Time Flies

I should be packing to return to New York, but fog is drifting by the windows, so I am reading the September issue of a Canadian literary magazine that a friend down the road brought over, because it has two stories with tangential Latin connections. I also found in its pages an advertisement for an ebook containing twenty-three years' worth of the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. As you can see on the website, these awards have a crest of two lions rampant around a torch with a Latin motto encircling: ARTES NOS TENENT ET INSPIRANT (The arts hold and inspire us). Here is an explanation of the crest.

One of the two stories of Latin interest was a look into flying around Canada with a fragile copy of Magna Carta, reminding us again that 2015 is the eight-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Great Charter at Runnymede. Most fascinating was the necessity of proper humidity around the document; the iron-based ink could in fact disappear under the wrong conditions. The other story was about decoding Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, especially the identity in nineteenth-century England of the Cheshire Cat, wordplay abounding. A disappearing cat, disappearing ink, a disappearing landscape--disappearing summer!

Poetic Energy

The headline reads "Pieridae gets export approval: Company says it will make final investment decision on Goldboro LNG project in 2016" on p. B2 of the Business section of the 18 August edition of the Halifax Chronicle Herald.  Pieridae Energy (Canada) Ltd. is a company that deals in liquefied natural gas (LNG); I wonder if the namers of the company were looking for a beautiful image that had some connection with burning/energy. For their website they chose a lovely photograph of one of the many (over a thousand) species of Pieridae and created a logo that also suggests a butterfly. The family of Pieridae includes the butterflies known as sulfurs, the common pests of cruciferous vegetables like cabbages and broccoli. Sulfur is a smell associated with burning...perhaps it is a stretch. The ultimate root of Pieridae seems to be Pieria, a region of Macedonia that is home to Mount Olympus and also dear to the Muses, goddesses of poetic inspiration.

Dashing Through the Media

I cannot report or comment on a television/media family whose last name begins with the letter K. But I did note an Associated Press article discussing possible K-fatigue in today’s Halifax Chronicle-Herald:

Tom Nunan, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television with a long resume in film and TV entertainment, doesn't think so. He has a two-word explanation for the world's prolonged Kardashian-Jenner moment. It's "sui generis," or Latin for don't hold your breath.

Not really. What it means is this moment is unique, in a class of its own.

"It's so vast," he said Wednesday by phone from Los Angeles. "Because there are so many members of this clan, our attention can bounce from one to the next to the next to the next."

What sui generis really means is “of its own kind,” usually understood as a synonym for “unique,” an adjective rooted in the Latin adjective unus, a, um meaning “one.” 

I cannot comment on anything related to this family, but I do appreciate Tom Nunan’s observations. I marvel that teachers, commentators, columnists, reporters continue to seek Latin words and phrases to explain modern media phenomena.

P.S. Media is a plural Latin word, as phenomena is a plural Greek word. One medium is one mode of news (internet, newspaper, radio, etc.) and one phenomenon is one appearance of something.

Latin, Latin Everywhere?

In an article in today's Halifax Chronicle-Herald, a Canadian reporter used three Latin words and phrases. What was the subject of the article? The larger-than-life Donald Trump! Here are the relevant sentences:

"That value system doesn't abide turning the other cheek. Rather, it responds to every ounce of criticism with a multi-tonne, Mack truck of ad-hominem degradation."

"His current political targets, John McCain, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, and Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, will recognize the modus operandi spelled out in that old book chapter."

"His aversion to forgiveness is deeply ingrained. His words in a 25-year-old interview... are a near-verbatim replica of what he's told political talk shows in recent days."

Ad-hominem here is a Latin prepositional phrase turned into an adjective; the prepositional phrase means "to/towards a human" and describes a rhetorical attack directed to a person rather than to an argument.

Modus operandi is a Latin noun phrase meaning "method of working or of operating."

Verbatim is a Latin adverb meaning "word by word."

Interestingly all three of these words were not italicized in the context of the article; these Latin words have become English words!

Darkness Underwater

Yesterday I went to the local Canada Post office in Riverport, Nova Scotia to buy stamps for mail destined for the United States ($1.20 CDN + 15% tax each). I was disappointed to find no new commemoratives for international delivery, but I was pleased to find a Latin word on a new domestic issue to commemorate the H.M.S. Erebus, a ship that sank in 1848 on the Franklin expedition to find a Northwest Passage across northern Canada. The ship was discovered again last fall; you can learn more about the ship and the stamp itself here. The name Erebus is a Latinized form of the Greek Erebos (meaning “darkness”) considered in early mythology to be an offspring of Chaos, the primordial state of confusion. What a strange name for a ship! It reminds me of the (fictional) French ship, the Acheron, in the film Master and Commander (2003)) based on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels; Acheron is one of the five mythological rivers, the river of pain, in the ancient Greek underworld.

Darkness and pain—no happy ending for either of these ships. A famous Nova Scotian folksinger, Stan Rogers (1949-1983), wrote a song about the Franklin expedition on which the Erebus was lost:

You Say Aquapel, I Say Rain-X

Today as my husband and I sat at Frank's Automotive while Frank ran computer codes for some illuminated dashboard warning lights, I amused myself by scanning magazines and product shelves for Latin connections. Neither disappointed! First the shelves: I spied a product near the windshield wiper blades called Aquapel, and knew immediately what it was. The Latin noun aqua, ae f. means "water," and the Latin verb pello, pellere, pepuli, pulsum means "I drive," so the trade name Aquapel means "driving back water," an excellent name for a product that repels (drives back) water from your car windshield. While I was unfamiliar with Aquapel, I have used a competing product called Rain-X, another good name also with a Latin connection. The X part of the name is a shortened form of the Latin preposition ex meaning "out," so the Rain-X name means "Rain out," as in "Get out of here, rain!" Which product is better? Judge for yourself by checking the Grudge Match posting on the Aquapel website.

Look for the magazine find tomorrow!

They Seek Him Here

Do you recognize that title statement? The whole verse:

"They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
That demned elusive Pimpernel!"

I was reminded of this quotation as I was ski-walking around the yard yesterday, observing the natural beauty of this maritime location, because I spied at first one and then a whole plot of a tiny reddish flower called...the scarlet pimpernel, anagallis arvensis! The Latin genus name Anagallis seems to mean "laughter," and arvensis is an adjective meaning "of the ploughed land."

The Scarlet Pimpernel, a novel by Baroness Orczy, from which the quote above comes, was a favorite classic novel about intrigue during the French Revolution. An English noble is known only by his seal, a small flower, as he rescues French nobles from the guillotine. Several film versions exist; my favorite was made in 1934, starring Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon. In one scene Merle Oberon is inspecting a portrait in the library when she observes a tiny scarlet pimpernel in the corner, and she has a sudden key insight. I always thought that a scarlet pimpernel was a made-up literary plant, but after reading my neighbor's reference book on weeds of Nova Scotia, I was delighted to learn that these little flowers grow wildly and abundantly around the world, including here in my backyard.

Little Presents at the End of a Branch

Fruit crisp made with rhubarb, strawberries, and the tart haskap berry is a current favorite on our table. The haskap berry is making a big splash across Canada, because it grows in cold places like Siberia and Japan, and is doing well here in Nova Scotia as well as in the plains provinces. It seems to be a super-food, like many berries, packed with antioxidants. The genus and species name for haskap is lonicera caerulea; lonicera is the Latinized form of Lonitzer, a German botanist of the sixteenth century, and caeruleus, a, um is a Latin adjective meaning “blue.” Haskap is sometimes called “blue honeysuckle,” as lonicera is the genus name of many woody shrubs and vines in the honeysuckle family. 

I love binomial nomenclature, because even when Latin words do not exist to describe a plant or animal, classifiers make up descriptive or memorializing words. I was delighted to find a new resource online for the meanings of plant genus and species names: a botanary, a portmanteau combining “botanical” with “dictionary.”  

Tall Ships

It was thrilling to watch Bluenose II and Hermione enter Lunenburg Harbour this morning, accompanied by a Canadian warship and Canadian Coast Guard cutter. This evening we walked along the waterfront and observed the majesty of both ships. Bluenose II is the reconstructed fishing schooner that tomorrow begins taking passengers for cruises; an image of the original Bluenose graces every Canadian dime. Hermione is a beautiful frigate; tied up outside the Fisheries Museum she dominated the waterfront this evening. Such a thrill to think that Lafayette returned to the American colonies in the original in 1780.

Shipshape

A few ship names have floated by my inquiring mind on vacation here in the Maritimes. I learned from a model-ship builder of Dutch descent about a trio of British ships in the early nineteenth century that carried classical names (the Irene, the Hero, and Egeria) and were involved in action that resulted in either destruction near Holland or capture by the Dutch. On Saturday 11 July 2015 I viewed a model, the result of over four thousand hours of work, of Irene, at a display of model ships in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. Irene is the Greek word for "peace." Hero was the mythological lover of Leander; Leander swam the Hellespont to visit Hero, but drowned one night. In grief Hero also drowned herself. Egeria was the name of the wife of the second king of Rome, Romulus' successor, Numa Pompilius. She eventually became a fountain/spring and is sometimes considered a Roman equivalent of a Greek Muse.

On 18-19 July 2015 not a model but a full-scale reproduction of the tall ship Hermione, a French ship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to America in 1780, is scheduled to tie up in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Hermione has already visited a few ports in North America, having set sail from France on 18 April 2015. Hermione in Greek mythology was the daughter of the beautiful Helen of Troy and her husband, Menelaus of Sparta. This name appears to be a feminine form of Hermes, the messenger god.

A quick search around the internet turns up all kinds of mythological ship names. One wonders who chose the names and why they did. Even without knowing the answers, how delightful to keep ancient names afloat through the centuries!

P.S. The Marquis de Lafayette's motto was the Latin Cur non? (Why not?)

Riches of Pluto

Pluto is back in the news! NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has flown by the tiny planet and sent back photos, including one showing a heart-like design. I was sad when Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet back in 2006; it is thrilling to see photos from so far away and learn more about little Pluto. Here is a little background information about finding Pluto in the early twentieth century, including an explanation of its name. Because Pluto is named for the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto's moons are also related to mythology. Styx is the river in the underworld by which the gods swore oaths; Nix is the Latin word for snow, but it is also an altered spelling of the Greek (nyx) meaning "night" and when capitalized Nyx, the goddess of night; Hydra is a many-headed water monster who could be found in the underworld; Kerberos is the transliterated Greek spelling of Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld; and the largest moon is called Charon, the ferryman who carried shades, and sometimes heroes like Aeneas, across the river Styx.

In Greek ploutos means "wealth," and the name Pluto means the "wealthy" one. So the god of the underworld rules over the shades of the dead, but he also is lord of all that is found in the earth. English has the words plutocrat "one with power from wealth" and plutocracy "power of the wealthy."

Today Pluto is making us rich in astronomical knowledge.

Safety First

photo by Michele Stevens

On a house and garden tour (that also included two boats) to benefit the Mahone Bay Museum in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, I spied the Latin motto for the Canadian Coast Guard (SALUTI PRIMUM AUXILIO SEMPER meaning "for safety first for help always") displayed on a sign at the Mahone Bay wharf.  The a-b-a-b or interlocked word order (noun in dative, adverb, noun in dative, adverb) gives a nice balance to the Latin and also emphasizes the first and last words that begin with the letter s: (saluti "for safety"...  semper "always." The Canadian Coast Guard observed the 50th anniversary of its existence under that name in 2012; here is an excellent history and description of the service, including an explanation of the CCG badge and its symbols.

I was happy to see a Latin motto for the Canadian Coast Guard, as the United States Coast Guard has one of my favorite mottoes: SEMPER PARATUS meaning "always prepared." Around the sea coast, and Canada has the longest coastline of any country, one must always be prepared, because the sea demands respect.

Cutting Edge

Flipping through the weekly advertising circulars, I noticed a product with an unfamiliar name, Proraso, but I knew what it was: shaving cream. The Latin preposition pro (+ ablative) means "for, on behalf of," and the Latin verb rado, radere, rasi, rasum means "I scrape, scratch, shave." Proraso is an Italian company; the name seems to be an Italian phrase meaning "for shaving." American shaving creams also have interesting names, two of which are Barbasol (from the Latin barba, -ae f. beard + (probably) -sol, from the verb solvo, solvere, solvi, solutum meaning "I loosen, cast off" and Edge, referring to the sharp edge of a razor, but playing also on the expression cutting edge, literally the sharp edge of a razor, but also the figurative on the cutting edge, meaning "up to date, especially at the frontline of innovation." So often that frontline is rooted in the ancient world.

One other shaving product is Burma-Shave, made by an American company that became famous for its advertising. The company began as Burma-Vita (vita, -ae f. is a Latin noun meaning "life"), founded by the father of Clinton Odell of Minnesota;  Odell changed the name to Burma-Shave when he created brushless shaving cream. Documented in The Verse By the Side of the Road by Frank Rowsome, Jr., advertising jingles (short rhyming poems) containing puns were painted on a series of six signs posted along roadsides; my favorite: Past/ Schoolhouses/ Take it slow/ Let the little/ Shavers grow/ Burma-Shave.

A Thorny Problem

(Robbie's Photo Art)

Nova Scotia has some wildlife that we do not see in New York. Before breakfast our German shepherd, Buddy, had a brief encounter with a porcupine (erethizon dorsatum, meaning "irritating back") under the forsythia bush opposite the front door. He ended up with small quills in his mouth and front paws, so he spent the forepart of the day at the veterinary office in Lunenburg, where, under anaesthesia, the doctor and assistant removed most of the quills. Some very tiny quills may still work themselves out over time. Porcupine derives from the Latin words porcus, -i m. pig and spina, -ae f. thorn, spine. A porcupine is a slow-moving rodent covered in sharp quills. We knew a porcupine was about, but we had seen it up in the pine tree or wandering off the property. Now we know to stay vigilant; as we say in Latin: Experientia docet. (Experience teaches.) In case you, too, have porcupines around, find out what porcupines like to eat.

From porcus we also get the English words pork and porcine, and from spina we also have the words spine and a musical instrument from France called the epinette des Vosges, a relative of the mountain dulcimer.

Deep Water

Following the summer music festivals in Canada, I observed the name of a band called AquaAlta, scheduled to appear at the Evolve Festival in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The Latin phrase aqua alta can mean either "deep water" or "high water," as the adjective altus, a, um can indicate vertical direction either "high (upwards)" or "deep (downwards)." Here in the Maritimes the tides are amazing; we can be high and dry or in deep water every twelve hours.

Rejoice!

This past weekend in Canso, Nova Scotia was the 19th annual StanFest, a music festival in memory of Stan Rogers, the great Canadian singer-songwriter. Perusing the festival guide brought back by a friend, I observed that Steeleye Span was one of the featured acts on Saturday night. I remember listening to Steeleye Span back in the late 1970s, but I could not remember the songs, so I looked some up on Youtube. I was delighted to find that one of the group's recordings was of an old Christmas tune called Gaudete. The Latin verb gaudeo, gaudere, gavisus sum means I rejoice, and gaudete is the imperative plural form meaning "Rejoice!" Let's observe a little Christmas in July, because the Latin lyrics are so clear. Enjoy!

Driving Romanian Cars

In the Wheels section of today's Halifax Chronicle Herald, an article about cars made in Romania under the brand Dacia made me smile. The Romans under Trajan in the early years of the second century A.D. beat the Dacians, who lived in the area to the west of the Black Sea, thereby making the Roman Empire as great as it would be. The Romans called this area, around the modern country of Romania, Dacia. Before Dacia became a Roman province, the first emperor Augustus exiled the poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) to Tomi on the shore of the Black Sea. Today Ovidiu is a town in Romania, near the area where Ovid died in exile. There's lots of history on the roads in Romania.

Dryathon

I noticed in a rest stop along the road, driving from New York state to Nova Scotia, Canada, a paper-towel dispenser with the brand name Marathon. Many know this word as the twenty-six-(or so)-mile foot race, and many also know the origin of this word in a place name in ancient Greece, a plain about twenty-six miles from Athens, whose name means “fennel field.” According to legend (and the Dictionary of World Biography, vol. 1 by Frank Northern Magill, Taylor & Francis, 1998), on this plain in 490 BC, Greek forces under the Athenian general Miltiades beat a Persian army; a runner named Philippides (or Pheidippides) ran the twenty-six or so miles to Athens to deliver the news, and then died, possibly because this same runner had earlier run one hundred and forty miles both to Sparta to ask the Spartans for help and then back to Marathon. Today in English marathon can also be used as an adjective to mean “great, large, lasting a long time or involving a lot of effort.” Marathon seems like a good name for a paper-towel dispenser that can be used twenty-four hours a day at a highway visitor center or rest stop, every day of the year.

P.S. Also -athon or -thon has become a noun-forming suffix in English words like telethon, radiothon, phonathon, dance-athon, events that extend over hours or days to raise money for charitable causes using television, radio, telephones, or dancing.

What's In A Name?

I cannot stop marveling at the bottomless well that is the ancient world for supplying names to the most modern space-craft. Philae is in the news as a space-craft that has woken up after landing on a comet! Read more about naming Philae and its landing space.

Happy Birthday, Magna Carta!

Today, 15 June 2015, is the eight-hundredth anniversary of the signing by King John of Magna Carta, the Great Charter, or as I used to tell my sixth-graders, the Big Paper. Magnus, a, um is the Latin word for “great, big, large,” and charta, ae f. means “papyrus, paper, map, chart, charter, writing.” In my local library I found a little, wonderful book, 1215 The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham (Touchstone, 2004). At the end of the introduction the authors describe a visit to Runnymede they made on a dark December day when they had finished writing their book. They describe two memorials at Runnymede. How many Americans know that one acre of Runnymede is American territory, donated by the Queen and her government, by vote of the House of Commons? That in this acre are two memorials, one to President John F. Kennedy and one  built by the American Bar Association, both dedicated to the ideal of liberty under law as symbolized by Magna Carta? 

Here, as given by Danziger and Gillingham, are the two most famous of the sixty-three clauses of Magna Carta:

Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legal judicium parium suorum vel per legem terre. 

Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum aut justiciam.

"No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or deprived or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.

To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice." (p. xii-xiii)

The Latin of the Great Charter is beautiful and clear; a few words influenced by English and French are present (disseisiatur, utlagetur, legal, terre, justiciam), but otherwise any student of Latin recognizes the future active and passive verbs, nouns, adjectives, conjunctions, and prepositions that Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil would also know.

How excellent that this splendid anniversary falls between Flag Day and Fourth of July!

Flag This Day

Today, 14 June 2015, is Flag Day, a day when Americans display the flag and observe the birthday of the American flag. Here is what downtown Millerton, NY looked like just after noon.

What do Americans do on Flag Day? 

Flag Day falls within National Flag Week, a time when Americans reflect on the foundations of the nation’s freedom. The flag of the United States represents freedom and has been an enduring symbol of the country’s ideals since its early days. During both events, Americans also remember their loyalty to the nation, reaffirm their belief in liberty and justice, and observe the nation’s unity.

Celebrating national unity—what an excellent idea, especially in these next few weeks leading to America’s birthday, celebrated on the Fourth of July.

Here's another shot of a view up Main Street:

Long may she wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

P.S. Where is the Latin connection? On the Flag Day website I noticed a small error; one of the links is called & Etcetera. The Latin phrase et cetera already means "and other (things)," so no "& (and)" is necessary. The symbol & is called an ampersand. 

Juno in Jewelry

I've been de-cluttering. This afternoon I found a jewelry advertisement I saved from a local newspaper about a year ago. I spied a brand in very tiny letters called Juno Lucina, a producer of gifts for mothers, appropriately named, for the Roman goddess of women and childbirth is Juno. As protector of women in childbirth, she is called Juno Lucina. Towards the back of the advertising insert, I also noticed a brand of men's rings called Triton. In Greco-Roman mythology Triton was a god of the sea, a son of Poseidon/Neptune, half man, half fish. I admire the Triton jewelry logo; it turns a T into a trident, the traditional symbol of gods of the sea. Latin lives on in jewelry boxes everywhere.

Wasp Etymology

I read a wide variety of publications, and today I read an article about insects in the June 2015 issue of the Finnish American Reporter that has a Latin angle to it. The article is about the naming of a new species of wasp for the Boston Bruins' goalie, Tuukka Rask. The wasp has the genus name Thaumatodryinus and the new species name tuukkaraski, which follows the format of ending in -i, as specified by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Mr. Rask, winner of the 2014 Vezina Trophy for best goalie in the NHL, is also the goalie for the Finnish National ice hockey team, and, to quote the article, "whose glove hand is as tenacious as the raptorial fore tarsus of this dryinid species." More information can be found in the delightfully Latinate scientific journal Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae.

On Track with Vulcan

We still love this Roman god of fire, Vulcan. He continues to surface in technological arenas of all kinds, and I will continue to write about him. Today's entry is a ridiculously limited edition Aston Martin track-only automobile; only twenty-four will be made. As I look at the lines, the facets, the details, I cannot envision the god Vulcan behind the wheel, but I do believe he would be proud of the lines/engineering.

MOXIE Redivivus

Redivivus is a Latin adjective that means "living again, renewed, renovated."  In the last century or earlier, Moxie was a brand-name for a soft drink originally made in Maine, and it is still available in certain areas of the world. The soft drink was so widely advertised that the name became a noun in common use to stand for "vigor, pep, boldness, courage, nerve."

MOXIE is a new acronym used by Nasa to simplify the name of an instrument that will be deployed on the Mars 2020 mission. MOXIE stands for Mars Oxygen ISRU (in situ resource utilization) Experiment. The Latin phrase in situ means "on site, on location" from the noun situs, sitūs m. "site, location" and the preposition in meaning "in/on." Once you read about the job of the MOXIE, you will agree that Nasa is making a bold plan into the future.

Winged Victory

In the mall earlier today I saw this store window and had to take a picture. Nike is advertising its running shoe named for Pegasus, the famous winged horse of Greco-Roman mythology. How appropriate a classical sighting, combining a mythological flying horse with the Greek goddess of victory, on this weekend when American Pharoah, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, will try for the Triple Crown at Belmont Park. Here is a little more information about Nike Pegasus.

I Can, Too

Driving back to school today I saw a license plate with this message: I-CANTU. In Latin the word cantus, cantūs m. means "song," and in the ablative singular form, cantū, it means "by, with, or from a song." So could this license plate mean "I (exist) (because of/by) song"? Or perhaps "I (am) with song"? Or possibly "#1: by song"? More likely: "I can, too"! But I do wonder what it is I can do, don't you?

The Latin verb canō, canere, cecinī, cantum means "I sing," and it is one of the opening words of Vergil's great epic poem, the Aeneid. The poem begins, "Arma virumque canō: I sing of arms and a man/hero." In English from this Latin verb we have the words canticle, a song or hymn and cantor, a religious official who sings or chants prayers in a synagogue.

Probably only the author of the license plate knows the truth, but I can try, too.

Seize the territory!

What can Latin do for you? This article came my way, and I was happy to read (again) about the benefits of studying Latin. I am also interested in the company name, Capterra. It looks like a word formed from two Latin roots, cap (from capiō, capere, cēpī, captum I take) and terra (from terra, ae f. land) yielding a possible meaning of "Take the land!" When you read the name out loud, however, you may hear "Cap'terra," a word that could suggest "Capture!" This company may wish to capture your business!

Swimming Through Forgotten New York

A few days ago I saw a truck advertising a business located on Nereid Avenue in the Bronx, NY. Alas, I no longer recall the business, because I was trying to make myself remember to research how Nereid Avenue in the Bronx received its name. A charming website called Forgotten New York tells it all:

East of the Bronx River Parkway, the road has yet another name: Nereid Avenue (the correct pronunciation is NEER-ee-id: the MTA gets it wrong on its taped station announcements). A nereid is a minor Greek water nymph; while some Bronxites believe the street was named for an N.E. Reid, it was actually named for a local fire company. Since firehouses and pumping wagons used a lot of water, they all had water-associated names, like Oceanus, Neptune, etc. This is the only street that recollects the old Bronx fire companies. Compare Coney Island’s numerous “water” names like Surf, Brightwater, Seabreeze et al. By the way, nereids had two legs: only the mermaids and mermen, which were not in Greek myths, had tails. 

Nereid caught my interest, because a nereid in Greek mythology is a sea-nymph, a child of Nereus. When you encounter the word nereid, it is almost always in a context having to do with swimming, water sports, or some kind of watery environment, as in the Bronx. Here in New York it is still so cold and snowy that any nereids have certainly fled to warmer waters.

Wintry Mix

Winter storm Neptune blew through the northeastern part of the United States yesterday. Here in Westchester county, New York, we received an inch or two of new snow, and the wind continues to blow. As I drove around town running errands, I spied an unlikely sight and had a camera with me, so observe the name of the boat located in a store parking lot. No doubt Old Man Winter is having a chuckle today.

Neptune is the Roman name for the god of the sea, and Poseidon is his Greek equivalent.

Faithful Care

Yesterday I watched a nice commercial for a company called Fidelis Care. I was struck by how calm, peaceful, and happy all the people in the ad appeared. I was moved to investigate the company name, knowing that fidelis, fidele is a Latin adjective meaning "faithful." I smiled when I discovered on the Fidelis Care website that it is the New York State Catholic Health plan. The logo also makes sense, as it shows a dove, a common symbol representing the Holy Spirit, superimposed on a human figure.

Fidelis may also be familiar because it is part of the motto of the United States Marine Corps (semper fidelis, always faithful), and it is in the title of a Christmas carol sometimes sung in Latin (Adeste Fideles, O Come All Ye Faithful).

Sweet Confetti

In Latin class yesterday my seventh-grade students were wrestling with the word confectus, a, um, an adjective meaning finished. I asked if anyone could think of an English derivative from this word, and several students suggested confection and confectionary sugar. We discussed that confections--sweet treats often made with confectionary sugar-- are often eaten at the end of a meal, and therefore they finish the meal. And so we determined that confectus, a, um means "finished."As we were talking, I also wondered about the word confetti, an Italian word brought into English. According to my dictionary confetti, from the Latin confectus, a, um, was originally candy or "candy" made from plaster thrown at carnivals or other festive events, and then later was replaced with bits of paper as we know confetti today. Etymology is definitely a sweet treat.

New Year Reflection

One of my favorite excerpts from the poetry of Ovid captures the four seasons in two lines. I surely must have written of these lines before, but I believe in repetition, so here they are, courtesy of The Latin Library:

Poma dat autumnus: formosa est messibus aestas:

Ver praebet flores: igne levatur hiems.

                                                                                    Ovid, Remedia Amoris 187-188

Translation:  Autumn gives fruits: beautiful is summer with crops:

                                    Spring offers flowers: by fire winter is lightened.

I sit on this fourth day of the New Year before a woodstove. Flames dance above glowing coals, and the rain falls on last night's snow. Within the fire glows orange, the pale daylight reveals the orange spine of Millennium: A Latin Reader/374-1374 by F.E. Harrison, on the cover of which St. Jerome looks out from his writing at a slanted desk.

Reading, setting one's thoughts on fire, also lightens the dark winter. In addition to Millennium, I have Sarah Ruden's translation of Vergil's Aeneid at hand. The Latin excerpts in Millennium, balanced by the spare English of Ruden, set in the landscape of snow, before a fire--no better way to welcome another year than to look back, way back, and, catching fire, reflect the light of millennia.