Pseudonyms: Sports

A number of athletes have chosen to use pseudonyms. These are not to be confused with nicknames. For example, Cal Ripken, Jr. was who played in 2,632 consecutive games, over 16 seasons without a game off, which earned him the nickname “Iron Man.”

But a pseudonym is a more formal, permanent and usually legal name change. Some sports pseudonyms include:

Joe Louis (Joseph Louis Barrow)
Chi Chi Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodriguez)
Chipper Jones (Larry Wayne Jones, Jr.)
Whitey Ford (Edward Charles Ford)
Babe Ruth (George Herman Ruth, Jr.)
Casey Stengel (Charles Dillon Stengel; originally named after the initials of his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, or "K.C.")
Chad Ochocinco (Chad Javon Johnson)
Chi Chi Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodriguez)
Chipper Jones (Larry Wayne Jones, Jr.)
Cristiano Ronaldo (Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro)

A few interesting name change stories:



Yogi Berra ( born Lawrence Peter Berra) grew up in St. Louis and while playing in American Legion baseball, he received the nickname "Yogi" from his friend Jack Maguire. After seeing a newsreel about India, Jack said that Larry resembled a Hindu yogi whenever he sat around with arms and legs crossed waiting to bat or while looking sad after a losing game.

Another complicated - and confusing - sports name change is that of Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, a former football running back. He played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1996 to 2000 with the Miami Dolphins, Cleveland Browns, and Indianapolis Colts. He was previously known as Karim Abdul-Jabbar and was born Sharmon Shah. In 1995, Sharmon Shah, a Muslim, was given the name "Karim Abdul-Jabbar" by his Imam.

In his NFL debut, some viewers and even some commentators mistakenly believed that he was the son of former basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Both had attended UCLA.





Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had played at UCLA under the name (Ferdinand) Lew(is) Alcindor. In 1968, Alcindor converted to Sunni Islam, but he did not begin publicly using his Arabic name until 1971.

Erasmus Said...

Many of the adages that have become commonplace in many European languages, are attributed to Erasmus.

Equivalents in English include:

More haste, less speed
The blind leading the blind
A rolling stone gathers no moss
One man's meat is another man's poison
Necessity is the mother of invention
One step at a time
To be in the same boat
To lead one by the nose
A rare bird
Even a child can see it
To walk on tiptoe
One to one
Out of tune
A point in time
I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
To call a spade a spade
Hatched from the same egg
Up to both ears
As though in a mirror
Think before you start
What's done cannot be undone
Many parasangs ahead (Miles ahead)
We cannot all do everything
Many hands make light work
A living corpse
Where there's life, there's hope
To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
To cut to the quick
Time reveals all things
Golden handcuffs
Crocodile tears
To lift a finger
You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
To walk the tightrope
Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
With a fair wind
To dangle the bait
Kill two birds with one stone
To swallow the hook
The bowels of the earth
Happy in one's own skin
Hanging by a thread
The dog is worthy of his dinner
To weigh anchor
To grind one's teeth
Nowhere near the mark
To throw cold water on
Complete the circle
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
No sooner said than done
Neither with bad things nor without them
Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
Like teaching an old man a new language
A necessary evil
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip
To squeeze water out of a stone
To leave no stone unturned
Let the cobbler stick to his last
God helps those who help themselves
The grass is greener over the fence
The cart before the horse
Dog in the manger
One swallow doesn't make a summer
His heart was in his boots
To sleep on it
To break the ice
Ship-shape
To die of laughing
To have an iron in the fire
To look a gift horse in the mouth
Neither fish nor flesh
Like father, like son
Not worth a snap of the fingers
He blows his own trumpet
To show one's heels
A snail's pace

Crank, cranky and crank it up

Sometimes word origins are not very complicated. Such is the case with the English word "crank" (noun) and "cranky" (adjective).

In our modern usage, cranky means describes someone who is irritable or ill tempered.

Etymologically, our use goes back to late 19th century Germany. The German word spelled krank meant to be sick or cross or out of sorts. English speakers anglicized the word and swapped the k for a c and added the -y to make the adjective.

What's the connection to crank meaning the lever used to make a rotary or oscillatory motion to a rotating shaft? None that I can find.

In the early days of automobiles and airplanes, you need to crank the engine to get it started. That handle or propeller turned the crankshaft of the engine and created the initial spark. Much later, when cars no longer needed that hand starting, people began to use the work in phrases such as "crank it up" to mean to kick up or increase something. "Crank up the volume" might still be used, though even that is less likely to mean turning a volume dial, but rather to click a volume icon.

Trojan Horse

In our time, a "Trojan Horse" has come metaphorically to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive wooden horse that led to the fall of the city of Troy

Homer and the Roman poet Virgil wrote about the fall of Troy and the horse, though they didn't explain why the Trojans fell for the trick.

In the Aeneid, Prince Aeneas tells us that his fellow Trojans went out of the city to examine the deserted Greek encampment and found this enormous wooden horse. Was it a gift? Was it something of value that they just didn't want to haul back home?  They did not know it was filled with Greek soldiers. The Trojans were split on what to do with the horse but, at the urging of Thymoetes, they brought the horse into the city.

In Virgil's Aeneid, Book II[7] (trans. A. S. Kline), he tells this:

After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,
opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,
build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas's divine art,
and weave planks of fir over its ribs:
they pretend it's a votive offering: this rumour spreads.
They secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot,
there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the huge
cavernous insides with armed warriors.

Our modern day version of a Trojan horse is usually a malicious computer program which tricks users into willingly running allowing it into their computer or device. This "Trojan horse" (or sometimes simply a "Trojan") is not like a computer virus or worm. Trojans generally do not attempt to inject themselves into other files or otherwise propagate themselves. And the worse part is that the victim allowed the attack to occur.

I suppose our modern Trojans are a form of social engineering, as was the Greek version in that the victims were duped. Today, it might come from opening an email attachment or link that looks friendly or tempts us with a gift or great offer.

Soccer, Football and Rugby

American football season is in full power, but the world's football is America's soccer. But soccer as the name for what the world knows as football is not an Americanism. The "soccer" term is actually an English export, just like the sport.

"Soccer" was a colloquial term used in England well into the 20th century and rose in popularity following World War II. But it fell out of favor in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today, the term is used outside the U.S. mostly in an American context, such as when referring to leagues like Major League Soccer (MLS). The term "soccer" is also used in countries that have their own competing version of American style football, such as Canada, and Australia.

In England in the early 1800s, a version of the sport of football was played based on a game played by “commoners" in the Middle Ages. It found its way into some of England's privileged schools. A set of standard rules was drafted by students in Cambridge in 1848 and were further developed by the Football Association in 1863.

A variation was established in 1871 with the founding of the Rugby Football Union using Rugby School (where the game was first played) rules from the 1830s that allowed a player to run with the ball in their hands. Rugby football, or rugger, separated itself from association football, the traditional feet-only version of the sport.

Association football would get the nickname assoccer, leading eventually to just soccer. The addition of an "er" at the end of a word was something of a trend at the time, which is why we get the awkward transformation of association into assoccer and soccer.

The first recorded American football game was between the colleges of Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 and used unique rules derived from those in both association and rugby football.

Simply called "football" in the U.S., elsewhere it would become known as gridiron football or American football, much in the way Gaelic football and Australian football have their own distinctions.

The world ended up with two footballs, on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Neither side would give up the name, so Americans started referring to England's football by the previous nickname, soccer.