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A dozen years ago I posted about fashions in given names; now I present Daniel Wolfe and Andrew Van Dam’s WaPo story “The mysterious tyranny of trendy baby names” (archived):

In America, how you spell your name says a lot about when you were born.

Take “Ashley,” for instance. Ashly, Ashley and Ashleigh each mark distinct eras — not just for the Ashleys of the world, but also for the various spellings themselves.

What is it about how we spell a name — specifically, how we choose to spell the end of a name — that makes for a trend? Laura Wattenberg, author of “The Baby Names Wizard” and creator of Namerology.com, a website devoted to the art and science of names, has been examining that question. […]

As Wattenberg has watched names rise and fall in popularity over the past 20 years, she said she’s seen the invisible hand of name endings wield surprising influence — especially as Americans have abandoned the use of ancestral names for new family members. While expectant parents want their child’s name to stand out and be memorable, Wattenberg said, they also typically want it to fit within the boundaries of some unacknowledged — but unmistakable! — social convention. […]

As Wattenberg and I examined the data together, a startling discovery came into focus: Back in the 1970s, singular names grew so popular that they became trends unto themselves. But “it just doesn’t work that way anymore,” Wattenberg said. Nowadays, trends are defined by many different names with similar suffixes.

Consider the awe-inspiring “Jason” curve. […] Jason begat Mason, Jackson, Grayson, Carson and a whole family of other “-son” names that together make up a major 21st-century trend for baby boys. […]

Wattenberg finds “an incredible irony” in this. People think they’re choosing something totally unique, but they do it in a way that winds up moving with the zeitgeist. As a result, names have actually gotten less distinctive over time, with nearly half of all baby names now following identifiable suffix trends — a phenomenon Wattenberg calls “lockstep individualism.”

Visit the link for details and a bunch of graphs. (Via MeFi.)

A couple of recent think pieces sent me by kind correspondents:

1) Carl Zimmer’s “Do We Need Language to Think?” (NYT, June 19, 2024; archived) begins with the idea (held by Plato, Chimpsky, et al.) that language is for thinking and continues:

As an undergraduate, Evelina Fedorenko took Dr. Chomsky’s class and heard him describe his theory. “I really liked the idea,” she recalled. But she was puzzled by the lack of evidence. “A lot of things he was saying were just stated as if they were facts — the truth,” she said.

Dr. Fedorenko went on to become a cognitive neuroscientist at M.I.T., using brain scanning to investigate how the brain produces language. And after 15 years, her research has led her to a startling conclusion: We don’t need language to think.

Not startling at all to me; see link for details. Thanks, Eric!

2) Steven Mithen, “How Babies and Young Children Learn to Understand Language” (LitHub, June 20, 2024); an excerpt on “finding words”:
[Read more…]

I’ve been a fan of John McIntyre’s hard-boiled tales of copyediting for well over a decade, and his brandishing of a word heretofore unknown to me (not to mention the OED) in the second paragraph of his latest post gives me an excuse to link it here:

Campus is crawling with undergraduates, half of them scurrying to the Eisenhower Library, the other half sashaying off to Charles Village bars. Scattered among them are union goons from the Ph.D. program. I have my eye on them, all of them.

My name is McIntyre. I carry a badge. And an espantoon.

According to Wikipedia:

The espantoon is an ornate straight wooden baton, equipped with a long swiveled leather strap for twirling. It originated in, and is still strongly associated with, the Baltimore Police Department, the police department of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The term is considered distinctly Baltimorean.

And McIntyre is a proud Baltimorean, having served the Sun long and well until it went the way of almost all newspapers and was eviscerated by vile profiteering. Long may he blog!

My wife and I have been on something of a Belmondo kick recently, and after watching Classe tous risques (which I learned is a pun on classe touriste ‘economy class’) and Breathless we moved on to Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic noir Le Doulos. It’s good that they generally keep the title in French even for American DVDs, because to call it The Finger Man (under which title it was originally released in the English-speaking world) misses an important ambiguity. As a title at the beginning of the film says, doulos is a slang word for ‘hat’ — but in the specialized jargon of cops and crooks, it means a police informer, and the movie foregrounds both senses. Not only are various people always calling the cops on other people, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many hats in a movie; indeed, the last shot of the film focuses on a fallen fedora. If you like hats, Belmondo, and/or good movies, I highly recommend it.

By the way, the Wiktionary article says the word is from Ancient Greek δοῦλος ‘slave, servant.’ Permit me to have my doubts.

I’m reading Nabokov’s Приглашение на казнь (Invitation to a Beheading), about Cincinnatus C, who sits in an empty prison awaiting execution, and I just got to the first mention of the crime for which he was arrested: “Обвиненный в страшнейшем из преступлений, в гносеологической гнусности…” [Accused of the most terrible of crimes, of gnoseological vileness…] I was familiar with the rendition in the published translation, “gnostical turpitude,” and was wondering what this unfamiliar “gnoseological” had to do with Gnosticism. Turns out the answer is “nothing,” and it annoys me that Nabokov, for whatever smartass reasons of his own, chose to render it in such a misleading way. As James I. Porter, in “The Death Masque of Socrates: Invitation to a Beheading” (International Journal of the Classical Tradition 17.3 [September 2010]: 389-422), says with some irritation (pp. 398-99):

Cincinnatus is to be executed, we later learn, for “gnostical turpitude” (72), whatever that may be, though we are assured it is “the most terrible of crimes,” utterable only euphemistically. Incidentally, to read the radical of the word “gnostical” in anything but its etymological sense is to becloud the meaning of the crime, and the allusion as well. “Gnostical” bears no relation to “gnostic,” as a great many readers of the novel have held—as though through a kind of interpretive parapraxis, viz., by referring to a misremembered “gnostic [sic] turpitude.” Any lingering doubts may be quelled by reference to the Russian: gnoseologičeskaja gnusnost’, “gnoseological vileness.” Cincinnatus’s crime is vaguely epistemological, and decidedly un-Manichean, let alone religious.

So what does gnoseological mean? Well, having to do with gnoseology, duh, but what’s that when it’s at home? M-W says “the philosophic theory of knowledge : inquiry into the basis, nature, validity, and limits of knowledge” [New Latin gnoseologia, from gnoseo- (from Greek gnōsis knowledge) + Latin -logia -logy]. But the OED (in an entry from 1900) spells it gnosiology and says it’s “The philosophy of cognition or the cognitive faculties.” Is that the same thing? It would take a more philosophical mind than mine to know. There is, of course, a fuller account in Wikipedia (under the -i- spelling), where we find:

Gnosiology (“study of knowledge”) is “the philosophy of knowledge and cognition”. In Italian, Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy, the word is often used as a synonym for epistemology. […]

The term “gnosiology” is not well known today, although found in Baldwin’s (1906) Dictionary of Psychology and Philosophy. The Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) remarks that “The term Gnosiology has not, however, come into general use.”

Meanwhile, the equivalent Russian Wikipedia article is headed Эпистемология (‘epistemology’) and says “Нередко (особенно в английском языке) слово выступает как синоним гносеологии” [Often (especially in English) the word is used as a synonym for gnoseology]. So English-speakers blame it on Italian and Russian, and Russians blame it on English. The whole mess makes me sympathetic to the idea that the world we perceive is the creation of a malevolent lesser divinity.

Addendum. I found this footnote in Brian Boyd’s superb biography of Nabokov (on p. 410 of my UK paperback edition of Vol. 1):

The original phrase, gnoseologicheskaya gnusnost′, seems repellent to a Russian ear. Words like gnusavit′, “to sing through one’s nose,” gnusnyy, “foul, vile,” and the substandard swearword gnus, “vermin,” give the gn combination a special hideousness. Marina Tsvetaeva once refused to attend a lecture whose title contained the word gnoseologia, because it sounded too disgusting to her. Cf. Robert Hughes, Triquarterly 17 (1970): 290.

Bathrobe, who sent me a link to this article by Sachiko Yasuda (Assessing Writing 61 [July 2024]), says “Although it is only available in part, I found this recently published study interesting”; he adds that in his experience “students are taught all kinds of complex grammatical constructions but can’t put together a decent argument.” The Abstract:

The study examines the relationship between form-based complexity and meaning-based complexity in argumentative essays written by high school students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in relation to writing quality. The data comprise argumentative essays written by 102 Japanese high school learners at different proficiency levels. The students’ proficiency levels were determined based on the evaluation of their argumentative essays by human raters using the GTEC rubric. The students’ essays were analyzed from multiple dimensions, focusing on both form-based complexity (lexical complexity, large-grained syntactic complexity, and fine-grained syntactic complexity features) and meaning-based complexity (argument quality). The results of the multidimensional analysis revealed that the most influential factor in determining overall essay scores was not form-based complexity but meaning-based complexity achieved through argument quality. Moreover, the results indicated that meaning-based complexity was strongly correlated with the use of complex nominals rather than clausal complexity. These insights have significant implications for both the teaching and assessment of argumentative essays among high school EFL learners, underscoring the importance of understanding what aspects of writing to prioritize and how best to assess student writing.

Benedict Lowe’s “Οὐδὲ τῆς διαλέκτου τῆς σφετέρας ἔτι μεμνημένοι: The disappearance of indigenous languages in Republican Iberia” (open access), Rhesis 7.1 (2016) 44-55, begins:

By the early Imperial period the indigenous languages of the Peninsula had disappeared from public use. The reasons for this remain the matter of considerable debate: according to Strabo the disappearance of the Turdetanian language was due to the Turdetanians’ adoption of a Roman lifestyle and their receipt of Latin status and Roman immigrants (3.2.15). Further factors may have fostered this process: the Turdetanians were the most civilized of the inhabitants of the Peninsula with as many as 200 cities (3.2.1) and sustained commercial ties with Rome (3.2.5; 3.2.15). The Roman conquest brought with it linguistic consequences: the replacement of a plethora of regional languages with a single common language of government – Latin – and the adaptation of pre-Roman epigraphic practices to serve the needs of this new language and government: developing epigraphy as a medium of public communication and for the dissemination of propaganda. It is not clear, however, if there was an official policy of Latinisation – in fact the last two centuries BC are the apogee of indigenous epigraphy in the Peninsula. How extensive the use of Latin was is unclear, nor is it clear how much the extant epigraphic material provides an accurate picture of the process of Latinisation: not only does the extant epigraphic material represent only part of a more diverse range of written material, but it is not clear if the written record accurately reflects the oral language.

Although nowhere explicitly stated it seems probable that Roman officials employed Latin in their exchanges with the indigenous population […] In contrast to the scarcity of inscriptions issued by Republican magistrates elsewhere in the west, several are known from the Spanish provinces that enable us to explore the use of Latin as a language of government and its diffusion amongst the indigenous population. […]

The conclusion:

Languages remain in use as long as it is beneficial for the language to be employed. Choice of language is not merely determined by expedience, however, but can symbolise the relationship of the speaker to the political forces behind the languages in question: thus one’s adherence to or rejection of the influence of Rome. By creating an environment in which the Roman government communicated with the provincial communities through the medium of the Latin language they ensured the gradual marginalisation of the indigenous languages of the Iberian Peninsula.

No surprises, but it’s always good to see a close-up look at the process. I confess I’d never heard of the Turdetanians; Strabo “considers them to have been the successors to the people of Tartessos and to have spoken a language closely related to the Tartessian.” (Via Laudator Temporis Acti, which provides a translation of the quote from Strabo [3.2.15] used in the title of the article: “The Turdetanians, however, and particularly those that live about the Baetis, have completely changed over to the Roman mode of life, not even remembering their own language any more.”)

This Coco Khan piece is pure fluff, but we’re in the middle of a heat wave here and I can barely focus on a dumb TV comedy, let alone the Nabokov novel I’m supposedly reading, so it will have to do, and hey, dumb slang is evergreen entertainment:

If you’ve spent any time online recently, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s something in the water. Some grown adults – usually of the millennial, gen Z variety, though not exclusively – have regressed to a kind of cutesy, baby language, even while discussing serious topics. In this language, the cost of living crisis is the “cozzie livs”; the upcoming general election is the “genny lec”, and a mental breakdown is a “menty b”. Meanwhile, holidays are “holibobs”, and the wine formerly known as sauvignon blanc is “savvy b”– best paired with a jacky p (jacket potato) for a comforting dinner that’s not too “spenny” (expensive).

This linguistic phenomenon of, well, very silly abbreviations, has created so much confusion, particularly from North American social media users, that decoding British slang is now its own genre in US celebrity interviews (they’ve all done them – Billie Eilish, Emma Stone, Halle Bailey and more). Meanwhile British social media users regularly share their thoughts on the latest language in posts ranging from joy to derision. “If I am re-elected,” joked Labour MP Stella Creasy, “I promise legislation to ban the terms ‘genny lec’ and ‘snappy gen’.” (“Snappy gen” was briefly in the running for the election abbreviation du jour, before being superseded by the overwhelming popularity of “genny lec”.) […]

Yet although slang is likely as old as language itself, I’m convinced that this culture of contractions is something new. The novel thing is just how supercharged the speed of word-innovation has become, and the competitive yet democratic element to the phenomenon. New phrases are created and submitted to the online populus for its approval faster than you can say panny d (yes, for “pandemic”). It’s almost become a national sport of collective wordplay. My favourite at the moment? Although I never much liked “holibob”, I am rather enjoying the working holiday spin-off: “holijob”.

Click through for a deep dive into the sociosemantics of “cozzie livs”; me, I’m going to go fan myself. Thanks, Trevor!

I was struck by Anatoly Vorobey’s post on Dodie Smith’s well-known novel I Capture the Castle (which I will have to read — he calls it замечательный ‘wonderful, remarkable’). He says that the title, which at first seems straightforward, is anything but:

At first glance, it simply means “I’m taking over the castle.” But when you read the book itself, you notice that Cassandra [the teenage girl who’s writing the diary that forms the text of the novel] often uses capture with a different meaning in her diary, when she says that with her diary entries she hopes to “capture” the characters of her relatives, the atmosphere of life in the castle, etc. It’s like when they say that a photographer or artist “captured” a moment, a mood, a facial feature.

It gradually becomes clear that the title I Capture The Castle is meant in this sense. At the same time, it is interesting that the author does not impose this on the reader. Firstly, for a native speaker, the title, until you read the book itself, is clearly read as “I capture [in the usual sense] the castle”; another reading does not come to mind (I believe). Secondly, the title is not repeated within the text. If you don’t pay attention to the word capture, you might think that something metaphorical is meant by “capturing.” But if you pay attention to the “capture” in the text, and think about the fact that according to the plot, by the end of the novel the heroine does not “capture” the castle even in a figurative sense (does not become the main person in it, for example), then there is no doubt.

He is certainly right about the “native speaker” issue; it never would have entered my mind that capture was used in the sense he explains. He then goes on to say that he doesn’t know how to render the title in Russian: “Я ухватываю/охватываю/схватываю/ловлю/ замок” all sound wrong. The official translation is “Я захватываю замок,” but that uses the expected but incorrect sense. Translations in other languages avoid the issue: Le Château de Cassandra, Ho un castello nel cuore, Spiel im Sommer. A fascinating problem!

In the grand tradition of “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” I bring you Fa:m’ Ahniesgwow by the experimental poet Hans G. Helms. You can hear the author reading excerpts in this YouTube clip; as @magicmulder says in a comment, “So klingt Deutsch für Leute, die kein Deutsch verstehen. :D” I have no idea how the title is meant to be pronounced or what meaning the reader/hearer is expected to extract from the piece, but it’s fun in small doses.