Take a little peek behind the Latin and the Greek.

Hell fire! Is it really over six months since my last entry? I must be getting lazy! Still, here are some tasty titbits to tittilate your taste buds!

Scientists, intellectuals and inventors have routinely plundered the vast treasure chests that are Latin and Greek to pilfer words that they can use to name their new inventions, ideas and discoveries. Yet how many of us know what they actually mean? Well, here are a few with their literal translation into English. Hope you enjoy wandering through them and maybe you can try them on others and show how damned erudite you are, old chaps (and chapesses).

ocean – swift-flow

television – far-sight

helicopter – screw-wing

bicycle – two-wheel

astronaut - star-sailor

aeroplane - air-wanderer

electricity - amberness

petroleum - rock-oil

automobile - self-mover

telephone - far-voice

monarchy - single-rule

democracy - people-power

omnibus - for-all

aristocracy - best-power

dinosaur - terrible-lizard

oxygen - acid-born

atom - uncut

microscope - small-look

energy - in-work

hydrogen - water-born

geography - earth-writing

psychology - mind-word

archaeology - very-old-word

astronomy - star-law

economy - house-law

technology - art-word

thermometer - heat-measure

philology - love-word

philosophy - love-wisdom

photography - light-writing

autobiography - self-life-writing

That's enough for now, but you should be able to work out some other ones for yourselves. I'll put up some more tasty morsels later. Sooner than six months for definite.

Things you never knew about your body parts, Part 3

Welcome to the last instalment of the trilogy that is “Things you never knew about your body parts”. Let's start at the top, not the very top, but a bit down, at the mouth. We think of the mouth as being something which can open to let food and drink enter and words exit, but actually, “mouth” started out a bit further down as something usually quite prominent and certainly not open. The original root of “mouth” basically meant “jutting out”, giving a number of derivations that we use in modern English. The Latin word most closely related to “mouth” is mentum, chin, which suggests that “mouth” actually started life out as the chin, and somehow climbed up the face a little. Other words related to “mouth” and mentum are Latin mons, which gives us “mountain”, and minari, which means “threaten”, on the basis that something jutting out is threatening. So there you are – your mouth was once a chin and could have been a mountain and even a threat.

On the subject of chins, one word underscores the effects of culture on language, which might lead to the strangest formations, often ending up having no basis in reality. The Russian for “chin” is podborodok. Apart from being quite long, it doesn't seem particularly interesting, until you understand that the pod bit means “under” and the borod bit means “beard” (yes, it's historically the same word). Essentially, then, podborodok means literally “underbeard”, suggesting that the original word for “chin” was lost and that beards were more significant than what was under them. Strangely enough, a woman also has a podborodok even though she doesn't have a boroda (at least, the vast majority of women don't). But then Russian always did do strange things with the body, with claws for hands and nails for feet.

Now let's take a wander around the body for the next three words, all of which have transcended the mere physical and have come to describe a variety of feelings and emotions. First of all, when we think of a situation in which everyone agrees and gets on well, we have “harmony”, from Greek harmonia, literally “joining together”, from harmos, “joint”, related to English “arm”. And what surrounds all our joints and bones? Flesh, of course, which is sarx in Greek. What's that got to do with feeling? Well, if you want to strip the flesh off the bone you use the verb sarkazein, which also came to mean “sneer, speak bitterly”, sort of metaphorically tearing strips off someone. This gave us sarkasma, or “sarcasm”, which doesn't really do much for harmony when it's used.

The last of the trio is by far the most intense and uncontrolled emotion that most people will ever endure, though, actually, only half of the human race should really be able to suffer it, or so the other half would maintain, and that's “hysteria”. So which half can suffer it? The Greek for womb was hystera, and we see this in the medical procedure “hysterectomy”, in which the womb is removed. The ancient Greeks believed that each emotion was associated with a specific part of the body, and as such, hysteria was held to arise in the womb, and therefore to be associated only with females. So there we are – only women could become hysterical.

So we come to the last of these meanderings through terms for parts of the body, finishing up with the region just below the womb, in fact. Under sixteens need to turn off their computers and go to bed now. Firstly, we will talk of avocados and witnesses. What do they have in common? Well, in a manner of speaking, a great deal, as they refer to the same thing, or rather, same two things. “Avocado” is the Spanish representation of the Nahuatl word ahuacatl, a fruit which the Spanish first encountered when they landed in Mexico and trekked up to Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs gave it that name for its resemblance to the real ahuacatl, “testicle”. Now, “testicle” is interesting in its own right, as it comes from Latin testiculum, “little witness”, from testis, “witness”, which we can see in “testify” and “testimony”. The idea behind the little witnesses was that they testified to a man's virility.

Still in the same area, let's turn to the two other features which were named after certain other things they resembled. Originally, Latin penis meant “tail”, but it was also used to refer to the male appendage, which, naturally, is the one we use today. Funnily enough, you can use one derivation of penis to sketch a picture, as “pencil”, from penicillus, actually means “little brush”, since brushes were long and hairy, just like tails. Now, the pencil may be mightier than the sword, but the sword gets put into the sheath. And what is the Latin for sheath? Yes, you've guessed - vagina. And on that note, this little journey round the body comes to an end.

Things you never knew about your body, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my little wander through the weirder side of names for parts of the body. In this part we'll start off with measurements. Probably the most obvious part of the body used as a measurement is the foot. The main problem with using a foot to measure things is the fact that feet are generally not the same length from person to person, so until a foot was defined as twelve inches, it was rather inaccurate, as all measurements based on body parts must have been.

The other four measurements in this discussion are all based on the upper limbs. The most obvious is the “hand”, though this is only used nowadays as a measurement in association with horses, despite the use of hands for measurement going back to the ancient Egyptians. Three other measurements take up more than the hand, stretching some way up the arm. The first is the “ell”, a word of Germanic origin related to Latin ulna. The ell was a measurement from the tip of the middle finger to, naturally, the elbow, which, of course, takes its name from the ell. The second is the “cubit”, which denotes exactly the same length as the ell. In fact, cubit comes from Latin cubitum, “elbow”, which is actually related to Greek kybos, “space above a cow's hip”, and also to English “hip” itself. So there we have it: the ell is the same as the cubit in length, the elbow is the same as the cubitum as a joint, and the ell is related to the ulna, the bone leading from the elbow to the hand, while “cubit” is from the same root as “hip”. So in a real sense, you're elbow's connected to your hip bone.

The third is actually something which could be alternately the same measurement as a cubit, alternately a weapon, and which ends up as being not so much a measurement as an indicator of size. The Greek pygme, related to Latin pugnus, meant “fist”, which, of course, usually only exists at times of anger and conflict. A pygme also represented the same length as a cubit, and this meaning was applied to a mythical race of people known in Greek as pygmaioi, reputed to be only the height of a cubit, thereby giving us modern “pygmy”.

Another interesting aspect of body terminology is the way we can use parts of the body to make things happen. Here are some which may never have occurred to you. First up, what do you say when someone sneezes? Why, "bless you", of course. However, if you knew the original meaning of “bless”, you might not be so willing to say it. We think of a blessing as being a priest making the sign of the cross, but 1500 odd years ago it was something quite different. The pagan Germanic tribes which came to Britain at the fall of the Roman empire engaged in animal sacrifice, and blessing involved sprinkling blood on the object to be sanctified. The ancestor of “bless”, Old English bloedsian, meant “sanctify with blood”. When Christianity arrived, the practice changed but the term remained. What's more, the French blesser, “wound”, is from a Frankish root similar to Old English bloedsian. Both roots referred to the letting of blood - in war in French, in religion in English. You could say that Stephen King's Carrie was blessed in an English way with pig's blood, and returned the favour by treating her teachers and schoolmates to quintessentially French blessures.

On the subject of religion, have you ever thought about the way many children are taught to adhere to religious dogma? One way to ensure they learn and never forget the teaching is to inculcate it into them. Now, you might think that violence is not the best way to teach, but “inculcate” tells another story, whether literal or metaphorical. The Latin calx meant “heel”, and inculcare meant literally “stamp in”, the idea being that once stamped in, knowledge would remain. However, if a child did not want to be inculcated, he or she might do a little stamping of their own by being recalcitrant. Calx also produced the verbs calcitrare, “kick”, and recalcitrare, “kick back”, rather like a horse or a donkey. “Recalcitrant” was borrowed from Latin in the 19^th C with the meaning of “obstinately disobedient”, rather like a kicking donkey. Stamping and kicking - who would have thought that the education process could be so violent?

If all that stamping and kicking has taken it out of you, have a rest. And what better way to have a rest than to doss for a while? And while you're dossing, looking up at the stars or the ceiling, you can think of the best way to doss and why it's called dossing at all – because you're on your back, which, of course, is dos in French, from Latin dorsum. So there you have it – if you lie on your front, you can't be termed a dosser. Another thing you can do with your back is to write on it, or rather, let someone else write on it, especially if you want to be a bank cheque. “Endorse” comes from the Old French endosser, “put on the back (of)” (with the spelling changed later). So if you're a politician running for office, you can always get important supporters to endorse you, perhaps with a giant stamp on your back saying “The Next President”.

Of course, if you do run for office, you'll have to persuade enough people to give you their vote to make sure you win. So you'll spend days consulting the polls, until the day when the real poll comes – the only one that matters. That's when everyone lines up and officials count their heads, usually one per person. OK, that would be rather time-consuming and impractical in a modern democracy, but that's how polls started out – head counts. “Poll” in Middle English originally referred to the head, or just the hair of the head, before it came to mean “head count”, and later “election”. The old meaning can still be seen in that much-reviled term “poll-tax”, literally a tax per head of population. Now, let's move from the head to the other end of the body, at least for quadrupeds - the tail. Latin coda, “tail” has produced three words in modern English. The tail-end of a musical piece is termed the “coda”; the tail that you wait in is a “queue”, which comes via French; and the tail that you use to hit balls on a table is a “cue”, an alternative spelling of “queue”.

One other part of the body can prove useful in amusing the public, as long as you know how to use it for speaking - your belly, venter in Latin. That's precisely what a ventriloquist does – speak from the belly, though in a sense, we all speak from the belly from time to time, with sounds that say “I can't eat another morsel”.

Part 3 coming up soon.

What's in a national name?

It's axiomatic that one of the most important aspects of an identity for both an individual and an ethnic group is the name of the group, whether that be a clan, a tribe or a nationality. It may come as quite a surprise to find out that the commonly used name of such a group is often not that name which the group gives itself. However, this is more often the case than you might think. Here are a few well-known, and a few less well-known examples.


The Scots


What comes to mind when you think of the Scots? Kilts, whisky, Rangers, Celtic, lochs, Rabbie Burns, och aye the noo, etc., etc. However, the original use of the term Scot was by the Romans, who referred to the Scotti, raiders from Ireland who settled Scotland and brought their language, Gaelic, with them. So perhaps the Scots should really be drinking whiskey, chasing leprechauns and kissing the Blarney Stone.


The Welsh


This is a classic example of a people bearing a name which was given to them by a hostile people and which is essentially dismissive of them. When the Romans abandoned the British to their fate in the face of the invading Germanic tribes which came to be known as the Anglo-Saxons, the British tribes took on the name Combrogi, Fellow Countrymen, which eventually became the Welsh name of their country, Cymru (pronounced come-re). The term Welsh came from the invading Germanic tribes and meant foreign. So essentially, the Welsh were called foreigners by the English in their own land – a habit which the English have cherished right up to now with regard to other nations. A further twist comes from the fact that the term Welsh originally came from the Volcae, a Celtic tribe encountered by the Romans whose name they applied to all Celts. This term was picked up by the Germanic tribes and adopted as the term for foreign, which is still true in modern German Welsch, which denotes peoples that speak languages descended from Latin.


The French


We talk of Gallic humour, Gallic shrugs and Gallic wit, but that should really only apply to those of Celtic descent, who can trace their ancestry back to the time of Gaul before Caesar conquered it and brought it into the Roman empire. The French are technically not Gauls – they're German. The Franks were a group of German tribes, some of which started to settle in ancient Gaul during the time of the Roman empire, but who eventually took over the country after the collapse of Roman rule. In fact, Frankish vocabulary accounts for about 10% of modern French vocabulary, with the bulk coming from Latin and the rest mainly from Gaulish. So the French shouldn't really be the French, as so little of what the French are is genuinely French.


The Dutch


Now, the Dutch are used to being called Dutch, but they never call themselves Dutch, and they don't really like the term, calling themselves Nederlands, people from the Low Country. This is mainly because the real Dutch are the Germans, who call themselves Deutsch. I know, it gets confusing. The origin of Dutch and Deutsh is the Germanic version of the ancient Indo-European form *teuta, people, which produced Proto-Germanic *theudiskaz, of the people, producing Old High German diutisc. So basically, the Germans call themselves the People, but the Dutch, who English speakers call the People, don't like being called the People. Other languages use a word from the same root to name the Germans: Italian Tedesco, Scandinavian Tysk, and even the languages of Eastern Asia. Funnily enough, the Slavonic languages all refer to the Germans as Nemtsi, literally the Dumb Ones, as the Germanic tribes were unable to speak the language of the Slavs, who regarded themselves literally as speakers, or people of the Word, slovo.


The Greeks


Let's get one thing straight. The Greeks have never been the Greeks. They have been many things, but never Greeks. What I mean by this is that the Greeks have never called themselves Greek, and are the victims of name-calling by foreigners, in this case the Romans, who designated them according to a subset of the wider people, which is actually quite a common occurrence (see below). Interestingly, the Greek government once ran a campaign to get foreigners to effectively abolish the term Greek and use Hellene, with little success.


The people known as the Greeks have actually called themselves many things. Homer, writing around 750 BCE, mostly used Achaeans, Argives and Danaans, terms which are associated with different areas in Greece, to describe the peoples who went to war against the Trojans. After Homer's time, the name Hellene gained currency throughout Greece and has remained the name that the Greeks use for themselves to this day, along with the name of the country Hellas (modern Elladha), though that's not the whole story.


As the Romans expanded their rule through Italy, mainly to the south, they started to come across various peoples living in cities which were colonies settled by people from mainland Greece. The practice of the colonies was to identify themselves strongly with their mother-city, metropolis, in Greece, rather than with the Greeks as a whole, who were all Hellenes (though they constantly fought amongst themselves). The first of these people who the Romans came into contact with called themselves Graikoi in acknowledgement of the region they originated from in Greece, so the Romans cheerfully called the whole of southern Italy Magna Graecia, Great Greece. The name stuck and the rest is history.


It doesn't end there. The Greeks also founded colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, the best known of which referred to themselves as Ionian, giving their name to that region. The coast of Asia Minor fell under the dominion of Persia, which took the name Ionian to refer to all Greeks. From this we get variations of the term Ionian in Arabic, Persian and Hebrew to refer to the Greeks. All this chimes with other instances of one tribe or group being used to denote the wider group, such as the Chechens being named by the Russians after a village in their country, and the Germanic Allemani tribe giving their name to French, Spanish and Portuguese to describe all Germans.


One final thing here; the Greeks don't even call themselves Hellenes, really. Hellene is largely a revival of the ancient term to denote the modern country. Before modern Greece was founded, any self-respecting Greek would call himself Romios, Roman, and many still do. By the time the Roman empire split into eastern and western, Athens had long been reduced to a village and the centre of the Hellenic world was Byzantium, or Constantinople, known just as i Polis, the City, by the Greeks. In fact, if one Greek asked another where he was going, he would reply “to the City”, “is tin bolin”, which gives the modern Istanbul. As Constantinople was the capital of the surviving Roman empire, the people living there called themselves Romios, Roman, even though they spoke Greek. So, essentially the Greeks reject the name of one of their own tribes, which was applied to them by the Romans, but are happy to call themselves by the name of the people who actually gave them the name from their own language that they reject. That's history for you.


The Russians, the Hungarians and the Romanians


The Russians are not really the Russians. They're actually Swedes. Well, at least their name is Swedish. Back in medieval times, before the Slavic tribes settled down in the countries we are familiar with now, groups of Swedes known as Varangians, essentially eastern Vikings, started rowing their ships from the Baltic up the rivers of what is now modern Russia. These people were known for their rowing skills, from which they got the name Rus, the first name of the kingdom which became Russia. The name also sticks in the Finnish name of Sweden, Ruotsi.


The Hungarians are not really the Hungarians. They're the Magyars. However, they were stuck with the name Hungarian, which comes from the Turkic Onogur, meaning either Ten Tribes or Ten Arrows. Medieval Latin added the initial H.


Finally we get to the Romanians. Romania, formerly known as Dacia, was settled by the Romans in the 2^nd century. Although the Romans pulled out around 150 years later, it was enough for Latin to be established as the main language. Apparently, from that time the Romanians have always regarded themselves as the true Romans, which, in a sense they are, even though it's debatable how many of them are actually descended from the original Romans. Still, at least they have the name they want to call themselves, even thought the real Rome is hundreds of miles away in Italy.


There's a world of weird and wonderful ethnic names just waiting to be discovered. Feel free to find some more and bring them back here.