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Question of the Day
Question:
"Dr. Hal, what are those little sweat drops around somebody's face in a cartoon?"Answer:
Well, we in the cartooning profession use the technical term, plewds. Vibration lines are called agitrons, a tiny Saturn in a cuss-word or maledicta balloon is referred to as a quimp. And so on. "Who cares? What does it matter?" In fact, names do matter. Native peoples know that the true name of something is invested with mana, or supernatural power. Consider: usually, even with us, a funny-sounding name guards a technical secret. But of course, the Native Americans also suffered peculiar names from time to time. Take Aztec emperor Montezuma's obnoxious nephew, for example. His name, Cuitlahac, translates from the Nahuatl language as "plenty of excrement." Or the name of one nineteenth-century northwestern American Indian chief, "Not Able to Fornicate." Some towns have funny names. How'd you like to have as your return address, Smackover, Arkansas or Embarrass, Wisconsin? Does that suit your fancy? Or, you could live in the British Isles, in the nation of Wales, in the quaint little Welsh hamlet of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantsiliogogogoch. How'd you like that, huh? That name, by the way, roughly translates as, "Saint Mary's Church in a hollow of white hazel close to a whirlpool and Saint Tysilo's Church and near a red cave." Sometimes a casual nickname becomes freighted with power because of a magnificent deed. In ancient Rome, a great house was founded by a famous general, Mucius Scaevola. It seems he was captured by barbarians, and to impress these people that Romans were the toughest of the tough, and you couldn't win against them (pretty much true at that time) he deliberately stuck his right hand in the fire and held it there while he talked to them, ignoring his on-fire hand's smoking, crackling and popping. Sure enough, those "barbarians" (a.k.a. non-Romans) were impressed, all right, and the general won the concessions Rome had asked for. This incident made his reputation and fortune, and all of his house afterward bore the patronymic or surname Scaevola, which translates as "Lefty."
Askdrhal.com by
Jascha Ephraim,
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