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.