Language issues and Women’s Day celebration round the corner.

 

 

Just a time pass in lighter vein social media inundated with debates Language issues and Women’s Day celebration round the corner.

With International Women’s Day around if one had to Google [1] to find out why on Earth [2] every event becomes History [3] and not herstory.

Whereas language has assigned terms like Gossips [4] to women as if men do not.

If one were to look out for Clues [5] to this Jigsaw puzzle [6] or Loopholes [7] to overcome these Nightmarish[8]  Human [9] created terminological partiality, though it would not be wise as Homo Sapiens to undo centuries of literature, terminologies but rather we may do a course correction by adopting a better  attitude and treating them with due recognition and respect.

After all Mount Everest [10] has not lost it tall stature or importance because of a hastily assigned terminology. What else is required to prove the weakness of Homo Sapiens who could embed stars in Disaster [11] but not while naming months of the Calendar where sycophancy made names of emperors to get precedence. Any way this is not meant to provide content to the Memes [12] industry.    

 

Credits:- References 1 to 12 are from Patrick Foote’s interesting book , ‘The ORIGIN of NAMES, WORDS and EVERYTHING in BETWEEN’ published by Mango Publishing Coral Gables, FL

 

1]                                     GOOGLE

Can’t you just find this one out for yourself? Like isn’t there a

website you can use to search for things like this or

something? No? Fine, very well.

While the name Google might sound like gibberish a baby

would spit out while trying to say granny the word Google

has its origins in the world of mathematics. In maths

however the word is spelt “googol” and it’s the name of the

number that starts with a one, followed by one hundred

zeros. Which is seen as this:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0

00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0

00,000,000,000,000,000.

Safe to say that that is a pretty big number. It’s a number

that the creators of the search engine, Larry Page and

Sergey Brin, liked so much that they named their company

after the number. As they felt the unfathomably huge

number reflected the unfathomably huge amount of

search results that the site could give people. As I’m sure

you saw earlier there is actually a spelling difference

between the company “Google” and the number “googol.”

The company was spelt with an le instead of an ol simply

because Larry Page just presumed it was spelt that way

when seeing on google.com was available. I guess he

couldn’t Google to see how it was actually spelt.

2]                                    EARTH

Earth, home, the little blue and green dot that defies

everything. Earth was in the perfect location and had the

perfect conditions for us to thrive, and thrive we have. Earth

may be the only planet we know of to have life, but that

isn’t Earth’s only distinction. Earth is the only planet not

named after a god of any kind.

 

Earth wasn’t named after a god because only planets got

to be named after gods, and early astronomers didn’t really

see Earth as a planet. To them Earth was just home, the

planets where the far off specks in the night sky. By the

time we realised earth was just another planet the name

“Earth” has been cemented, coming from the German

words for ground erda or erde.

 

Earth is also known as is Terra Firma. This name comes

from Latin meaning Firm Land, and in the Roman

mythology Terra/Tellus was the goddess of the Earth.

Seriously!? why isn’t this the official name of our planet to

keep in line with everything else!? Plus it would have given

us another planet named after a goddess in the god

dominated night sky.

 

3]                                        HISTORY

 

History may very well be the one true constant in the

universe. History is in the past, history is being made right

now and history will be made in the future. Pretty much

everything that has, is, or will happen can be considered

history, whether that be naturally made history or human

made history, but why do we call all this stuff, history?

The word history is thought to have its roots in a verb rather

than a noun, the Greek historia which means “to inquire.”

It’s from this verb of seeking knowledge and answers that

we can see where the word story might come from as well.

Story and history seem to be only linked in this way.

As story is now a word more associated with tales of fiction

while history tend to be tales of truth, well what we know

to be truth. History even has the word story within it, so

where does the hi part of the name come from?

The “hi” part of the name is thought to come from the Greek

history meaning a “wise man” and some believe that this is

where the word history as a whole comes from.

It’s this part where the word history has come under attack.

History is a very male dominated thing. As unfortunately in the

past (where most of history takes place) women weren’t

treated as well as they are now, being more sidelined

letting men hog the spotlight more. This can be seen with

history coming from “wise man” and the word history itself

looking like a combination of the words his and story. This

in the ’70s led to the “herstory” movement, here history was

rewritten from a female point of view, and emphasized the

role that women have played in history.

 

While we have made some amazing head way since the

dark ages in giving women a voice, perhaps one day the word will

evolve to reflect that too. Whether that be just herstory or perhaps our story, celebrating the role we have all played.

4]                          GOSSIP

Gossip isn’t one of the nicest things either, but let’s face the

facts. We have all partaken in gossip once in our life. It’s

seems to be a common trait in humans to revel in the

darker side of people behind their back. Kudos if you avoid

gossip, you are a far better human than me.

The noun (which can also be a verb) has roots in baptism of

all places. The word was originally the Old English godsibb

meaning a “godparent” coming from the words “god” and

“sibb” with sibb meaning relative, it’s where we get the

term sibling from. Over time this term of godsibb related to

not just godparents but any close friend or family member.

Especially linked to women and their fellow female friends.

Gossip has always been more associated with women, but

please know that as a male (with male friends) that men

are just as awful with talking about people behind their

backs. By the 1500s this godsibb turned to gossip and

meant idle chat with people you are close with. Evolving

into the idea of talk revolving around rumours.

5]                                        CLUE

Like a disaster a clue can take a physical form, like a note,

or a tape recording, or a blue dog paw print, but the

concept of a clue is very much an abstract noun. Clues are

all about helping us find an answer, and its etymology

reflects this.

 

The word clue hasn’t actually changed that much from its

origins from the 1500s. The word was originally clew and

the key difference between a clue and a clew is that the

former is an abstract noun, while the latter is very much a

physical thing. A clew is a Germanic name for a ball of

string. But what exactly has a ball of string got to do with

helping solve a mystery? Well this links all the way back to

a story from Greek mythology.

 

The story goes that a character called Theseus entered the

infamous labyrinth where the ferocious half-man half-bull

minotaur resided to slay the beast once and for all. To make

sure that he wouldn’t get lost in the labyrinth while in there

he unwound his ball of string (clew) along the floor so the

string would trace his path around the labyrinth. This was

to make sure he could find his way back out once the beast

had been defeated. His clew was very much his clue into

getting back out of the labyrinth. And from this story we

got the concept of a clue as we know it today.

 

6]                     JIGSAW PUZZLE

Is a puzzle even a type of game? Puzzles very much take

up a whole category of their own in the realm of things we

play with. Without doubt the most popular of types of

puzzles are the kind that are made up of many little pieces

that join together to form a picture—jigsaw puzzles!

Solving the puzzle of the etymology of the word puzzle is

Unfortunately, a puzzle we aren’t able to solve, as no one is

too sure where the word came from, very puzzling indeed!

Regardless of the word puzzle why are these ones called

“jigsaw” puzzles? Well when these puzzles were originally

created, they were painted onto flat pieces of wood and

then broken up into interlocking pieces. But how would the

wood be split up? What kind of tool would be used to

separate the pieces? Well it would be done with none other

than the power tool, a jigsaw.

But why is a jigsaw called a jigsaw?! Well when using a

jigsaw the saw goes up and down, a movement that could

be considered a jig. The jigsaw is a saw that jigs.

 

7]                                   LOOPHOLE

 

While a loophole now may be an abstract noun, the name

for a way out of a situation you weren’t intended to get out

of, usually involving run ins with the law, in another time

loopholes were very much a real thing.

 

So, what were these real loopholes?

Well, they had nothing to do with getting out of legal trouble,

they were more about escaping real trouble, that real trouble

most of the time being certain death!

 

A loophole was the small slit in the side of a castle, used to let

light and air through and perhaps more importantly,

shoot arrows through at people attacking your castle!

However, this could work the other way around, a skilled

enough archer could fire an arrow through the loophole

and into the castle. These tiny slits could sometimes be

the only way to take down an impenetrable castle.

Over time the skilled archers became lawyers,

the castles became conviction charges, but the

loopholes remained loopholes, well, in name only.

 

8]                                NIGHTMARE

Nightmares are weird old things aren’t they? When you’re

a kid the worst kinds of dreams you have are of scary

monsters trying to attack you, but as you get older

nightmares become less fanciful, grounded in reality, and

somehow more terrifying. Bad dreams of monsters coming

to get me have been replaced with bad dreams of close

friends and family members passing away, have fun

sleeping tonight folks!

 

While we still aren’t too sure exactly what dreams mean

and how they come to us, we definitely know a lot more

than what they understood of dreams in the thirteenth

century. In the thirteenth century a “nightmare” was the

female evil spirit that invaded you during your sleep and

attempted to suffocate you! A mare has always been a

term associated with females, like how a mare is the name

for a female horse, so it’s no surprise to us that a nightmare

was a female spirit. Over time the term nightmare stop

referring to the spirits but just referred to the bad dreams it

was once thought that they caused

9]                                  HUMAN

Of course while we think we may rule this planet, we are

just another member of the animal kingdom. There are a lot

of things that separate us from the rest of the animal

kingdom, such as our much more complex brains, our

settlements and civilisation, our inventions! Did you know

humans are the only animals that are aware of their

inevitable death and become full of dread and anxiety

when they realise this and on the same token, realise they

haven’t done enough in their life and valued work and

money over family and friends? That fact sounded a lot

more fun in my head, I apologise.

Human is one of those words that just evolved over time,

much like us humans actually did! It’s earlier roots are

thought to come from the Proto-Italic ɣomos and the Proto-

Indo-European degom which both mean things along the

lines of “earth/soil/ground.” These two words evolved into

the Latin humus, which turned into humanus, which then

turned into humaine in Old French. Finally from there

becoming human in English like we know it today. It’s

interesting that the name human has its roots in ancient

word for ground. So much mythology involves us humans

coming from the ground, the womb of mother earth as it

has been put in the mythology of the Arikara Native

Americans. This can even be somewhat seen in the creation

of humans in Greek mythology, where Prometheus formed

humans from clay and mud from the earth.

Our Latin name is of course Homo Sapien with “Homo”

meaning “man” in Latin. While we are now, we aren’t the

only “homo” to have dwelled on this planet. There was of

course Homo Erectus, meaning “upright man.” as these

guys are thought to be the first humans to stand upright

like us. Homo Habilis meaning “handy man” as these

humans were skilled with tools. Yet we too are handy and

stand upright, so what does sapien mean?

Homo Sapien is a name that was introduced to us by the

same man who named the lemur, Mr. Carl Linnaeus—this

makes humans the only animal to name themselves!

Sapien comes from the word sapient which means “be

wise” as the key feature that separates us from the humans

before us is our much more sophisticated and complex

brains!

10]                  MOUNT EVEREST

The Burj Khalifa is pretty big, at 2,722 feet it’s the tallest

building on Earth. So yes while that is pretty tall, Mount

Everest is 29,029 feet tall, making it the highest point on

Earth!

Before being donned Mount Everest, the mountain went by

a couple of different names, and still does to this day. In

Nepali it is called Sagarmāthā and in Tibetan it is called

Chomolungma. In my opinion these names are much

prettier than the one we in the English speaking world

associate with it. The Nepali name of Sagarmāthā means

“Forehead in the Sky” and it’s Tibetan name Chomolungma

means “Mother of the World” which I think we can all

agree are better names than Mount Everest.

So why is this the name we have been parred off with in

English then? This name was given to the mountain when it

was “discovered” in 1852 by the British sponsored Great

Trigonometrical Survey. Upon realising that what they had

discovered was not just a big mountain, but the biggest

mountain on Earth, they needed to name it. It was the

leader of the Survey, Andrew Waugh, who decided to

name the mountain after the previous leader of the Survey,

Sir George Everest.

When George Everest heard however that this colossus of a

mountain had been named after him, he was not honoured

at all, rather he was embarrassed. George had spent so

much of his life on the Survey team in India that he felt all

discoveries should maintain their native names and not

have names of English language origins thrown onto them.

Though we now know that the mountain had/has a native

name (two in fact!) at the time of its discovery by the British,

they didn’t know of these names. Not only did they not

know of them, but the Nepalese banned the Survey team

from entering their country! With no known native name

and the fear that the natives wouldn’t be able to say his

name, George Everest stopped fighting against it and let

the mountain be called Mount Everest. Poor George died

around a year after the mountain was named after him

and we don’t know if he even got to see it with his own

eyes.

11]                       DISASTER

Why are so many of the abstract nouns I’m covering so

negative? Honestly, it’s these negative words that seem to

have a more interesting etymology. That theme seems to

continue with the concept of a disaster. While things that

are disasters: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, are

all very much real things, the actual concept of what

makes something a disaster is very much an abstract noun.

The English word disaster came from the French désastre

which came from the Old Italian disastro. Dis is a common

prefix to words, normally with a negative connotation:

disappoint, disapprove, diss track. So what about the “aster”

part of the word which, as we see in Old Italian, was “astro”

which has a very cosmic feel to it. The idea of disasters have

their root in the world of astronomy. The Greeks thought so

much about their lives and the world around them could be

understood by “reading” the stars in the night sky. They

thought the way the stars and planets aligned would tell

them what their future had in store for them.

When the stars told the ancient Greeks of negative events

that would be coming up, this would be known as “illstarred

events” with the “ill” part of this becoming “diss” and

the Greek word for star being astron. This of course led to

the word disaster as we know it now. And while astrology

is now only partaken by the select few and not the

majority, disasters unfortunately still keep on happening.

12]                                          MEME

Is meme even an abstract noun? I mean you can certainly

see memes (they are becoming ever more present in our

daily lives) but you can’t really grasp or take hold of a

meme, unless you print one out but that’s a whole ce n’est

pas une meme type scenario. But I couldn’t not talk about

memes, so here they are.

Modern internet memes can come from a huge variety of

places, random photos, clips from movies, real world events,

animals. Anything (and I mean anything) is game in the

world of online memes. The name meme for these online

funnies however dates back to 1976, written first in the book

The Selfish Gene written by evolutionary biologist Richard

Dawkins. In his book Dawkins played with the concept of

ideas being like organisms, wondering what would happen

if ideas bred and mutated in the way the organisms did

through evolution.

Following this idea led Dawkins to feel that ideas and

organisms were similar for they both rely on replications.

Organisms rely on reproduction to continue while ideas rely

on spread from brain to brain to survive. Not all ideas

survive however, and even the ones that do survive can

change over time. This concept of ideas behaving like living

organisms needed a name. For a name he borrowed from

the Greek mimeme which means “that which replicates”

but cut of the “mi” at the start so it rhymes more with the

term gene. He also insisted that the name meme could

relate to the French même meaning “memory.”

And at the dawn of funny images being passed around

online, the name meme was adopted for them because like

Dawkins concept of memes. Online memes changed and

mutated over time the more they were shared around, and

like Dawkins memes, they even died too.

Also of interest :- https://time.com/4824551/history-word-origins/

Wherein you find , “That is why feminists, for example, rejected the word history and championed the notion of herstory during the 1970s, says Dictionary.com’s Jane Solomon, “to point out the fact that history has mostly come from a male perspective.” The “his” in history has nothing, linguistically, to do with the pronoun referring to a male person. And some critics pointed that out back in the 1970s, saying that the invention of herstory showed ignorance about where the word comes from. But sociolinguist Ben Zimmer says there’s evidence that the feminists knew as much at the time. And more importantly, the fact that it sounds plausible that there would be a link can still tell us something.

Take the fact that similar plays on the word have been made by people in other marginalized groups too: When jazz musician Sun Ra quipped that “history is only his story. You haven’t heard my story yet,” that statement might have nothing to do with etymology but it can suggest a lot about race and whether an African-American viewpoint is included in the tales passed down in textbooks. That’s why, even if the origins of the word “history” are clear, the question of who gets to decide which version of the past is the right one remains a contentious debate centuries after the term came to be”.

Note:-Though in the past 4 years having read some 200+ serious books on various aspects and topics on Language. I thought collating those extremely serious stuff would require lot of time, revisit those books and end up producing something that may get forwarded without being read as people are not inclined to read long, serious and original stuff in all sorts of media unless they happen to be textbooks. However, I may do at least some small piece when time permits amid too many diversions and duties.