h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's a Chinese Restaurant about 30 miles from me with the name of "Soon Phat", obviously named after the owner.

Portly comes from the French, porter, mean to carry. It refers to the way one carries oneself and is related to deportment. I don't know how it came to mean wide around the middle.

Re: Margaret / Molly, Dorothy / Dolly.

Presumably it is because of the real closeness between the R and the L sounds and came about spontaniously as a result of elision from one to the other.

What I find slightly harder to understand is the R to Z elision in male names:

Charles / Chaz, Gary / Gazzer, etc.

Ben

Isn't it Charles to Chas, as an abbreviation?
And wasn't Gazzer from Gascoine, just altering the spelling to reflect the sound of the shortened version?

*very occasional post from a lurker warning*

Fat. There are probably as many different ways for referring to this as there are ways to be offended by the reference.

Obesity has a clinical definition which not only looks at the height and weight of the individual but the proportion of fat they have at certain points on their body. http://www.iotf.org/

The contraction of names is surely related to a number of things like the ability of the very young to pronounce their own and others names, familiarity and the ability to distinguish between friends/relatives with the same names and not forgetting the costs of a good signwriter and shop frontage (hence Thos, Chas, Wm etc). I suspect there might also be a blokish element creeping in there too .

*sotto voce "that's the backlog dealt with"*

turvy

BBC Headlines:-
Man charged with burgling footballer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3390437.stm

Doesn;t sound right. Perhaps because it isn't the footballer who was burgled but his house? Or just that 'burgling' sounds wrong. Or am I just in an odd mood and seeing things a bit wonky!

It sounds all right at first glance, but is open to several different interpretations when you think of the different meanings of the word "charged".

As for shortened names, I thought Molly was short for Maureen.

Maureen is usually shortened to Mo.

Ictoan, there's only one way to burgle a footballer, and this involves an intimate act

One of my pet bugbears is the inaccurate usage of adjective chains:

"Former Tory leader, William Hague" is inaccurate - they mean "Tory former-leader, William Hague" the man is still a Tory, though no longer their leader.

This matters because "Former Labour MP, Ken Livingstone" is accurate, he is no longer a member of the labour party, though that is apparently about to change.

Likewise, "Former Tory Cabinet Minister and Unionist MP, Enoch Powell" was accurate until such time as Enoch Powell ceased to be a Unionist MP, though because of the omnipresence of inaccurate adjective chains, the best description would have been "Unionist MP and former Tory Cabinet Minister, Enoch Powell"

It drives me absolutely spare..... The adjective chains could be extremely informative but they are actually just miscellaneous syllables there to fill up time in front of the camera with vague bleating noises.



Ben

>> "Lost in Translation" - has anyone seen it? <<

Waiting impatiently for the video release!

It looked very interesting - almost but not quite sufficiently interesting to get me to endure the cold line-ups, the smell and noise of the crowd, the smell and noise of popcorn (smothered in a 'butter-like' substance), and sitting in wet winter coats amid the syrupy sticky seats and floors of our local cinema.

Last film I actually went out to was the first episode of LoTR which was way too long for a smoker with a weak bladder. Almost went to 'Master & Commander' to enjoy the big screen effect of what has been called 'the best film of its kind, ever'. And currently Tim Burton's 'Big Fish' is tempting me to venture forth and suffer, but I keep reminding myself that Danny Devito is in it and then the sickly smell of rancid popcorn whels up.

peace
jwf

Ben,
Taking possibly a more Germanic approach to the language, one *could* interpret 'tory leader' as effectively being a single language unit that we simply don't bother writing down as 'Toryfuehrer', yet we process internally as if it was atomic.

Even in common usage, there is still the possible *relatively* clear distinction between 'the former Labour MP for...' (someone who used to be a Labour MP, and who isn't an MP any more) and 'the formerly Labour MP for...' (someone who isn't Labour any more, but is still an MP).

However, rearranging the second example to 'formerly the Labour MP for...' does push the meaning back to that of the first example.

Just Turvy,
(but not to exclude Topsy if she pops in)

I'm not sure that Gazzer and Gaz do not predate P. Gascoigne.
More than 40 years ago a friend "Marilyn" was called "Mal" and afterwards "Maz". Not by me, I hasten to add.

My friend Carole was called Caz at school in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Potholer - good point about processing complex nouns as single blocks. I hadn't thought about it, but that is *exactly* what is going on. English behaves far more like German than anyone really acknowledges.

I try not to be prescriptive about language, it is so much more interesting to work out what is happening than to rant about what should be happening.

Thanks for pointing it out, Potholer. It doesn't annoy me now, it just intriges me.

Ben

I suppose the flexibility of English, particularly the tendency to use nouns as adjectives can complicate things a bit.

Interestingly, it does seem odd that one can use Tory, Conservative and Liberal as a noun, but not Labour. 'He is a Tory/Liberal/Socialist' is fine, but not 'He is a Labour', so I suppose in this instance, it looks more like a case of nouning adjectives than of adjectivising nouns.

Potholer,

"Interestingly, it does seem odd that one can use Tory, Conservative and Liberal as a noun, but not Labour."

Well spotted, and the converse is that I have never used the verbs "to Tory" "to Conservative" nor "to Liberal".

H'mm.

I think Maz, Caz and Gaz come from the English habit of putting an s on the end of a short word to make an affectionate term. Dorothy is shortened to Dot, but "Dots old gel, pass me the caviar" shows the affectionate use. Marilyn thus becomes Mar, Mars and thus Maz. The same 's' appears in "his nibs" and "muggins".

>> ..English habit of putting an s on the end of a short word to make an affectionate term. <<


Very on topic! And a revelation to me, at least on a conscious level, because I have often done exactly intuitively, being on record here-abouts as referring to Munchkin as 'Munchers, me old chap', apparently shortening the word before adding the 's'.

Potholer would be Pots.
Gnomon would have to be 'Gnomes'.
Plaguesville though just wouldn't work as Plagues.
It'd probably shift to something like Plagie.

But usage is the only authourity and if there's a Pegs and a Peggy as well as a Mags and a Maggie, I'm sure evntually there would be a Plagues and a Plagie if Plaguesvilles were as common as Margarets. Hey nothing personal intended there Marge.

~jwf~

~jwf~

"being on record here-abouts as referring to Munchkin as 'Munchers, me old chap'"

This derives from the (British or, more precisely, English) public school tradition of awarding or imposing nicknames. It reached its zenith in the work of Brian Johnston (Eton and New College, Oxford). He was for many years "the voice of cricket" although he said the title belonged to John Arlott who had a broad, round (Hampshire, I think) rural accent completely opposite to Jonner's suave urbanity. Mainly, he took the first part of the surname and added "ers" to it. So, Jonathan Agnew became "Aggers", Phil Tuffnell "Tuffers" etc. Potholer would likely have been "Potters". There were exceptions to this. For instance the ever present scorer and all round good egg, Bill Frindall, was the "bearded wonder" because of his hirsute appearance and extensive knowledge; this mutated to "Bearders". Another oddity was the Indian S. C. Ganguly who for a while was named "Gingang".

>>..the first part of the surname and added "ers"..<<

By George you're right! It isn't just the ss; there's ER to be considered.


~jwf~

>> Another oddity was the Indian S. C. Ganguly who for a while was named "Gingang".




Benners (Wailer)

The -ers ending is very definately English Public School and those who aspire, at least from my Comprehensive view point. Most Scottish equivalents I can think of make no sense to me at all. i.e. Alexander shortens to Sandy and Hugh to Shug!

Munchkin, back of to hide and only posting cause he got mentioned.