Driving forward with Greek and Latin

Friends visiting for the weekend just pulled out of the driveway, and as we were saying our last farewells, my husband and I noticed the tires on the car. My husband noticed the brand (Hankook), because the brand had been recommended to him, and I noticed the model, VENTUS AS, because ventus is the Latin word for “wind.” Having never heard of Hankook before, I searched the Internet and found their global site, where I learned about the scope of the business and interesting tire names. Probably in the not too distant future Hankook tires will be on your radar if not your vehicle, because Hankook is a Korean company, with plants all over the world, making millions of excellent tires. In addition to the VENTUS model, there are also OPTIMO (from the Latin word optimus meaning “very good, excellent, best,” and other models with names rooted in Greek and Latin, such as the KINERGY (from kin, Greek for “move,” and (en)ergy, Greek for “work”) and the DYNAPRO (from Greek dyn meaning “power” and Latin pro meaning “forward”). The DYNAPRO is an excellent name for a tire designed for the toughest pickup truck! I again maintain that knowledge of Greek and Latin helps us understand the world around us and gives us the power to name our inventions and creations, no matter who is doing the inventing and no matter where the inventions are coming into being. 

Out of this world

My big dog, a German shepherd, loves his new toy, and when he plays with it, I also smile. His new toy is a big, squishy, minty, hollow orange ball with the word Sol on it. It is one of a series of three dog balls called Sol, Luna, and Venus. They are made by a company with the name Orbee and go, collectively, under the name of Cosmos. I love dog toys with Latin names! Sōl, sōlis m. is the Latin word for sun, lūna, lūnae f. is the Latin word for moon (this ball glows in the dark), and Venus, Veneris f. is the Latin word for Venus, goddess of love and beauty and a planet.  See the Cosmos collection here. The name Orbee sounds like the Latin word orbis, orbis m. circle. My dog loves chasing his toys in circles around the yard!

Lysistrata, Temptress of the South

The Halifax Chronicle Herald Arts & Life section today features a review of a new production based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and it sounds like an amusing entertainment. If you find yourself heading to Nova Scotia, you have until August 11 to catch a performance of this ancient Greek comedy translated to the American Civil War and performed by Two Planks and a Passion Theatre at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, near Canning, Nova Scotia.  Pique your interest in Aristophanes’ original with this translation available at Perseus, and you can also try an audio version at a site with a great Latin name, LibriVox (“voice of a book” or “BooksVoice”).

Via Latin

At the Ovens Natural Park yesterday evening in Bayport, Nova Scotia, I spied a good-sized RV called a Via made by Winnebago on a Mercedes Benz chassis. This is the second occurrence this week for a via connection, as earlier in the week I learned that train service in Canada is called VIA Rail Canada.The Latin noun via, viae f. way, path, road is the source of these names. Via is a good name for an RV, as one must travel by way of roads to reach any destination. Via is also a good name for a rail service, as it provides a way of travel. In English we also use the word via as a preposition to mean "by way of," as "I am travelling to Montreal via VIA Rail Canada." In English we also use two pronunciations of via, both VAHYuh and VEEuh. I would love to travel via RV or train, but for right now I will enjoy the beauty of the Nova Scotia seaside.

Blowin' in the Wind

A young alumna of my school, a former Classics student and now a graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota, is spending her summer doing research in Manitoba, Canada. She is learning to use an Aeolian trap, a device which catches materials that are wind-borne. In an email she reported to me that the researcher who introduced her to the device did not know why it is called an Aeolian trap, so my former student explained the connection to the mythological Aeolus, king of the winds, who in Book 10 of the Odyssey gives Odysseus a bag of winds to take him home to Ithaka, and who also in the Aeneid is bribed by Juno, the queen of the gods, to disrupt Aeneas' voyage in Book 1 by means of a huge storm.

Safety First

Visiting a yacht supply store in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia yesterday, I noticed a display of life-vests for dogs with the brand name Salus. Looking around the shop, I then saw many other flotation devices for humans, too, made by the same company. What a good name for a means of safety during activities on the water! The name appears to come from the Latin noun salūs, salūtis f. safety. English derivatives from salūs include salutary, salubrious, and salute.

Really Big Numbers

I’ve been thinking about the contrast between knowledge (Latin scientia) and wisdom (Latin sapientia), and I was interested to learn that the Latin verb sciō, meaning “I know” is related to a Greek verb meaning “to cut.” When I think about science, we really do cut things up and down constantly. So I was interested to read the terms petabyte and petaflop in Reality Is Broken by Jane McGonigal. When I checked the etymology of petabyte in the Oxford English Dictionary, I found a handy explanation of some of the big number prefixes that are making their way into English, prefixes like tera-, peta, and exa-, all of which come from the Greek prefixes tetra-, penta, and hexa-, standing for four, five, and six, respectively. The prefix peta-, as I understand it, stands for a quadrillion.  What does a quadrillion have to do with “five”? A quadrillion is a thousand million million or ten to the fifteenth power, as in ten to the third power raised to the fifth power.  A petaflop, as explained in Reality Is Broken (p. 239), is “one quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS).” Yi!

As we listen to our lawmakers and political candidates throw around dollar terms (millions, billions, trillions), I guess we should still count our blessings that we are not close to quadrillions in debt.

Mythological Asteroids

Way back in July of 2011 I clipped an article from the Associated Press on an asteroid that runs ahead of Earth as the planet rolls around the sun. At the end of the short article was this sentence which caught my eye and imagination: "Asteroids are giant space rocks that orbit the sun, and ones that share an orbit with a planet are called Trojans."

Hmmm...now why would asteroids orbiting with planets be called Trojans? A quick trip around the internet, and I discovered that two groups of asteroids circling with the planet Jupiter were given names of soldiers who fought in the Trojan war, one group of Trojan soldiers and one group of Greek warriors. Now asteroids orbiting with any planet go by the name of Trojans. Astronomers are so inventive, but apparently not always correct. Check out the two naming mistakes, one in each of the camps, here.

One more thing: the ending -oid on the word asteroid is a good Greek root to know. Related to the word eidos meaning "form,"-oid means "resembling, like." Words containing this Greek root include anthropoid, celluloid, humanoid, android, etc. An asteroid resembles a star, from the Greek aster meaning "star," source of, among other words, our English asterisk, astrolabe, astronaut, and astronomy.

Venus and Artemis

The January 2012 cover of The Field magazine from England featured a young woman dressed in a short tweed skirt carrying a walking stick and flanked by two dogs. The article on the inside of the magazine was called “Ladies Picking Up,” or ladies using dogs trained to retrieve birds shot by a hunter.  The image called to mind the description by Vergil in Aeneid, Book 1, of his mother, the goddess Venus, disguised as a huntress:

318            namque umerīs dē mōre habilem suspenderat arcum

319            vēnātrīx dederatque comam diffundere ventīs,

320            nūda genū nōdōque sinūs collēcta fluentīs.

[For down from her shoulders according to custom she had hung a handy bow,

and the huntress had given her hair to pour out in the winds,

bare as to her knee and having been gathered as to her flowing folds.]

On the back cover of the magazine was an advertisement for a new model of a Rizzini shot gun called...”Artemis, a perfect combination of elegance and excellence.”  Artemis is the Greek name of the huntress goddess known in Latin as Diana. The classical tradition continues in words and pictures in The Field magazine.

Michelin, the Tire That Drinks Obstacles!

Reading a cooking article in a recent NewYork Times Magazine, I learned about Simon Hopkinson, founding chef in 1987 of a restaurant in London called Bibendum. Of course, the name of the restaurant caught my Latin eye, as the word bibendum recalls the opening words of the poet Horace’s famous ode (I.37) on the death of Cleopatra:

            nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero

pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus

ornare pulvinar deorum

tempus erat dapibus, sodales.

[Now it must be drunk, now with a free foot the earth must be struck, now, friends, was the time to honor the sacred couch of the gods with priestly feasts.] The poem becomes much more complex, but the opening words are frequently quoted on wine coasters, cocktail napkins, and in other convivial contexts. 

But I also learned that the building in which the restaurant Bibendum opened was the 1911 Michelin Building, and another reference to the word bibendum revealed itself: the famous Michelin man has a name, and it is... Bibendum! On the Michelin website there is a fascinating little excerpt from an old film explaining how the Michelin man took shape in April of 1898 AND how he received the name Bibendum. You can watch it here, but you may also wish to check out more Bibendum history at the Michelin website. The text of the film is in French, but you can clearly see the drawing of a portly man enjoying a good drink under the Latin heading Nunc est bibendum! The artist signed as O'Galop, but his name was--mirabile scriptu--Marius Rossilon. 

Time to rejoice in the inventive imagination of the classically-influenced advertising artist!

A Large Chariot on a Hot, Sunny Day

During a lull in the Memorial Day procession in my little town, traffic  was allowed through, and a very large RV bearing the brand name Phaeton drove past me.   Here you can see the very amusing introductory page of this amazing motorhome and enjoy a Latin frisson in the text.  Also amusing was the vehicle following the Phaeton, a truck pulling a motorboat with a large Mercury engine.

Phaethon, the son of Helios, god of the sun, wanted to drive his father's chariot, i.e., the sun, across the sky for a day, but alas, the horses sensed a beginner at the reins. The poet Ovid tells Phaethon's story in Metamorphoses at the end of Book 1 and into Book 2. Early automobile designers gave Phaethon’s name, with the slight spelling change, to a style of sedan, and the name persisted throughout the twentieth century into the twenty-first; Volkswagen makes a model called a Phaeton. But to my eye the Chrysler Phaeton 1997 concept car definitely shares some of the glory of the chariot of the sun. See it here.