Names and their meanings 01 Japanese names

Most Japanese names are written in kanji, Chinese characters. These letters are ideograph so we can read the letters not just phonetically but understand them semantically.

Parents when they give their newborn a name, would choose carefully the characters that reflect their hopes for their child. For example my name Makiko (phonetically chosen by my big brother) is written 万起子 in kanji, and each character's meanings are 万 = myriad, 起 = raise, 子 = child, so when all linked together it would mean something like "a child who raises myriad of things". I don't think I always semantically live up to my name, but I do think the name, to some extent, influence my sense of identity.

Unless we are trying to explain to others how we write our names in kanji, the meanings of the names are not much of a concern.

Now, there is a website of Japan Shogi Association (日本将棋連盟 Japan Shogi Association ), and the website offers multilingual translation of the site (by Google translation). Because it is automatic translation, and faithfully and thoroughly executing its function, it sometimes overdoes the work by translating the names of the Shogi players like below (Their correct names in alphabet and in kanji are in parentheses).

Kato One Hundred and Twenty-Three    (Kato Hifumi  加藤一二三)
Forest Keiji    (Mori Keiji  森けい二)
Excused True    (Chuza Makoto  中座真)
North Island Tadao    (Kitajima Tadao  北島忠雄)
Piece Daisuke    (Katagami Daisuke  片上大輔)

Village Hideshi    (Muranaka Hideshi  村中秀史)
Sasaki Courage    (Sasaki Yuki  佐々木勇気)

Good for them that they are peaceful Shogi players; hardly ferocious ring names if they were wrestlers.

Apo Koinou

A follow-up to "There is no one compares with you"

The sentence construction is sometimes called "Apo Koinou" (from Greek)

The OED explains:

----------
Applied to a construction consisting of two clauses which have a word or phrase in common (see quots.)
----------

The OED cites the passages in which "Apo Koinou" was used, and these are actually the ones by modern linguists.

----------
1892   L. Kellner Hist. Outl. Eng. Syntax 62   The whole construction may be apprehended as a sentence with one subject and two predicates. This is the so-called construction ἀπὸ κοινοῦ.
1927   O. Jespersen Mod. Eng. Gram. III. vii. 133   Our constructions are often explained on the so-called apokoinou principle, according to which something is expressed only once instead of twice, but in such a way that the hearer connects it both with what precedes and with what follows.
----------

Pseudo-Anglicism 01 OL, Miss contest, Companion

OL (office lady), Miss contest, Companion

These are words that are used in Japanese. They look and sound like English, and maybe a lot of Japanese people believe that they are actually English.

Here are some examples of how these words would be used in a Japanese conversation context.

"So, are you a student?"
"No, I am OL (office lady). I work for Sony."

"How come there are always so many beautiful women around him?"
"Oh, he is the owner of that Miss contest."

"Are you going to the motor show next week?"
"Of course! I love all the concept cars, but I really want to take photos of the companions."

These words are called pseudo-anglicisms. Words are used in a non-English speaking society which sound like English but the actual meaning is different. Their meanings in Japanese are as below:

office lady → office worker
Miss contest → beauty pageant
companions → motor show girls (party hostess, convention guide)

All these above words slightly irritate my mild feminism spirit.

The word Office Lady (OL) was first introduced into Japanese vocabulary by a woman's magazine in 1964. It refers to working women whose role is mainly assistant work, so it doesn't refer to women in a managing post. I feel it has sort of a condescending nuance, but most people take it very neutrally.

The word "companion" had always reminded me of stories like "Lord of the Rings", "Three Men in a Boat", "Journey to the West", "The Wizard of OZ", all those journey stories, and it always had wholesome buddy chummy kind of feel. However, the same word in a Japanese conversation context carries slightly lascivious impression.

I would happily be a companion in an English context but not in a Japanese one.

Eponym of Britain

A name, or noun formed after a person is called "eponym."

A famous example is "sandwich," which originally refers to the 18th-century Earl of Sandwich who insisted on eating bread and meat together while gambling. Also, "jeans" derives from the city of Genoa in Italy, where the type of cloth was first made.

"Britain" is also the case.

In medieval England, "Britain" was thought to have been named after one of the Trojan descendants, "Brutus." He is a descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas who, attacked by the Greek, fled from Troy and become a founder of Rome.

Overall, the Trojan legend was massively popular throughout the Middle Ages in many respects: it helps to bestow a ancient "badge" with familial origin, enhancing nobility and boosting national prestige and identity.

English people were not able to stay silent as to this "grand" narrative and added, rather ambitiously, some pages of another story: They claimed that the name of Britain has its origin in this Brutus of Troy, who in some chronicles is presented as the grandson or great grandson of Aeneas!

His name is sometimes confused with "Brutus" in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Et tu, Brute?), but another Brutus is the very eponymous founder of Britain.


Works Referred:
Yule, George. The Study of Language. 3rd. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.

Wrong, long or young

People have their reasons for their choices.

I have been teaching beginner's level English in English at my school. The classes are very simple and straight forward, except that it is taught all in English, mostly orally, and no Japanese allowed in class, so some of my young students receive quite a shock and sometimes stumble on some simple exercises.

In the workbook, there was a page of exercises where the students had to choose the correct word from given choices to complete the sentence. One student who was quite good at English made mistake on this question:

'Yesterday' is a ( wrong,  long,  young ) word.

The word 'yesterday' was one of the long words that appeared in their text book so far, so the correct choice was 'long'.

The student first chose 'wrong'. I put a red underline on the incorrect choice, and let him try again. I thought that his mistake was due to misunderstanding of the spelling and the pronunciation.

He came back to me with his workbook. He chose 'young'. 

Wrong again. I wondered why this bright boy would make this easy mistake. I gave the workbook back to him and told him that the last one left was the correct choice.

"Really? I couldn't really get this question. I had to really think for this one. I mean, 'Yesterday' isn't that long, is it? So that one was out of the choice. There are much longer words, I know longer ones. Then, I thought, OK, if I compare myself of yesterday and myself of today,  I am one day older than yesterday. So everything yesterday is one day younger than everything today. That's why I chose 'young'."

He had a point.

He thought about the event that the meaning of the word carries.

Yes, 'yesterday' could be a long and young word.

King Arthur fights with a giant in Brittany

King Arthur was considered as a "legendary" figure now, but he was much more like a "historical" hero throughout the Middle Ages. First appearing as a military leader of Briton, he combats against the intruding Saxons and rescues the Britons from the invasion. (In fact, his "historical" fame was gradually overshadowed by appearance of other stories centering on his Knights of the Round Table)

One of the memorable episodes concerning King Arthur is a fight with a giant in Brittany (Little Britain). Brittany was often deemed as a place of magic and enchantment, and the giant dwells in Mont Saint Michel. Arthur hears the news that the giant, a constant harass in the region, killed and abducted the niece of Brittany. Finally, Arthur defeats a giant by showing his prowess.

(Egerton 3028   f. 49   Drawing of king Arthur finding a giant roasting a pig)

The story is recorded in the 14th-century alliterative poem. Confronted with Arthur, the initial description of the giant runs with concentration of "g" sound.

----------
Then glopined the glutton   and glored unfair;
He grenned as a grayhound   with grisly tuskes;
He gaped, he groned fast   with grouchand lates
For gref of the good king   that him with grame greetes. (1074-77)
----------

Simon Armitage, one of Britain's most celebrated poets, translates the passages as follows:

----------
The startled glutton glared gruesomely,
grinned like a greyhound with grisly fangs,
then groaned and glowered with a menacing grimace,
growling at the good King who greeted him angrily. (41)
----------

A sequence of "g" sound helps to heighten a nature of his brutality and ferocity as well as a sense of terror. The "g" alliteration really creates a fitting atmosphere that heralds monster's entrance on the stage.

"G" consonant has been traditionally associated with such effect, reminding us that the first monster slain in the history of English literature is called "Grendel."

To "wear the pants"

"Wear the pants"

wear the trousers (Br E)
(often disapproving, especially of a woman)
to be the person in a marriage or other relationship who makes most of the decisions. 
to be the dominant partner in a relationship.
(OED)

I was not so familiar with this idiom until recently, now Hilary Clinton running for presidency. Hilary Clinton's power pants suit has become her trademark, and there was even a flash-mob to pay tribute to her ("Pantsuit Power").

Why does she always wear pants suit?

This question was on YAHOO Answers, and many gave responses, some sarcastic, some serious. From the serious ones, they say it is reasonable and practical because she can 'fit in' better with the boys club in pants suits when she is fighting in the male dominant field, and in order for a woman to be taken seriously, not to be held in contempt, she has to look like a man.

Women cannot fight in the male dominant field as she is, but has to look and be like a man.



Hello!?
We are living in the 21st century and we still have to deal with this kind of S**T?! (Excuse me).

I wondered and checked when this idiom came into English, and it goes back as far as mid-1500s. It started about 500 years ago, time when women wore only skirts, and "pants" was equated with an authoritative and properly masculine role. So the idiom is generally applied to women, to refer, disapprovingly (this is the part that annoys me), to a person who wasn't in the position to make the decisions has gained that right.

Women started to wear pants in the early 20th century as work clothes reforming the men's pants, and the item came into women's fashion in 1960s.

Nearly a century of history with pants and STILL, women have not gained the 'proper' right to make the decisions, to be the dominant one.

Will the result of this year's presidential election have any influence on the status of women? Will it have any influence on the nuance of idioms?

Let us look forward to it.