Language Trainers Blog

A person’s family name can tell a lot about their ethnicity, family history, even what their ancestors did for jobs.  Many older names reflect occupations, such as Baker, Tailor, Smith, and Cook. Surnames can sometimes give clues about where a family comes from, even down to a town or village.

There are a lot of genealogy resources available if you are interested in researching your own family name, or that of your friends. Behind the Name has family names from many different cultures and languages, from Basque to Icelandic, Romanian to Sikh.  An interesting addition is the Statistics option, which allows you to see how common a certain name is in the USA or England and Wales.

The Mandarin Chinese surnames Wang and Li are the most common surnames in the world, with over 90 million people each.

Just out of interest, my surname was ranked 459th out of 88,799 names in the US census of 1990.  You can also tell that my family is from a Cantonese-speaking part of China, as the English transliteration is ‘Wong’, not ‘Huang’ (which is a Mandarin spelling).

One of my favourite linguistic phenomena is the eggcorn.  It occurs when a person hears something slightly different to what was said, but the misheard form still makes some sort of sense.  If a person never sees the phrase written down, it’s very possible for them to think that their interpretation is the correct version.

A good example is the word eggcorn itself, which some people believe is the correct pronunciation and spelling of acorn.  It qualifies as a true eggcorn, because acorns are egg-shaped, and corn is a kind of seed, so eggcorn almost makes sense.

A little digging around the internet has revealed some gems, and the Eggcorn Database is a great source.  It encourages public submission, discussion, and possible etymologies.  It even includes some that it doesn’t technically classify as eggcorns.

Here are some of my favourites:

• (chocolate) eclair >> eggclair
• (social) leper >> leopard
• an arm and a leg >> a nominal egg
• eau de cologne >> odor cologne
• cold-hearted >> coal-hearted

Social leopards

The Chinese government has been reported to have plans to release a list of about 8,000 characters that they recommend be used for everyday purposes, including textbooks, documents, and names for newborn babies.  Limitations in updating technology to recognise all of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters in existence means that it is very difficult for the government to implement nationwide electronic ID cards, as well as digitisation of texts.  Their solution, rather than adding thousands of characters that most people will never use, is to restrict new baby names, as well as require people with very unusual names to change them.

Everyday Chinese involves about 3,500 characters, and the recommended 8,000 simplified characters are reportedly enough to convey “almost any concept in any field”.  This doesn’t bode well for the some 60 million Chinese people with obscure names, who may have to choose simpler names in order to receive the mandatory ID cards.

Government officials suggest that names have gotten out of hand, with too many parents picking the most obscure characters they can find or even making up characters, like linguistic fashion accessories. But many Chinese couples take pride in searching the rich archives of classical Chinese to find a distinctive, pleasing name, partly to help their children stand out in a society with strikingly few surnames.

By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.

At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.”

While I don’t agree with people having to change their names for the sake of convenience for the government, cultures that have an alphabet-based written language can’t compare to this situation.  In English, we have our standard 26 letters, along with numbers, and various punctuation marks.  We occasionally adopt accent marks when we borrow from other languages.  In Chinese, the computer systems must recognise thousands upon thousands of characters.  Many countries also forbid parents to name their children potentially offensive or damaging names, and names with numerals in them have been denied (such as baby 4Real, who was later named Superman).

I think it would also be quite frustrating not being able to input one’s own name on a computer, or have to describe it to someone who had never even seen the character before, but then again, both my English and Chinese names are pretty common.

Full article from NYTimes.com.

When I was reading about UK councils banning confusing jargon, I came across a discussion board thread which asked readers which terms they would to see “thrown into the linguistic trash can“.

An interesting post noted that the term Third World country was actually a leftover from the Cold War.  I’m not all that familiar with war terms, but this surprised me.

During the Cold War, the world was simplistically divided into three parts.  The First World was made up of NATO allies (the capitalist Western bloc), the Second World comprised the countries aligned with the communist Soviet Eastern bloc, and the Third World was essentially made up of all the rest.  The Third World, or unaligned countries at the time, were generally developing countries, although Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland were notable exceptions.  They remained neutral during the war, but weren’t considered undeveloped.

Here’s a general picture:

These days, the Third World tends to refer strictly to developing countries, no matter what their political leanings.  The First World now refers to highly developed countries with large incomes.  Both terms are difficult to define, and I wonder how useful they really are.  The term Fourth World has also arisen, to describe nomadic or nationless states or groups who are politically powerless.

Note: There is also the theory floating around that the Third World (speaking of Africa, mostly) came about following the terms Old World (Europe), and New World (the Americas).  These were terms used to match the order in which European explorers discovered the world.  It’s not an accurate origin, but it’s still somewhat logical, and probably less politically charged!

The internal software at my office has an interesting little addition called ‘English of the Day’ that pops up on the login screen and the home page. It gives a phrase in English, the meaning, an example sentence, and the frequency of usage.

Today it had two phrases that I’d never heard of, which I found surprising.

The first one was ‘in the catbird seat’, which, after further research, turns out to mean ’sitting pretty’, or to be in an advantageous position. It is an American phrase which refers to the catbird (a mimic thrush which can replicate the sound of a cat’s miaow and sits high up in trees). It was introduced into mainstream usage in 1940s by baseball commentator Red Barber, and James Thurber’s short story The Catbird Seat. A slightly more recent example of the influence of literature than the Chaucer story I talked about a little while ago.

The second one was ’strictly GI’, where GI is short for Goverment Issue (not Gastro-Intestinal, as it most often means to me, but then again, I studied pathology at university). The software did mention that anyone who used this phrase would probably be military, so it’s unsurprising that I don’t use it myself. ‘Strictly GI’, as well as being a 1943 film starring Bob Hope, means something is standard issue, military, by the book, etc. It has also been applied to infantrymen, or common soldiers. I think a lot of us remember the popular action figure G.I. Joe. I never realised that they were essentially calling the poor guy ‘Average Joe’.

I’ve asked for some more information about the source of these idiomatic gems, but as yet I haven’t heard anything back.

Growing up, we referred to Friday the 13th as Black Friday. It wasn’t until last November that I found out that Black Friday is also the name for the big shopping day immediately following Thanksgiving in the USA, and apparently the Friday just before Christmas in the UK (a big party day). It seems that my usage is non-standard at best (that is, pretty much unknown). Black Friday is also the name that has been given to numerous tragic events, as it seems like bad things happen fairly often on Fridays.

In some places, especially the United States and Commonwealth countries, today is especially unlucky because it is the combination of two unlucky things: Friday, and the number 13. The superstition causes many people to pay extra attention to staying safe, not letting black cats cross their paths, and not walking under ladders (other supposedly unlucky occurrences). Some people are so paralysed by a fear of this day that they can’t leave their houses and some can’t do anything on these days. The phobia is known as paraskavedekatriaphobia, or friggatriskaidekaphobia, which I think is an excellent word to try to say.

Interestingly enough, though Friday and 13 have individually been seen as unlucky for centuries, the combination has only been seen as a particularly unlucky day for the last 100 or so years.

In Greece and in certain Spanish-speaking countries (Mexico, Spain, and some parts of Latin America), it’s not the Friday that should be feared, but Tuesday the 13th. Tuesday is considered the worst day of the week, and why not, as you haven’t even reached Wednesday (the ‘hump’ day) yet. As a result of this, the horror film franchise Friday the 13th, although released in Spain as Viernes 13 (Friday the 13th), was released in Argentina as Martes 13, or Tuesday the 13th.

I was on a shopping trip in central China with two female friends, one American, and one Chinese. We were looking at hats (it’s quite chilly at the moment, after all), and we discussed the fact that my mother always told me not to wear white headwear. White is a funeral colour in China, so it’s considered bad luck to wear it on your head. What I didn’t know was that this is a very old-fashioned belief. Thanks, mum.

My American friend mentioned that she wanted a green hat, but noted that we hadn’t seen many around. Our Chinese companion then told us, very emphatically, that if you wear a green hat in China, it means your wife is cheating on you. I couldn’t work out why you would walk around with a green hat on in that case, but, needless to say, we stopped looking for them.

After a little more research into the topic, I found out that the term for ‘cuckold’ (a man whose wife is unfaithful) in Chinese is dài lǜ mào (戴綠帽), which literally translates to ‘wearing a green hat’.

A little more research dates this term back to the Ming dynasty. As the story goes, there was a businessman with a very beautiful wife. The businessman travelled often, and missed his wife. Unbeknownst to him, while he was away, the beautiful wife kept herself entertained with other men. When he came home, he told her how much he missed her. She made him a green hat, and told him to wear it to remind him of her. He went off happily, wearing the hat, while she and all the neighbours knew what was really going on.

Adding to the poor man’s plight is the fact that in the Ming dynasty, green material was a sign of the lower classes. Prostitutes were often artisans as well, and they were known for making green-coloured material.

The term dài lǜ mào endures to this day, and you would understandably be hard pressed to find any man in China wearing a green hat.

As an aside, a while ago Dave mentioned the corna, a hand gesture used in some countries to indicate that a man’s wife is cheating on him. I’m not quite sure what it says about us that we’ve mentioned cuckoldry on two separate occasions so far. Maybe it just means that it happens everywhere….

I was looking at some online resources aimed at helping people improve their English pronunciation when I came across the word ‘nill’, which was used as an example of how to pronounce the sound /ɪ/ (as in bit).  I didn’t know if this was a misspelling of the word ‘nil’ (meaning zero or nothing), or a word I’d never heard of, so of course I looked it up.  Using trusty old dictionary.com, I was informed that the word ‘nill‘ was an archaic verb, meaning to be unwilling, will not, or to refuse (something).

This led to the phrase ‘will he, nill he’ (or ‘will ye, nill ye’), which means ‘whether he is willing or not’.  This in turn morphed into the phrase ‘willy-nilly‘, which is still used today.  ‘Willy-nilly’ is generally used to describe something that is disorganised, unplanned, or generally ‘all over the place’, but it still has a secondary (but rare) meaning that is related to the original form, which is basically ‘whether you like it or not’.

So if you ever hear someone say ‘you’ll have to do it willy-nilly’, don’t assume that it means they want you to do a shoddy job.  Unfortunately, they probably mean that you’ll have to do the task whether you want to or not.

I sometimes find it quite difficult to explain the difference between words that are almost synonymous, but not quite.  As a native speaker, sometimes you just feel the difference between words, and it’s a challenge to put that difference into words, especially in a way that will be meaningful to your listener, especially if they are a learner of the language.

Today I was discussing ‘whine’ and ‘whinge’ with an American*, who thought that these two words meant exactly the same thing (they both mean ‘complain’, but have slightly different meanings).  Even now I’m finding them challenging to describe.  In these cases, it’s always good to have a dictionary handy, and lucky there are plenty of them online**.  I found these definitions in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:

whinge

Brit. informal

• verb (whingeing) complain persistently and peevishly.

• noun an act of whingeing.

— DERIVATIVES whinger noun.

— ORIGIN Old English.

whine

• noun 1 a long, high-pitched complaining cry. 2 a long, high-pitched unpleasant sound. 3 a feeble or petulant complaint.

• verb 1 give or make a whine. 2 complain in a feeble or petulant way.

— DERIVATIVES whiner noun whiny adjective.

— ORIGIN Old English, whistle through the air; related to WHINGE.

I couldn’t quite convey that they were just different forms of complaint, and they were annoying in different ways.

*It just goes to show that even native speakers of the same language interpret words in different ways.
**Sticklers for language usually have a favoured dictionary that they swear by, whether it be the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), Dictionary.com, or the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  I think as long as you cite your sources, nobody can really complain (unless you frequently get your information from Urban Dictionary).

In the news last week, an Athens court dismissed a case requesting that the word ‘lesbian’ be only used to refer to residents of the small island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea.  Three such residents requested that the word be banned from being used to refer to homosexual women.  One of the plaintiffs was photographed holding a banner that proclaimed “If you are not from Lesbos / you are not a lesbian”.

“This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere,” Vassilis Chirdaris, lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece, told Reuters. “A court in Athens could not stop people around the world from using it. It was ridiculous.”

The female poet* Sappho was famous for her love poems in ancient Greek times, and the word ‘lesbian’ was derived from her birthplace, Lesbos.  It turns out that the island has become something of a popular destination for gay women, and this has provided a boost to the local tourism industry.

It’s not unheard of for certain towns or regions to restrict the use of their name for commercial purposes, and for this reason the word ‘Cognac’ can only be used to describe brandy made in that region.  Unfortunately for the people of the village of Champagne, Switzerland, they can’t even use their own village name on local produce.  France is very proud of its Champagne wine region, and Switzerland has, for politico-economic reasons, agreed to forbid this tiny village from using the word ‘Champagne’ on their products.

Despite all the efforts of the French, ‘champagne’ has become synonymous with almost any ’sparkling white wine’ in many places in the world, despite not being technically correct.  We could use ‘methode traditionelle’, or ‘bubbly’, but it’s just not the same.  ‘Champagne’ is becoming generic, which has to be somewhat of a compliment for the region, surely?  Similarly, whatever the ruling had been in Athens, I doubt many people worldwide would restrict the use of the word ‘lesbian’ to the description of the 90,000 inhabitants of Lesbos.

*I’m not a fan of the word ‘poetess’, for some reason.  Maybe ‘poetress’ would be better?