Whats in a name

[Neville Briggs]

You'll probably find this uninteresting, but I'll put in anyway because it is cold and cloudy today and I am stuck inside with not much to do.

I was discussing the renaissance musician Michael Praetorius with a friend and I discovered the curious thing that his name was actually Michael Shultz. As in Sergeant Shultz " I know nuthing " .

There was a fashion in past times for people to make their names into Latin sounding words as this was considered " posh ".
Shultz means a magistrate or a town sherriff or head man , and I found out that Praetorius means magistrate or head man in Latin. The place where Romans had court was called the Praetorium.
So Shultzy decided to sound grand by becoming Praetorius.

And I got to thinking how there were others. Cristoforo Colombo, hey duzzen matta, became Christopher Columbus, Erasmus Roterdamus ( famous philosopher, trust me) took this name
because he came from the Dutch city of Rotterdam.
The dynasty of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles was known as the Carolingian because Charles relates to the Latin name Carolus.
A very curious Latinisation is the English Stuart monarchs known as the Jacobeans. This comes about because the Jewish name Jacob gets poshified into Latin as Jacobus and the pronunciation of Jacobus gradually gets morphed into Jam-uss or James.

My own name Briggs, is a Germanic name coming from Brücke, meaning bridge. If I were to Latinise my surname it would become Pontius, the Latin word for bridge. Hence a pontoon, a type of bridge. ( My mate at Orange calls me a poltroon but that isn't a bridge ).
This is perhaps not desirable , as it would relate to Pontius Pilate ( that's Pon-tius Pil-ar-tay by the way) who infamously washed his hands of responsibility.

Talking of Pontius Pilate, I realized that our old mate Banjo has a name taken from the Irish for son of the father. It becomes a half Latin Pater, father and English son. Pater-son, son of the father.
interestingly the man released from crucifixion by Pontius Pilate had the Aramaic name Barabbas which also means son of the father. Banjo Barabbas might not have caught on.

If we are going to be poets we have to be fascinated by words.

That's enough for now, I have something to do, go and make tea.

[Heather]

It must be the holiday season.

Julius Caesar's real name was Caius and his family name Julius. His nickname was Caesar, which later became linguistic root for "Kaiser" and "king".

[Neville Briggs]

Almost correct and also the Russian Csar. Julius Caesar's first name was Gaius. Pontius Pilate's first name was Marcus ( or Mark ).

[Heather]

You are reading a different book to me Neville!

[Neville Briggs]

Trust me I know these things, I suffered three years of Latin at school including Caesar's Gallic Wars.

and for an encore....Picasso's real name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso.

[Heather]

I think there is an echo.

Wow, there must have been fights over Pablo's naming!

[Ron]

Interesting stuff Nev, also our best and most famous poet (In my opinion) could have been Henry Larsen!

Ron

[Heather]

Nero was an interesting chap.

Nero was born Lucius Domitus but was also called Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus and was a bad bad egg. Nasty piece of work although in the first few years of his reign he did do some good things like reduce taxes, abolish capital punishment and was a patron of the arts, especially poetry. After several attempts he had his mother murdered, then his wife so he could marry his mistress who he subsequently kicked to death while she was pregnant (I did say he was a bad egg).

In the year 64 a large fire destroyed much of Rome and some thought Nero may have had a hand in lighting the fire so that he could do some construction work. His inaction in fighting the fire led to the expression that "Nero fiddled while Rome burned". Other accounts state that he was in fact reciting poetry The Sack of Troy while using the burning city as a backdrop! Nero blamed the Christians for the fire and had them rounded up and fed to the lions. Peter and Paul happened to be in town preaching and Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified upside down.

Nero even competed in the Olympic games and won every event he took part in!

Cutting a long story short, Nero ended his own life by taking poison and his last words are said to have been, "Qualis artifex pereo" or "What a great artist the world loses in me."

[r.magnay]

Well I'll be, I thought Ceaser was named after a salad....

[Bob Pacey]

Yeah you were right.


You'll probably find this uninteresting