The Beatles

                      

     

Original band member Stuart Sutcliffe came up with THE BEETLES, as a play on Buddy Holly's group THE CRICKETS who they loved.

Thet actually called themselves The Beatals for the first few months in 1960 and had tried out other names including "Johnny and the Moondogs", "Long John and The Beetles.

They were using the name THE QUARRYMEN and sometimes THE SILVER BEATLES - and by late summer of 1960 the members settled on THE BEATLES emphasizing the BEAT aspect of music and poetry.

Some sources say that John Lennon listed the influence of the film The Wild One, which featured a motorcycle gang called the Beetles (female gang members). An interesting email came to me from Bill Harry (www.mersey-beat.com):

I was with John and Stuart at the Gambier Terrace flat when they discussed a new name. Indeed, Stuart suggested a name like Buddy Holly's group and they started coming out with the name of insects and liked 'beetles.' This was the name Buddy Holly originally thought of himself before decided on Crickets. None of the Beatles knew of 'The Wild One' and none had ever seen it because it was banned in Britain for 14 years and was first shown in 1968.

The rumour came about 'The Wild One' in the mid-Sixties when Derek Taylor saw it in America and asked George Harrison did the reference to a motorcycle gang called the beetles influence the name. George wasn't around when the name was conceived and didn't know, so he assumed Derek was right, unaware that the film had never been shown in the UK when the name was conceived in 1960.

John Lennon never at any time mentioned 'The Wild One' in association with their name.

Lennon is generally credited with combining Beetles and Beat to come up with THE BEATLES spelling.

   

   


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Paparazzi

"Bratislava Bronze Paparazzo". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Paparazzi (plural) and paparazzo (singular) or sometimes paparazza comes from the Italian papaˈrattso. Today, we use the terms in English to describe photographers who take pictures of celebrities, usually while they are going about their everyday life.

Many paparazzi are freelancers who make their living by selling photos to news services. the more scandalous the photos, the more money they make.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence getting papped in New York City.

The word "paparazzi" as we use it now is an eponym, meaning it is taken from a name.  In the 1960 film La dolce vita directed by Federico Fellini there is a news photographer named Paparazzo.

Word and Phrase Origins: Definitions and Origins author Robert Hendrickson writes that Fellini took the name from an Italian dialect word that describes the annoying noise of a buzzing mosquito.

Ennio Flaiano, co-writer of Fellini's La dolce vita, said that "paparazzo" in his Abruzzi dialect refers to a local clam and figuratively for the shutter sound of a camera.

Flaiano also said that he or Fellini had seen the name in an Italian translation of a travel narrative by George Gissing titled By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy that one of the them was paging through on the set of La Dolce Vita. The character in the book was a hotel keeper.

Actress Anita Ekberg takes a bow & arrow to the paparazzi
outside her house in Rome, 1960 (by Marcello Geppetti)

paparazzi on Wikipedia

August

The Roman calendar changed its form several times between the founding of Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire. The early Roman Romulus calendar was followed by the Julian calendar (after 46 BC). The common calendar widely used today is known as the Gregorian calendar. It is a refinement of the Julian calendar with an adjustment to the length of the year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days (a 0.002% change).

Calendar of Romulus
Martius (31 days)
Aprilis (30 days)
Maius (31 days)
Iunius (30 days)
Quintilis [2] (31 days)
Sextilis (30 days)
September (30 days)
October (31 days)
November (30 days)
December (30 days

July was Quintilis renamed to honor Julius Caesar. His grandnephew was Augustus who defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra, and became emperor of Rome.

To honor him, the Roman Senate chose the existing month Sextillus (sex means six). Why that month? In the Senate's decree:

Whereas the Emperor Augustus Caesar, in the month of Sextillis . . . thrice entered the city in triumph . . . and in the same month Egypt was brought under the authority of the Roman people, and in the same month an end was put to the civil wars; and whereas for these reasons the said month is, and has been, most fortunate to this empire, it is hereby decreed by the senate that the said month shall be called Augustus.

But there were a few problems with the choice. Julius's month, July, had 31 days, and Sextillis only had 30. That seemed like a slight to Augustus.

The Julian calendar had a nice alternation of months with 30 and 31 days (with the exception of February with 29).

The Senate took a day from February and reduced it to 28 days (29 in a leap year).

Of course, adding that extra day to August meant that July, August, and September would all have 31 days. Three long months in a row didn't sit well with them. So, they also switched the lengths of the last four months, and so we got 30 days in September, April, June, and November.

Julius and Augustus were the only Roman ruler to ultimately end up with months named after them. Emperor Claudius renamed May for himself  and Nero instituted Neronius for April, but neither had any holding power and were reverted.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

Midsummer

Tonight is marked as Midsummer Night's Eve, even though for those of us in the Northern hemisphere summer has only just started. I wondered for a long time why it was called this and why Shakespeare set his play on this night that was clearly not in the middle of summer.

The origin of the naming of this as midsummer comes from Old English and we need to acknowledge that the old Anglo-Saxon calendar had only two seasons, summer and winter.

Dividing the year in half for a “Midsummer’s Day” would have put the day near the middle of summer in June. It probably wasn’t an exact day marked universally. Summer started in mid-April in the old Icelandic calendar and on the Anglo-Saxon calendar, it was marked as whenever the full moon appeared.

The marking of midsummer may have varied but the celebration of Saint John's Eve on this day was set by the church. Saint John is the patron saint of beekeepers.

This is a time when after many spring flowers and clover have bloomed, the hives are full of honey. One name given to this month's full moon was the Mead Moon because much of that honey was fermented to make the honey wine called mead.

This is also one of the origin stories for the word "honeymoon" and so it became known as a time for lovers.

That is why Shakespeare set his play A Midsummer Night's Dream on this night.The night also gained a reputation as a time of magic when the fairy kingdom would play pranks on people.

The tale is of two young couples who wander into a magical forest outside Athens full of fairies who play with the lovers' emotions. "The course of true love never did run smooth," wrote Shakespeare, but being a comedy, things do eventually work out for the lovers.

An old Swedish proverb says, "Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.

cross-posted from Weekends in Paradelle

New Words in English

Words are always being added to languages and English is more dynamic than many languages. Words come and often go after a short time. Fads, slang and pop cultural references sometimes have a short shelf life.

Dictionary makers had always held a kind of dominion over what words were accepted or not. That is true to a lesser degree today, but we still pay attention to their pronouncements.

Merriam-Webster has announced new entries for their 2014 collegiate dictionary. There are 150 new words with a good number coming from pop culture and technology.

One day in the future, perhaps someone will be reading this blog or some article about these words and they will wonder about the etymology of these words the way I currently look at the origin of words from the past on this blog.

Big Baby Bumps of 2012

Why did we start saying "baby bump" around 2003 to mean "the enlarged abdomen of a pregnant woman?" We already had "pregnant" or the expression "she's showing."

Since 1980, we have been calling it "big data" when there was a collection of data that is too large and complex for processing by traditional database management tools

The word "catfish" took on a new non-fish meaning of a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes. It comes from the the 2010 documentary called Catfish (which led to an MTV show). In that pseudo-documentary, a man has an online friendship with a woman that turns out to be far different than a Facebook profile.

Not all the words are new to English/ "Fracking" has been around since 1953, but it has been much more in the news and media the past 10 years. It's time has come.

Here are a few other "new " words in English.

crowdfunding (n., 2006): the practice of soliciting financial contributions from a large number of people esp. from the online community

e-waste (n., 2004): waste consisting of discarded electronic products (as computers, televisions, and cell phones)

gamification (n., 2010): the process of adding game or gamelike elements to something (as a task) so as to encourage participation

hashtag (n., 2008): a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that clarifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet)

selfie (n., 2002): an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera esp. for posting on social networks.

social networking (n., 1998): the creation and maintenance of personal and business relationships esp. online

spoiler alert (n., 1994): a reviewer’s warning that a plot spoiler is about to be revealed

unfriend (v., 2003): to remove (someone) from a list of designated friends on a person’s social networking Web site