “Don’t stop, grab a Snickers!”]’ (apparently used by those perennial culprits, Today’s Youth), and it made me wonder why Snickers are called that. Turns out they’re “named after the favorite horse of the Mars family.”
According to Japanese wikipedia, though, “Uemura Bunrakuken” was a stage name (as you might expect — *bunraku*’s combining a kanji associated with “literature” with one associated with “music” is too pat to be random). His birth name was is said to have been Masai Yohei or Kahei.
The plot thickens! Thanks for that; I wish someone would add that vital information to the English article.
As the Japanese version of the wiki explains more carefully, there were originally several competing forms of “ningyo joruri” (人形浄瑠璃), which remains the name for this art form, but since the Bunraku-za is the only remaining group capable of staging large scale joruri, the name is used synonymously.
I used to have to drive from the vicinity of Dulles Airport, where I worked during the week, to Staunton, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, where I actually live and keep all my stuff. One frequent route was Leesburg Pike, Virginia Route 7, which goes from Alexandria on the Potomac WNW through various inner and outer D.C. suburbs, then Leesburg, then crosses the Blue Ridge into the Valley. The last left turn before the peak, is route 734, heading southeast, Snickersville Turnpike. Passing the turnoff always activated my sweet tooth and made me crave a Snickers bar. There doesn’t seem to be any such town as Snickersville. If you ask Google Maps, they show you Bluemont, the first town you would come to when getting off Leesburg Pike onto the turnpike.
That’s hilarious! And it turns out Bluemont was formerly called Snickerville.
Is “Bunrakuza” supposed to rhyme suggestively with “yakuza”?
Might “сникерсни!” have any connection with the English “snickersnee”?
I mean, it’s clearly just a cute verb formation from the brand name. But given the existence of a catchy English word, I wonder if they couldn’t have had it in the back of their mind.
I seriously doubt it — snickersnee is not one of the English words that is prominent in the minds of Russians. And there are other words based on English-language brand names.
Interesting: snickersnee is from “Dutch steken of snijden to thrust or cut.”
“named after the favorite horse of the Mars family.”
Can any Brits confirm my memories — which on recent evidence seem entirely unreliable [**]? In the UK of my youth there were only Mars bars. I remember also Milky Ways, but they were quite distinctly lighter eating, not at all a different name for the same thing, as claimed at that link.
I remember Marathons getting introduced much later. If ‘Snickers’ were ever a thing in UK, it was after I emigrated. There are Snickers in NZ, but they seem pathetically diminutive compare to Mars Bars of yore. Presumably all this rebranding is to conceal the real purpose: downsizing without downpricing.
[**] I’ve just been to see ‘The Remains of the Day’ Merchant-Ivory. Ishiguro [since there’s a Japanese element to O.P.] has a significant birthday tomorrow. I think I remembered the movie’s emotional ‘temperature’ pretty accurately from when it was first distributed (mid-1990’s) but nearly all the specific scenes I thought I remembered, I’d got substantially wrong, and there were whole episodes I didn’t recognise at all.
Needless to say I’m in love with Emma Thompson all over again.
Yeah, that’s a superb movie and Emma Thompson is the best. (I fell in love with her in Fortunes of War.)
A Mars Bar in the UK has gooey stuff on the bottom and caramel on top, then chocolate on the outside. I believe the same thing is called a Milky Way in the US.
A Milky Way in the UK has fluffy stuff inside and chocolate outside. I think I recently learned that a similar thing is called Three Musketeers in the US.
I’m pretty sure that Snickers (gooey stuff, caramel and peanuts inside) has always been around in the UK, although they were called Marathon until about 30 years ago. I don’t like them much, so never really ate them until small ones started getting left over in whichever selection that is (better than nothing).
I believe Marathons were renamed as the (silly) Snickers bar so as to achieve a universal branding. Apparently there is now a move by Mars in the UK to bring back the Marathon name. Frankly, who cares? It was always an inferior product to the similar but far more delicious Topic bar, anyway…
In Barcelona I discovered that the UK brand Clipper tea — whose attractive packaging is very distinctive, and clearly designed to appeal to well-meaning professional-class types like us — is marketed as “Cupper” in Europe, because another tea company had already registered the name “Clipper” in Germany (surely “Klipper” in German, though? And no doubt they peddle that instant-piss-in-a-bag stuff, not proper tea).
Given the ease with which “Clipper” morphs into “Cupper”, though, you have to admit that “Cupper Tea” (geddit?) is a smart, economical, and creative typographical move, and a classic example of that eternal cliché, turning a problem into an opportunity.
… there were originally several competing forms of “ningyo joruri” (人形浄瑠璃), which remains the name for this art form, but since the Bunraku-za is the only remaining group capable of staging large scale joruri, the name is used synonymously.
I believe that even today, not all forms are fully synonymous with Bunraku. Some years ago I attended a performance of Awa Ningyō Jōruri (阿波人形浄瑠璃) in Tokushima. The theater there notes: “In Tokushima, so-called Awa-no-Te (dynamic puppeteering) using much larger puppets with a glossy finishing than those for bunraku has been used to appeal the audience because ningyo joruri has usually been performed in open-air farm-village stages or temporary stages in Tokushima.” Detailed accounts of some performances can be found in Elzey (1987).
another tea company had already registered the name “Clipper” in Germany (surely “Klipper” in German, though? And no doubt they peddle that instant-piss-in-a-bag stuff, not proper tea).
It’s “Clipper” with a “c”; being branded as (fake) British sells tea in Germany. I never tried it, so I don’t know whether you’re right about the quality.
Would spelling it ‘Clipper’ in Germany have made it easier to trademark? Like ‘Lite’ beer in the U.S.? I believe there are other products with strategically misspelled names, though I can’t think of any right now. Oh wait! I just wrote “right now”. Rite-Aid! Surely meant to imply that it provides the right kind of aid or help, not help wrapped up with religious rites.
Then again, popular entertainer Ludakris could possibly have trademarked Ludicrous, but preferred the odd spelling. Should we be grateful he doesn’t spell it Lewdakris?
And speaking of entertainers, one of the original Statler Brothers* died young and has a street named after him in Waynesboro, Virginia. His name was Lou DeWitt. On a hunch I Google-Booked “lewde witte” and learned that one of the second-string Elizabethan dramatists had accused one of the others of having a “lewde witte”, that is a lewd witt. I think one or the other may have been Chapman, the other maybe Decker. Unfortunately, Google Books has failed me, providing only snippet-view of a journal in (I think) Chinese.
*The Statler Brothers were big stars before the Beatles, singing the cornier kind of country music. Their biggest hit was “Counting Flowers on the Wall”. They mostly just sang, with a backup band, so rather resembled a barbershop quartet. They’re still admired in their home town, Staunton, where I live (10 miles west of Waynesboro) because even at the height of their fame they always came home once a year to give a free open-air concert. The three survivors must be 80 or more. (I saw the bass at his grandchild’s graduation from Buffalo Gap High School – love the name – in 2012.)
Oops, ran out of editing time. Intended to write “that is a lewd wit” (one T), and “speaking of entertainers and lewdness”.
As for Google Books, did they remove the book I had previously found the phrase in? They do seem to have less and less available every year. Are publishers of shoddily printed and shoddily bound print-on-demand (POD*) books paying them to make texts unavailable, even when long out of copyright?
*POD books : real books :: pod people : real people. One can imagine a remake or parody of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers about the snatching of the souls of books.
lewde witte
This may not mean what it looks like. In Chaucer, “lewd” still means “ignorant”, like Old English læwede. I don’t know when it acquired the “obscene” sense (ktschwartz probably does …)
Is “Bunrakuza” supposed to rhyme suggestively with “yakuza”?
I wouldn’t think so.
-za is the usual suffix for theatre troupes, and yakuza wouldn’t be something to jokingly allude to in Meiji Japan. The relatively small phonetic inventory and simple phonotactics of Japanese just make rhymes more likely.
Would spelling it ‘Clipper’ in Germany have made it easier to trademark? Like ‘Lite’ beer in the U.S.?
Possible, but I think they specifically went for the British vibe here – having tea, 5 o’clock tea, tea time are stereotypical British concepts in Germany, most of which, after all, is traditionally coffee country. And you can trademark common names without distortion; one of the biggest tea brands here is simply called Teekanne “tea pot”, written as in the dictionary.
Their biggest hit was “Counting Flowers on the Wall”.
I know that song… maybe you can enlighten me who “Capt’n Kangaroo” was?
@Hans: Captain Kangaroo
Thanks!
Looks as silly as I thought it would be based on the name.
Hey now! No insulting of Captain Kangaroo. Those are cherished childhood memories for some of us.
Me included! The theme (which I now learn is called “Puffin’ Billy”)! Mr. Green Jeans! Bunny Rabbit! Those were the days, my friend…
Hah, so that’s the name of that melody/music! It was used also on some Radio 4 game in the 70s – Sorry I Haven’t A Clue ??
Indeed, no less out-there a personality than F. Zappa slyly alluded via wordplay to Boomers’ happy memories of Cap’t Kangaroo in order to sucker them into listening to something that might go (after a fairly slow start, frankly) in a more avant-garde direction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YNK4m_kN-8
Puffin’ Billy, by Edward White, was the theme tune to Children’s Favourites, which was broadcast from 1952 to 1966 on the Light Programme, the predecessor of Radio 2.
Sorry I Haven’t A Clue ??
“The Schickel Shamble”, by Ron Goodwin, and is from the film Monte Carlo or Bust! . Full version (the show intro is only the first few bars).
I could never understand why the ‘sensible’ name ‘Marathon’ (the peanuts were supposed to give you energy) had been changed to the meaningless-sounding ‘Snickers’.
I also remember ‘Flowers on the Wall’. As a BrE speaker, I worked out what ‘playing solitaire till dawn with a deck of 51’ meant, but I never knew who Captain Kangaroo was!
Hans,
Of course Captain Kangaroo was silly. It was a children’s show. That’s what makes the narrative persona of the Statler Brothers’ song such a pathetic loser. Watching children’s television fits perfectly with “counting flowers on the wall” and “playing solitaire ’til 1:00 with a deck of 51”, which must require a certain amount of cheating, or else getting stuck and losing every time (not that he likely cares which, if he’s just killing time).
@Michael Hendry: I got that. When it comes to children’s shows and comedy, I regard silliness as a positive quality.
Good children’s shows only grow on you as you get older. What you thought was silly could be serious after all, and what you thought was serious, hilarious.
Apparently there is now a move by Mars in the UK to bring back the Marathon name
A retro limited edition recently appeared, apparently for the second time.
Lidl’s own brand is called Lord Nelson, and Aldi’s is Mr. Perkins. Think “Earl Grey” (and perhaps “Twinings”) and run with it, I guess.