From Medusa to Rome with Love

Last night I happened to see on television the opening of a film produced by Medusa Films, an Italian company. I was delighted by the animated logo of the company. The film is called To Rome with Love, and in the few moments I watched, I was longing to be back in Rome. As the film was released in 2012, the photography was clear and contemporary. I was last in Rome five years ago, but it feels like yesterday!

So Long, Status Quo

I spend a lot of time in the summer reading, watching old movies on television, and listening to radio programs. I look and listen for Latin in our popular culture. One phrase I have registered several times since summer vacation began is status quo, the most recent occurrence being in the lyrics of the song Brave written by Nichole Nordeman and Jay Joyce and sung by Nichole Nordeman. Status quo is a Latin phrase that means the “existing state of affairs,” literally, “state in which.” I heard Brave on K-Love , so I offer the warning that the lyrics given here are for a Christian song. Note that the first line of this song is a nice example of asyndeton, lack of a conjunction to join two independent clauses. If you are curious about contemporary Christian music, I encourage you to look up a review of Brave to receive the full effect of the song.

MEDUSA ATTRACTS INVESTORS

This was the headline on page B3 of today’s Chronicle Herald from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Not the snake-haired Gorgon of classical mythology, but Medusa Medical Technologies Inc., a Halifax company best known for their Siren ePCR (electronic patient care reporting) system. Why Medusa? I couldn’t find an explanation, but could it be a visual reference, i.e., many individual strands of information being sent electronically to a single system? Siren also is a classical reference, one of the two or three sweetly-singing but deadly half-bird women who appeared in the stories of both the Argonauts and Odysseus. Orpheus, one of the Argonauts, sang more sweetly and drowned out the Sirens, and Odysseus was tied to the mast of his ship while his men blocked their ears with wax and thus successfully sailed past the Sirens.

On the Via Again

Another discovery from a Sunday newspaper ad: a travel company called Viator.com. Their motto is Travel with an insider. Viator is a good name, for viator, viatoris m. is a Latin word that means “one who is on the road, a traveler.” The suffix -tor (masculine) or -trix (feminine) means "one who," and it is a handy way to coin new Latin words. So, for example, if you wished to converse in Latin on Twitter, you could call yourself a Pipilator or Pipilatrix, "a person who peeps, chirps, or tweets."

A Robot for Life

One Sunday in May I read in my local Sunday newspaper about a new medical robot in Carmichael, California. Now that June is here and I am cleaning off my desk, the article is at hand, and I can tell you what caught my eye. The new robot is called RP-VITA, which is short for Remote Presence Virtual Independent Telemedicine Assistant. RP-VITA is a fourth-generation telemedicine robot controlled by a tablet (computer)--and soon by an iPhone--that has videoconferencing capabilities, so doctors can see the patient in an emergency. RP-VITA can also move itself around. Vita, vitae f. is a Latin noun that means “life,” source of English words vital and vitality, and a hopeful acronym for a life-saving robot.

From Bestiaria Latina: Why Study Latin?

An Electronic Blend

I love blended words, also known as portmanteau words. My latest find is redditors, a blending of the website Reddit and editors; so redditors would be people who use Reddit. I learned of the website Reddit a while ago; it is a social network with a clever Latin name. In Latin reddit, from the verb reddō, reddere, reddidī, reditum I return, I give back means “he/she/it gives back, returns.” Back in April I heard a news story about people from around America wishing to send pizza to the first responders and families affected by the bombing in Boston; the redditors used Reddit to send a lot of pizza, an excellent use of a social network.

Perfidy

I was intrigued when I saw on the television last night that the song playing on the Big Band channel was called Perfidia, which is a Latin word meaning “faithlessness, treachery.” Tommy Dorsey and his band were credited as the artists, so I did a little search to find out the history of Perfidia, and learned that perfidia is actually the Spanish word for faithlessness and, according to Wikipedia, the tune was written by a Mexican composer, Alberto Dominguez. Most interestingly, however, Alberto Dominguez was born on 21 April 1913, a century ago on Rome’s traditional birthday! So although I thought the title might be Latin, in fact, it is not, but there is a slight classical connection. You can hear an early version of the song with Spanish lyrics here. In Book Four of Vergil’s Aeneid, Dido twice reproaches Aeneas with the term perfide, faithless one, treacherous one. No dancing matter in the Aeneid, but two millennia later, Perfidia the dance melody is featured in two classic movies, Casablanca and Now, Voyager. Both movies star Paul Henreid; in Casablanca his wife, played by Ingrid Bergman, is having an affair with Humphrey Bogart; they dance to Perfidia in the flashback scene in a Paris nightclub. In Now, Voyager, Paul Henreid is having an affair with Bette Davis, and they dance to Perfidia in a Rio de Janeiro nightclub. Perfidia, the Latin word, also gives us English perfidy (treachery) and perfidious (full of treachery, faithless, treacherous).

Fauna Foods

Running errands today I stopped by my favorite dog food purveyor, but I had to turn carefully into the driveway, because a delivery truck was almost blocking the way. I did not notice the name on the truck until I was leaving the shop, and I smiled to read the words FAUNA FOODS. Of course, what a perfect name for a pet-food distributor! Usually the word fauna is accompanied by the word flora, as in flora and fauna, the plant and animal life of a geographical area. Carolus Linnaeus, the father of scientific binomial nomenclature, chose fauna, animal life, as the partner of flora, plant life; Flora was a Roman goddess of flowers, and Fauna was the sister of Faunus, the goat-footed Roman equivalent of the Greek nature god, Pan. So Fauna Foods provides food for animal life. I also stopped by my veterinarian’s office on my way home and noticed that he, too, has an account with Fauna Foods. From Faunus we also get the word faun, a lesser Roman deity represented with human upper parts and goat legs and feet.