Roll Call

Unusual personal names collected in Oklahoma by onomastician Thomas Pyles in the 1940s:

  • A. Noble Ladd
  • Beverage Porter
  • Bunker Hill
  • Charming Fox
  • Erie Lake
  • France Paris
  • Gunga Dean
  • Harness Upp
  • Harry Baer
  • Ima Goose
  • Jack Frost
  • Johnny Steele Casebeer
  • Liberty Bond
  • Pansy Leafe
  • Pearl Button
  • Rose Bush
  • Safety Reuel First
  • Winter Frost

Ima Foster and Ura Foster, possibly twin sisters, both received master’s degrees in education at the University of Oklahoma in 1943. “It has been suggested to me that most of the bearers of jocular names come of families in which infant baptism is not practiced, inasmuch as (it is to be hoped) few clergymen would consent to make a travesty of the sacrament of baptism by bestowing such names in christening.”

(Thomas Pyles, “Onomastic Individualism in Oklahoma,” American Speech 22:4 [December 1947], 257-264.)

08/15/2024 UPDATE: It appears Safety First became a cardiologist. “My dad gave me this troublesome title. We already had a junior in the family, so dad named me after the popular motto that had just been created.” (Thanks, Charlotte.)

Sharp Practice

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Talking of shaving the other night at Dr. Taylor’s, Dr. Johnson said, ‘Sir, of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.’ I thought this not possible, till he specified so many of the varieties in shaving; — holding the razor more or less perpendicular; — drawing long or short strokes; — beginning at the upper part of the face, or the under; — at the right side or the left side. Indeed, when one considers what variety of sounds can be uttered by the windpipe, in the compass of a very small aperture, we may be convinced how many degrees of difference there may be in the application of a razor.

— James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791

Stature

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Venice’s Museo Correr exhibits a pair of wooden implements whose use isn’t immediately clear — they’re chopines, a type of platform shoe popular in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Worn under a woman’s skirt they could add up to 20 inches to her height, giving her an impressive eminence but an uncertain gait. Shakespeare mocked the trend in Hamlet’s greeting to a visiting player:

“By’r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine.”

08/15/2024 UPDATE: Reader Peter Kidd notes this even more impressive pair, now at the Museo Civico Medievale in Bologna:

Kidd chopines

(Thanks, Peter.)

The Champ

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Proposed cabinet of Dizzy Gillespie, who ran for president in 1964:

  • Secretary of State: Duke Ellington
  • Director of the CIA: Miles Davis
  • Secretary of Defense: Max Roach
  • Secretary of Peace: Charles Mingus
  • Librarian of Congress: Ray Charles
  • Secretary of Agriculture: Louis Armstrong
  • Ambassador to the Vatican: Mary Lou Williams
  • Travelling Ambassador: Thelonious Monk
  • Attorney General: Malcolm X

He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller. When asked why he was running for president, he said, “Because we need one.”

Food for Thought

Cannibalism shocks us terribly. Yet I remember talking to an old cannibal who from missionary and administrator had heard news of the Great War raging then in Europe. What he was most curious to know was how we Europeans managed to eat such enormous quantities of human flesh, as the casualties of a battle seemed to imply. When I told him indignantly that Europeans do not eat their slain foes, he looked at me with real horror and asked me what sort of barbarians we were to kill without any real object.

— Bronisław Malinowski, “Anthropology Is the Science of the Sense of Humour,” 1937

In a Word

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quisquous
adj. difficult to deal with or settle

quillet
n. a verbal nicety, a subtle distinction

aggiornamento
n. the act of bringing something up to date to meet current needs

irenic
adj. fitted or designed to promote peace

The survivors of the Titanic were picked up by the English passenger steamship Carpathia, which conveyed them to New York. This presented a delicate problem to the Social Register. “In those days the ship that people travelled on was an important yardstick in measuring their standing, and the Register dutifully kept track,” notes Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (1955). “To say that listed families crossed on the Titanic gave them their social due, but it wasn’t true. To say they arrived on the plodding Carpathia was true, but socially misleading. How to handle this dilemma? In the case of those lost, the Register dodged the problem — after their names it simply noted the words, ‘died at sea, 15 April 1912’. In the case of those living, the Register carefully ran the phrase, ‘Arrived Titan-Carpath, 18 April 1912’. The hyphen represented history’s greatest sea disaster.”

Strain’d

If mercy modifies the demands of justice, then to be merciful is perhaps to be unjust. But manifesting injustice is a vice, not a virtue. This seems to mean that mercy is a vice. A sentencing judge has been hired to enforce the rule of law that society has agreed upon. If he tempers this, even through love or compassion, then arguably he’s departing from his sworn obligation. Angelo says in Measure for Measure:

I show [pity] most of all when I show justice,
For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismissed offense would after gall,
And do him right that, answering one foul wrong,
Lives not to act another.

(If we try to claim that mercy is a form of justice, so that every act of mercy is just, then we’re saying that one has a right to mercy, that it’s not a gift. That seems wrong too.)

(Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy, 1988, via George W. Rainbolt, “Mercy: An Independent, Imperfect Virtue,” American Philosophical Quarterly 27:2 [April 1990], 169-173.)

First Impressions

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The beginnings of Algebra I found far more difficult [than Euclid], perhaps as a result of bad teaching. I was made to learn by heart: ‘The square of the sum of two numbers is equal to the sum of their squares increased by twice their product.’ I had not the vaguest idea what this meant, and when I could not remember the words, my tutor threw the book at my head, which did not stimulate my intellect in any way.

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1967

“Moral Thermometers”

Utopian socialist Robert Owen opposed corporal punishment, so when he took over the textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland, in 1800, he kept order with a “silent monitor”: Over each worker’s machine was hung a block whose successive sides were painted white, yellow, blue, and black:

The 2,500 toys had their positions arranged every day, according to the conduct of each worker during the preceding day: white indicating superexcellence; yellow, moderate goodness; blue, a neutral condition of morals; and black, exceeding naughtiness.

These ratings were assigned by the departmental overseer, whose own rating was assigned by an under-manager. The final say lay with Owen, to whom workers could appeal, and the daily ratings were recorded in a “book of character” maintained by each department.

This sounds draconian, but combined with Owen’s generous nature it seemed to work. “As time went on,” wrote one biographer, “the yellows and whites gained on the darker hues; and in the later stages of Owen’s management the signs were almost entirely white, with a sprinkling of yellows.”