How Latin Became French

Posted on April 10, 2013 by J L tagged.

The Romans left their language behind everywhere they went. They didn’t force anyone to learn it. Everyone wanted to speak Latin, the language of opportunity and success.

In time, Latin, became Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Romanian.

And also Catalan, Occitan, Provençal, Languedocien, Romanche, Corsican, Wallon, Venetian and Sicilian.

Rome began as a muddy, swampy village surrounded by the brilliant Etruscan civilization on one side and the no less prestigious Greek colonies on the other.

The history of Rome begins like a fairy tale with a prince and a goddess and continues with legendary stories and historical realities.

Aeneas ( Αἰνείας, Aineías, derived from Greek Αἰνή meaning “to praise”), the son of the prince Anchises, and Venus Aphrodite, brings his colony from Troy to Italy, as Virgil tells us in Book One of the Aeneid.

Two newborns, Romulus and Remus, are abandoned along the Tiber and suckled by a she wolf. Romulus kills Remus and becomes the first king of Rome.

There is a rape of young women from the nearby Sabine people. The women are kidnapped to populate Rome.

A great sewer (the Cloaca Maxima) is built to drain the marshes and the Forum is created, which becomes the center of Roman life.

There is a revolution (509 BCE) and the monarchy is abolished to make way for the Republic. The government is headed by two consuls elected by the citizenry and advised by a senate. A constitution based on the separation of powers and checks and balances is developed. Public offices are held for one year, and dates in Roman history are often stated to be when so and so was consul.

The Republic will last for five centuries (from the 6th to the first century BCE) to be succeeded by the Empire which will also last for five centuries until the fall of the Western Empire in 476 CE. The Empire’s beginning is usually dated from the declaration of Julius Caesar as permanent dictator in 44 BCE.

Rome conquered Transalpine Gaul (Provincia Narbonensis now called Provence) in 120 BCE and northern Gaul in 58 – 50 BCE, so the Romans were in Gaul longer than they were anywhere else.

Romans were farmers in the beginning and their language was based in the soil. The verb CERNERE (to see, to discern), for example, originally meant “sift.”

COLERE or INCOLERE which is found in the word “agricola,” farmer, originally meant cultivate, but Caesar uses it in the opening sentence of his book to mean “live” or “inhabit.”

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres: unam quarum Belgae incolunt. All Gaul is divided into three parts: one of which the Belgians inhabit.

The verb PUTARE originally meant prune or trim. Look where it is now: compute, dispute, repute, deputy, putative.

DELIRARE originally meant to leave the LIRA, the furrow. The word became delirium, delirious, délirer. That’s leaving the furrow with a vengeance.

RIVALIS was an adjective for RIVUS, the bank of a river ( rive gauche). Two people who shared the water in that river were rivals.

A PAGINA was a grape arbor, a group of vines arranged in a rectangle. Then it became a page of papyrus, a page containing one column of writing.

LIBER (book) originally was the tissue between the bark and the tree. The first books in Europe were written on “beechen” tablets. (Buch in German originally meant the beech tree as does our “book.”)

LEGERE Cueillir To pick, pluck, gather, harvest. This word LEGERE later took on the meaning of levy, draft, and a LEGIO (legion) is called that because the soldiers were levied upon the general population.

The past participle of LEGERE is LECTUS, so all of the elect, lecture, dialect, select, lectern, collect meanings come from LEGERE also.

LEGERE became the word for “read.” Lire, leer, leggere (Italian). When you read, you are harvesting words and meanings.

The people in France (Gallia, Gaul) finally spoke Latin, of course, but before they did they loaned some of their words to the Romans. CARRUS (a chariot with four wheels) was Gallic, as was BENNA, a kind of wagon with four wheels, which became benne the word in French for “bucket” or “scoop.”

Other Gallic words brought into Latin were ALAUDA, lark, alouette; BECCUS, beak; CAMBIARE, exchange, barter (which became “buy” in Italian and Spanish).

BRACAE, breeches, britches, pants. The Romans didn’t wear them, but the Celts did. They lived in a colder climate. The word became brache in Italian and bragas in Spanish. In modern French it’s braies.

There were two Latins, the Latin of the intellectuals URBANITAS and the Latin of the streets and fields RUSTICITAS.

The Latin of Cicero (3 January 106 BCE – 7 December 43 BCE) was a dead language even when it was alive. There was an agreement not to change it, and, remarkably, no one changed it for centuries. I can read Latin from the time of Cicero, but can only read my own language, English, in Beowulf , written almost a thousand years later, with great difficulty when I can read it at all.

RUSTICITAS, the Latin language of the people, changed constantly all through Roman history.

The extensive use of elements from vernacular speech by the earliest authors (Plautus, for example) and inscriptions of the Roman Republic make it clear that the original, unwritten language of the Roman monarchy was an only partially deducible predecessor to vulgar Latin. Very early on, this sermo rusticus (also known as sermo plebeius, sermo vulgaris, sermo cotidianus or just sermo usualis) already had many of the features of French, Spanish, Italian and the rest.

Here are some pairs of words that have the same meaning from upper and lower Latin. Guess which ones came down into French: AEQUOR and MARE (sea); AGER and CAMPUS (field); CRUOR and SANGUIS (blood); EQUUS and CABALLUS (horse); LETUM and MORS (death); SIDUS and STELLA (star); TELLUS and TERRA (terrain, earth, soil); MAGNUS and GRANDIS (big); FERRE and PORTARE (to carry, to transport). This would be easier to tell with Spanish or Italian. With French this is a little harder to see because French has changed more than any other Romance language. In fact, French is the most Germanic of the Romance languages. The very word “France” comes from the Franks, a Germanic tribe.

For the word “house,” the Romans had at least four terms: DOMUS (domicile) was the house and everything in it. AEDES (edifice) just meant the building itself. VILLA denoted a farm or agricultural property, and CASA was a cabin or a (thatched) cottage. Which term came down into the Romance languages? The humblest, of course. CASA is exactly the same in Portuguese, Italian and Spanish and in French when you say “chez nous,” you are using the Gallic form of CASA.

When I lived in New York, there was a restaurant around the corner from me called La Chaumière, which is the exact French translation of the Latin CASA.

There are books, or tablets, really, from Roman times where people are taught what and what not to say.

One of the most well known is the Appendix Probi, which reads like a schoolmaster’s spelling correction book. It would be as if today a teacher published a manual with some of the following strictures: say is not, don’t say ain’t; say You gave it to whom, don’t say You gave it to who; say Where is that? don’t say Where is that at? ; say He and I did it, don’t say Him and me did it; say between her and me, don’t say between her and I. (I hate to write these and I can feel the pain of the person who wrote the Appendix Probi. It’s a losing battle, and it always was.)

These correction books are a vivid snapshot of a language in evolution. Say VIR (man) not VYR. Say SPECULUM (mirror) not SPECLUM. Say VINEA (vine) don’t say VINIA.

Say COLUMNA (column) not COLOMNA. Say NUNQUAM (never) don’t say NUNQUA. Say HOSTIAE don’t say OSTIAE (proof that the H was already beginning to disappear.)

Città della Pieve City of the People

Say RIVUS (bank of a river) not RIUS (“river” in Spanish is “rio.”); Say PLEBES not PLEVIS (b and v were already beginning to be confused. Big Brother played in an Umbrian town called Città della Pieve. Pieve is what PLEBES, people, had become by the time we got there. (The LATIN L became I in Italian. Clara = Chiara.)

Say CIVITAS (city) not CIVITÀT (ciudad is Spanish for city) and certainly not CITTÀ. Say AQUA not ACQUA. Say PAUPER MULIER (poor woman, pauvre femme) not PAUPERA MULIER (changing third declension adjectives and pronouns to the first and second declensions).

Île de la Cité WAS Paris for a very long time. Nôtre Dame was begun in 1163. In 1963, I stood in a large group of people right about here and we heard and saw a son et lumière presentation of the catheral’s 800 year old history. In Latin her name would be Nostra Domina.

The accent circonflexe in French very often tells you that an s was there originally: île, hôte, août, hâte, arrêt, bête, fête, forêt. Put an s into each of these words and you will see very quickly what they mean.

For a linguist these prescriptive “corrections” are a delight, because in almost every case, what the people are taught NOT to say is what they are actually saying (otherwise why bother to correct them?) and these “mistakes” will be passed down into French and the other daughters of Latin.

Some rules from these early prescriptive wordbooks: Say AURIS, don’t say ORICLA. Say FRIGIDA, don’t say FRICDA. Say CALIDA, don’t say CALDA. Say MENSA, don’t say MESA. These rules show you what people were saying (and spelling) then.

Guess which forms came down into the Romance Languages? MESA, you know, if you live in the Southwest of the United States. ORICLA became oreille, oreja. FRICDA became froid. CALDA became chaud.

A thoughtful person might be encouraged here to think of terms and forms that are forbidden in English today, and to consider how our own language is evolving.

Comparatives in Latin: DOCTUS is wise, knowing, learned. DOCTIOR is more wise, more knowing, more learned. DOCTISSIMUS is the most learned.

In French, however, these comparatives were made by using Latin MAGIS (more) and PLUS (plus). More than my own life. Docte. Plus docte. Le plus docte.

Je n’en ai plus. I just don’t have any more. That’s it, I just can’t do any more.

Adverbs: IN SIMUL ensemble, AB ANTE avant, DE EX dès

When my wife Elise is in Germany, she can be heard to say, “Den Schlüssel der Toilette, bitte?” and the person at the gas station will say, “Der Schlüssel ist hier.” When Elise asks for the key to the bathroom, she uses the accusative case, because implied in her request is Ich will (I want the key to the bathroom), because “key” is the object of the sentence. The woman answers, “The key is here (der Schlüssel) which is the nominative case because “key” is the subject of the sentence.

German is an inflected language. The words can change form according to what function they perform. It’s the key to another world.

In English we have cases too, although we don’t call them that, and they are mostly seen in pronouns. He goes to the store. “He” is in the nominative case. He took his book. “His” is in the genitive case. I saw him. “Him” is in the accusative case. He, his, him are all referring to the same person, but the words change according to their function.

So, English is an inflected language too, but not as inflected as German, and neither of them is as inflected as Latin. You have probably noticed that “whom” is disappearing, so that dative/accusative case will be gone forever when the last person says it.

In Latin, for “Flavia picks a rose,” you can say Rosam Flavia leget. Or you can say Flavia rosam leget. Or you can say Leget Flavia rosam, or even Leget rosam Flavia, or Flavia leget rosam. They all mean Flavia picks a rose and the word order is not important because Flavia is in the nominative case and she is the subject of the sentence. Rosam is in the accusative case, and, wherever rosam is in the sentence, it will always be rose as the object of the sentence.

Similarly, to say “Flavia loves the color of the rose,” you can say Flavia colorem rosae amat, or Rosae colorem Flavia amat, or Colorem rosae Flavia amat or Amat Flavia rosae colorem. They all mean Flavia loves the color of the rose. This is Classical Latin, the language of Cicero and Caesar. The word order (syntax) is unimportant because each word has an ending that tells its function. Flavia is the subject of the sentence. Amat is the verb. Colorem is the object. And rosae is the genitive. It means “of the rose” no matter where it is in the sentence.

In the Latin of the street (RUSTICITAS), however, the endings of words, because they were almost always unaccented, began to be lost with people speaking quickly, mumbling, being drunk, being excited, being lazy… the endings dropped away early. So now what happens to the syntax? The order of the words in the sentence becomes more than important; it becomes absolutely necessary to the meaning of the phrase.

Paulus Petrum verberat means Paul hits Peter. It’s the same if you say Petrum Paulus verberat, but not if the endings in Paulus and Petrum both become -u as they did early on in street Latin. If Paulus and Petrum become Paulu and Petru, then Paulu has to go first and Petru has to follow the verb for the sentence to be most clear. Paulu verberat Petru. And the -t in verberat was lost early too, so the sentence looks like Paulu verbera Petru. This is beginning to look a lot like Spanish, French or Italian, isn’t it?

Flavia rosam amat (Flavia loves the rose) now begins to be said Flavia ama rosa, and if you say Flavia loves that rose, the sentence, even in Roman times, can be said Flavia ama(t) (il)la(m) rosa(m). Flavia ama la rosa. Then the sentence looks very much as it would in Spanish or Italian. Flavia aime la rose, as the people in Gallia would say.

In Classical Latin, murus (wall) is the subject of the sentence (nominative). Muri means “of the wall” or wall’s (genitive). Murum is the wall as the object of the sentence (accusative) and muro means “to the wall” (dative). So, there are four cases, murus, muri, murum, muro.

By the third century BCE, people in the street were saying muro(s), muri, muro, muro, and they weren’t pronouncing the s in the first case, so the word sounded the same in all the cases. We know this because of writing on tombstones, graffiti, and other places where uneducated people would write. And now to emphasize the words they would say THAT wall, rather than just wall. That = ille in Latin, and so they said (Il)le mur. Le mur is the wall in French.

Here is a message on a tombstone, date unknown: Hic quescunt duas matres, duas filias numero tres facunt et advenas II parvolas qui suscitabit cuius condicio est. Jul. Herculanus. There is a joke here, “two mothers, two daughters make the number three.” OK, it’s not a big joke, but it’s on a tombstone, where jokes are in short supply. Let’s be grateful.

There is a later inscription on a tomb in Gallia: Hic requiiscunt men bra ad duas frates Gallo et Fidencio qui fo erunt fili Magno… Both of these inscriptions show that the old declension (case) system was disappearing and would soon disappear altogether.

So, now, articles became necessary. In late Latin the definite article (the) was taken from the word for “that” ille, illa. For the indefinite article (a) the word for “one” was used. Unus, una. “The widow” is la vidua and “a widow” is una vidua. La veuve, une veuve.

Now prepositions become important. They are needed to show the relationships of the words to each other. The dative case is gone, so you have to say “to the wall,” as you do in English. Or “on the table,” or “with the drink.” The world had changed. (That’s the world… in the bubbles.)

Frederick the Great of Prussia and Voltaire made a bet who could write the shortest sentence in Latin. Frederick wrote Eo rus. (I’m going to the country.) Voltaire replied I (Go).

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida received a doctorate honoris causa from Oxford University and he wrote his discours de réception in Latin.

There were several words for “blonde” or “white” in Latin. Our friend Flavia above was so named because she was blonde (FLAVUS yellow). Also ALBUS meant white as did CANDIDUS but the French took their word BLANC from the Germanic languages. The Romans, too, borrowed “blond” from the Germans very early and Roman women bought great quantities of blonde hair from the north.

There were four or five ways to say “blue” in the mother language: CAERULEUS denoted the color of a cloudless sky. CYANEUS was a darker blue. CAESIUS, a gray-blue, a greenish blue, especially used for the color of eyes, and then there was GLAUCUS “between green and pale blue,” and VIOLACEUS, blue tending to violet, but in about the seventh century CE, the French borrowed *blao from the Germanic language.

So, when did French become truly French and not a mélange of Latin and Gallic? One boundary date might be the Oaths of Strasbourg (842 CE) taken by two grandsons of Charlemagne, Louis le Germanique and Charles le Chauve to swear assistance and fealty to each other against their brother Lothaire.

These Oaths were written in the langue romane and the langue germanique. The only copy we have is from a century later, but the document is invaluable for linguists.

Pro deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament d’ist di en auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon uol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.

In today’s French this would be: Pour l’amour de Dieu et pour le salut commun du peuple chrétien et le nôtre, à partir de ce jour, autant que Dieu m’en donne le savoir et le pouvoir, je soutiendrrai mon frère Charles de mon aide et en toute chose, comme on doit justement soutenir son frère, à condition qu’il m’en fasse autant, et je ne prendrai jamais aucun arrangement avec Lothaire, qui, à ma volonté, soit au détriment de mon frère Charles.

This is the way the Oath reads in la langue germanique: in godes minna ind in thes christânes folches ind unsêr bêdhero gehaltnissî fon thesemo dage frammordes sô fram sô mir got geuuizci indi mahd furgibit sô haldih thesan mînan bruodher sôso man mit rehtu sînan bruodher scal in thiu thaz er mig sô sama duo indi mit ludheren in nohheiniu thing ne gegango the mînan uillon imo ce scadhen uuerdhên

oba karl then eid then er sînemo bruodher ludhuuuîge gesuor geleistit indi ludhuuuîg mîn hêrro then er imo gesuor forbrihchit ob ih inan es iruuenden ne mag noh ih noh thero nohhein then ih es iruuenden mag uuidhar karle imo ce follusti ne uuirdhit.

In la langue romane, notice that the original is much more concise than the modern French. This is because of the survival of some cases and other similarities to Latin.

The copyist seems to have hesitated over the written form of final unaccented vowels. For aiudha (help) and cadhuna (each), he writes a.

Sometimes a, sometimes e: fradra, fradre (brother).

Sometimes e. sometimesd o: Karle, Karlo (Charles).

In Latin, the future of LAVARE was lavabo, lavabis. In French (and similarly in the other daughters of Latin) the verb “to have” (avoir) was used to make the future: laver + ai = I will wash; laver + as = you will wash; laver + a = she, he, it will wash; laver + (av)ons = we will wash; laver + (av)ez = you will wash; laver + ont = they will wash.

Sometimes a Latin word would come into French twice, once very early and then another time very late. The same thing happened with English and, in fact, some of the pairs are the same, such as frail and fragile (frêle et fragile) from FRAGILEM.

SECURITATEM sûreté et sécurité. FABRICAM came into French early as forge and then later as fabrique. FRIGIDUM froid et frigide. GRACILIS grêle et gracile (slender, slim). CADENTIAM chance et cadence. POTIONEM poison et potion. MUSCULUM moule (mussel) et muscle. MONASTERIUM moutier (obsolete) et monastère. MINISTERIUM métier et ministère. TABULAM tôle (sheet metal) et table. CLAVICULAM cheville (ankle) et clavicule. AUGUSTUM août et auguste.

Sometime early in the fifth century CE, Egeria, a Spanish nun, set out to visit as many as possible of the places mentioned in the Bible. This was in effect the first of many, many Christian pilgrimages and she decided to write about what she had seen.

The manuscript was discovered at Arezzo in 1887 by Italian scholar Gamurrini. Egeria’s descriptions of the way she was received by local dignitaries in her travels suggest that her standing in the Church was high.

No other author of her time or for long after wrote in such a lively and conversational style. It is like hearing her talk.`She writes in Latin, but it is a Latin far removed from the villas of Cicero and Caesar. Her language, the syntax, the simplicity, the excessive use of definite and indefinite articles, is well on its way to becoming French, Italian, Spanish. She’s chatty.

Cum ergo descendissimus, ut superius dixi, de ecclesia deorsum, ait nobis ipse sanctus presbyter: ecce ista fundamenta in giro colliculo isto, quae videtis, hae sunt de palatio regis Melchisedech…. Nam ecce ista via, quam videtis transire inter fluvium Iordanem et vicum istum, haec est qua via regressus est sanctus Abraam de caede Codollagomor regis gentium revertens in Sodomis, qua ei occurrit sanctus Melchisedech rex Salem.

When we had gone down from the church, as I said above, the holy priest spoke to us: You see those ruins in the fold of that hill, they are of the palace of king Mechisedech…. That path which you see passing between the river Jordan and the village, that is the way by which holy Abraham came back from the slaughter of Codollogomor, king of the peoples returning to Sodom, where holy Melchisedech king of Salem met him.

She continues: Tunc ego quia retinebam scriptum esse baptizasse sanctum Iohannem in Enon iuxta Salim, requisivi de eo, quam longe esset ipse locus. Tunc ait ille sanctus presbyter: ecce hic est in ducentibus passibus; nam si vis, ecce modo pedibus duco vos ibi. Nam haec aqua tam grandis et tam pura, quam videtis in isto vico, de ipso fonte venit. Tunc ergo gratias ei agere coepi et rogare, ut duceret nos ad locum.

Then because I remembered that it is written that Saint John had been baptizing in Enon near Salem, I asked of him how far away the place was. Then the holy priest said: It is two hundred yards away; if you wish, I will lead you there on foot. The stream which you see in the village, so large and clear, comes from that source. Then I began to thank him and ask that he should take us to the place.

This was a woman who loved to travel and who loved people. Her use of words such as HIC, IPSE, ISTE and ILLE and priest’s use of ECCE are pointing forward to la langue romane. They are attention getting and attention directing devices that are always a feature of ordinary life. Professors and academics are used to being the center of attention, and listened to, but everyday people have to build a few HEY! moments into their speech even to hope to be heard. HIC, IPSE, ISTE, ILLE, ECCE are all look at me words that call for attention.

Egeria would not have been out of place in Chaucer’s collection of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury a thousand years later.

The Gallia of the Romans began to form her own language(s). The names for them were each based on the word “yes.” The languages of the former Gallia Narbonensis (Provence) had a word for “yes” that was originally HOC, “this.” If someone said, “Did you go to the market today,” and you wanted to affirm this, you simply said HOC, this.

In Latin there was no word for “yes.” People simply said “thus,” which was SIC and this evolved into “si.”

In the French of today there is this “si,” but it is only used to contradict a negative statement. If she says, “You weren’t at Monterey, were you?” I can answer, “Si, j’y suis êté.” (Yes, I was there.)

Of course, the Latin SIC (thus) came down into all of the other Romance Languages as the word for “yes.” In Portuguese: Sim. Eu gosto muito. (Yes, I like it a lot.) Spanish: Si, señor. Italian: Ma, si, lo sai che sei più bella della Avril Lavigne, davvero eh! (But, yes, you know it, that you are more beautiful than Avril Lavigne, really, eh?)

In the north of Gallia, which we can almost call France now, the phrase for “yes” was HOC ILLUD, which is something like “this that,” but it meant “yes,” and the language of Gallia Septentrionale, northern France, became known as la langue d’oïl, the language of oui. The language of HOC ILLUD.

In the 9th century romana lingua (the term used in the Oaths of Strasbourg of 842) was the first of the Romance languages to be recognized by its speakers as a distinct language, probably because it was the most different from Latin compared with the other Romance languages.

A good number of the developments that we now consider typical of Walloon, the language spoken in the environs of Belgium, appeared between the 8th and 12th centuries. Walloon “had a clearly defined identity from the beginning of the thirteenth century”. In any case, linguistic texts from the time do not mention the language, even though they mention others in the Oïl family, such as Picard and Lorrain. During the 15th century, scribes in the region called the language “Roman” when they needed to distinguish it. It is not until the beginning of the 16th century that we find the first occurrence of the word “Walloon” in the same linguistic sense that we use it today.

In the south of Gallia, the language was called langue d’oc, the language of HOC, which was how they said “yes” in the South. This speech became known as OCCITAN.

Oc was and still is the southern word for yes, hence the langues d’oc or Occitan languages. The most widely spoken modern Oïl language is French (oïl was pronounced [o.il] or [o.i], which has become [wi], in modern French oui).

Very early on, differences between the languages of the south and north became marked.

These differences still exist today and there have been many movements to make southern dialects (Provençal, languedocien, occitan) into languages in their own right, especially in the 19th century and especially by the writer Frédéric Mistral.

In the South, they said: cantat aqua pratu(m) In the North, it was chante eau près.

By late- or post-Roman times Vulgar Latin had developed two distinctive terms for signifying assent (yes): hoc ille (“this (is) it”) and hoc (“this”), which became oïl and oc, respectively. Subsequent development changed “oïl” into “oui”, as in modern French. The term langue d’oïl itself was first used in the 12th century, referring to the Old French linguistic grouping noted above.

In the 14th century, the Italian poet Dante mentioned the yes distinctions in his De vulgari eloquentia. He wrote in Medieval Latin: “nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil” (“some say ‘oc’, others say ‘si’, others say ‘oïl’”)—thereby distinguishing at least three classes of Romance languages: oc languages. oui languages and si languages.

This is part of the story of the Prodigal Son in various dialects. Modern French: Son fils lui dit alors: Mon père, j’ai péché contre le ciel et contre vous; je ne mérite plus d’être appelé votre fils. Mais le père dit aux serviteurs: Allez vite chercher la plus belle robe et l’en revêtez, mettez-lui au doigt un anneau, des souliers aux pieds. Amenez le veau gras et tuez-le, mangeons et faisons liesse.

And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

And now in Picard, one of the langues d’oïl: Sin fieu ly dit: Min pere, j’ai grament péché conte I’ciel et conte vous; et jenne su pu dinne d’éte apelai vous fieu. Alor I’pére dit à ses gins: Allez vite qére s’première robe et fourez ly su sin dos; mettez ly un aniau au douet et dés solés à ses pieds. Amenés aveucque I’viau cras et tuélle, mingeons et faigeons bonne torche.

Walloon: Et I’fils li diha: Pere, j’a pegchi conte lu ci et conte vos: ju n’so nin digne d’ess loumé vos fils. Mais l’pere diha atou ses siervans: appoirto bin vite su pu belle robe et tapo li so l’coir et metto li onne bague et des solés èze pis. Et allézo prinde lu cras vai et sul touo et s’magnans et s’fusans gasse.

Morvandiau (Nièvre): Et son fiot ly dié: Men père, y ait pécé conte le ciel et conte vous aitout, y n’ mairite pu d’eitre aipelé voute fiot. Anchitot, le père dié ai sas valots; aiportez vias sai premère robbe et vitez ly, boutez ly enne baigue au det et das soulés dans sas piés. Aimouniez aitout le viau gras et l’tuez: mezons et fions fricot.

And now we go to the langues d’oc. Here is the tale in the dialect of Auvergne: Et son fiot ly dié: Men père, y ait pécé conte le ciel et conte vous aitout, y n’ mairite pu d’eitre aipelé voute fiot. Anchitot, le père dié ai sas valots; aiportez vias sai premère robbe et vitez ly, boutez ly enne baigue au det et das soulés dans sas piés. Aimouniez aitout le viau gras et l’tuez: mezons et fions fricot.

Gascon, the language of Cyrano de Bergerac: E soun hil qu’eou digouc: Moun pay, qu’ey peccat cost’oou ceo é daouant bous: nou souy pas mes digne deou noum de boste hii. Lou pay que digouc a sous baylets: Biste, biste, pourtat sa pruméro raoubo é boutats l’oc; boutats lou la bago aou dit, e caoussats lou. Amiats lou bedet gras, é tuats lou: minjen é hascan uo gran’ hesto.

Provençal as spoken in Marseille: Et soun fieou li diguet: Moun païré aï peccat contro lou ciel et contro de vous, noun siou pas digné d’estre appelat vouestre fieou. Alors, lou péro diguet à seis domestiquos: Adduses sa premiero raoubo, et vestisses lou; mettes-li une bague oou det et de souliers eis peds. Adusés lou vedeou gras et tuas lou, man- gens e faguem boumbanco.

Franco-Provençal (Swiss, Valais, Saint-Maurice: Son meniot la y a det: Mon pere y ai petchia devant le chel et devant vo; ye ne sey pas digno ora d’être appèlo voutrom fi. Mais le père a det a son valets: Apporta ley to de suite sa première roba e la fey bota; metté ley ona baga u dey é dé solar è pia; amènà le vè grà é toa lo; mindzin é fézin granta tchiéra.

These languages still exist.

SUBIUNGO is Latin for “I subjoin,” I add to, and the subjunctive mood is so named because it is primarily used in subordinate clauses. Il faut que tu vienne. (You have to come.) If faut que j’y aille. (It’s necessary that I go there.)

In Latin all conjugations and irregular verbs have four tenses of the subjunctive: present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. French normally uses only two of these tenses, although Spanish and Italian and the other linguae romanae rusticae positively revel in all tense subjunctive usage. Quisiera un café, por favor. (I would like a coffee, please.)

When I was young and silly, I used to use the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive just for laughs: J’aimerais que vous me servissiez 100 F de gasoil.

Or: Madame, réfléchîtes-vous à ma proposition car il faudrait que vous prissiez une décision immédiatement pour que je vous livrasse au plus tôt et que vous fussiez en mesure d’apprécier les services de mon appareil.

At the time I was taking a course in 18th century literature and reading people like Marivaux, Voltaire and madame de Sévigné, all of whom were comfortable with the all the subjunctives and used them in an often humorous and even schpritzy style. (Schpritzy = avec esprit.)

J’étudie la carte du Tendre, je participe aux fêtes galantes, je suis l’observateur “statufié” des tableaux de Watteau… et de Boucher.

In Latin, the past tense is called the “perfect,” because it has been thoroughly done, perfected, finished. I was = fui. You were = fuisti. It was = fuit. In spoken French this perfect past (or passé simple as it is known) is not ordinarily used in speaking, but it is in writing, especially in novels.

There is a French writer named Raymond Queneau. He wrote Zazie dans le métro and many other funny books that play with language.

The first book of his that I read was Exercices de Style where he takes a very simple story and tells it in many different styles: Métaphoriquement, Rétrograde, Surprises, Rêve, Pronostications, Hésitations and so on.

One of the versions of the story is Passé Simple where he uses only that tense. The usual tense for description is the imperfect, so it is strange to read all that Passé Simple.

Ce fut midi. Les voyageurs montèrent dans l’autobus. On fut serré. Un jeune monsieur porta sur sa tête un chapeau entouré d’une tresse, non d’un ruban. Il eut un long cou. Il se plaignit auprès de son voisin des heurts que celui-ci lui infligea. Dès qu’il aperçut une place libre, il se précipita vers elle et s’y assit.

Je l’aperçus plus tard devant la gare Saint-Lazare. Il se vêtit d’un pardessus et un camarade qui se trouva là lui fit cette remarque: il fallut mettre un bouton supplémentaire.

This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it if you read French, or maybe even if you don’t read French, because it does take that simple tale and tell it over and over again in many different modes, so it is quite educational.

And, speaking of end, here are a couple of trous de culs américains. What they don’t know would fill a number of very large volumes.

Au revoir. À la prochaine.

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A Heterogeneous Assemblage

Posted on March 2, 2013 by J L tagged.

In Australia, the number-one topping for pizza is eggs. In the United States, it’s pepperoni. I like the one in Italy called Caprese, goat cheese and tomatoes.

Fanfaronade: fulsomeness, from Spanish fanfarrón, a word that was probably an imitation of the blaring blowhardedness and braggadocio of bigheaded braggarts.

Stop the presses! Dirty Harry’s last name is Callahan.

Reading too many underground comic books? The name of Jabba the Hutt’s pet spider monkey is Salacious Crumb.

The famous Dragnet theme was actually composed by Miklos Rosza for the 1946 film noir classic The Killers.

The total number of bridge hands is 54 octillion.

General Lew Wallace’s best-seller Ben-Hur was the first work of fiction to be blessed by the Pope.

Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel entitled Lassie Come Home, written by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Eric Knight’s real-life collie Toots.

People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world.

The book of Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention the name of god.

Arnold Schönberg was a triskaidekaphobe. He died thirteen minutes from midnight on Friday the thirteenth.

Tabloids, chronicles and gazettes were what they called newspapers in the 19th century.

The word is WAY older than that: In Irish police stations in the nineteenth century, couples were charged with being Found Under Carnal Knowldege, which the police abbreviated calling it a F.U.C.K. charge.

A sultan’s wife is called a sultana.

The real name for lead poisoning is plumbism.

The word byte is a contraction of “by eight.”

Only words we use now that end in -gry are angry and hungry.

There are solid reasons for both of these facts: Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish more easily than English. Native speakers of English learn Spanish more easily than Japanese.

Give him 2.54 centimeters and he’ll take 91.44 centimeters: 10 October is National Metric Day.

A beverage in China called white tea is simply boiled water.

Ray Kroc bought McDonald’s for $2.7 million in 1961 from the McDonald brothers.

And just why would you want to do that? Beer foam will go down if you lick your finger and then stick it in the beer.

Vegetarians make up four percent of the US population.

Bananas don’t grow on trees. They grow on rhizomes.

Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world. Statements like this drive me crazy, because then I always have to wonder what is the FIRST largest item of international commerce in the world. You don’t know, do you?

Less than three percent of Nestle’s sales are for chocolate.

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma in an emergency.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Rice is grown on more than ten percent of the earth’s surface and is the main food for half of the people of the world.

Salt is the only rock humans can eat.

Playing cards in India are round.

More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.

A flush toilet exists today that dates back to 2,000 BCE.

Most people button their shirts upward. Not me, though.

Totally Hair Barbie is the best-selling Barbie of all time.

The yo-yo originated in the Philippines where it is used for hunting.

The side of a hammer is called a cheek.

The average lead pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long or write approximately fifty thousand English words.

People in China sometimes leave firecrackers around the house as fire alarms.

It takes a plastic container fifty thousand years to start decomposing.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are blood donors.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.

Most burglaries occur in the winter.

Abdul Kassam Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

A golden razor found in King Tut’s tomb was still sharp enough to be used.

In 290 BCE, Aristarchus suggested that the sun was the center of the solar system.

Candidus is Latin for shining white. All office seekers in Rome were obliged to wear a certain white toga for a period of one year before the election. They were said to be candidati and one hopes that they were candid in their speeches, but, well, probably not.

Two dogs were among the Titanic survivors.

Robert E. Lee wore a size 4 1/2 shoe.

Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.

New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, in 1890.

The words of the Japanese national anthem, dating from the ninth century CE are the oldest of any nation’s songs. but the music is from 1880.

Built in 1697, the Frankford Avenue Bridge, which crosses Pennypack Creek in Philadelphia, is the oldest U.S. bridge in continuous use.

Printed on the book that the Statue of Liberty is holding is “July IV, MDCCLXXVI.” The statue’s mouth is three feet wide.

The main library at Indiana University sinks more than an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

The Future’s Museum in Sweden contains a scale model of the solar system. The sun is 105 meters in diameter, and the planets range from five millimeters to six kilometers from the sun. This particular model also contains the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, still to scale, situated in the Museum of Victora, Australia.

The Angel Falls in Venezuela are nearly twenty times taller than Niagra Falls.

All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.

San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments.

The largest object ever found in the Los Angeles sewer system was a motorcycle.

If you bring a raccoon’s head to the Henniker, New Hampshire, town hall, you are entitled to receive ten dollars.

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

I had no idea that I was ever that close to forty-seven czars. Forty-seven czars are buried in the Kremlin which is just across the square from where we stayed when we played in Moscow.

“Czar” is the Russian rendering of “Caesar,” just as Kaiser is the German version. “Kaiser” is very close to the classical Latin pronunciation of “Caesar.”

Says here the Romans originated the practice of giving presents at Christmas, which was known to them as the Saturnalia, but the veneration of the Egyptian god Horus who was born on 25 December and who had twelve days of worship probably included presents too. Horus was born of a virgin and he had twelve apostles.

Sister Boom-Boom was a transvestite nun who ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1982. S/he received more than twenty thousand votes, if you look closely she looks very much like the shemales linked here.

Hmmm. Pope Adrian VI died after a fly got stuck in his throat as he was drinking from a water fountain.

According to the ceremonial customs of Orthodox Judaism, it is officially sundown when you cannot tell the difference between a black thread and a red thread.

Wives and husbands in India who desire children whisper their wish into the ear of a sacred cow.

A third of Taiwanese funeral processions include a stripper.

Not even real foam? NERF, the popular foam children’s toy company, doesn’t actually stand for anything.

Ted Turner owns five percent of New Mexico.

Time to go online. It takes about 63,000 trees to make the newsprint for the average Sunday edition of The New York Times.

The most dangerous job in the United States is sanitation worker. Fire fighters and police officers are a close second and third, followed by leather tanners fourth.

The sale of vodka makes up ten percent of Russian government income.

In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

Vanilla is used to make chocolate.

Sixty percent of big-firm executives say the cover letter is as important as, or more important than, the résumé itself when you are applying for a new job.

John Dillinger played professional baseball.

Anise is the scent on the artificial rabbit that is used in greyhound races.

It takes three thousand cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs.

Nearly all sumo wrestlers have flat feet and big bottoms.

Meteorologists claim they’re right 85% of the time.

Astronauts in orbit around the earth can see the wakes of ships.

A manned rocket can reach the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.

A neutron star has such a powerful gravitational pull that it can spin on its axis in one-thirtieth of a second without tearing itself apart. A pulsar is a neutron star, and it gets its energy from its rotation.

A full moon always rises at sunset.

The first computer ever made was called the ENIAC. A silicon chip a quarter-inch square has the capability of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.

The tail section of an airplane gives the bumpiest ride.

Gold was the first metal to be discovered.

One out of five trees in the world is a Siberian larch.

During the time that the atom bomb was being developed at Alamogordo, New Mexico, applicants for routine jobs like janitors were disqualified if they could read.

All organic compounds contain carbon.

Hydrogen is the most common atom in the universe.

One hundred seven incorrect medical procedures will be performed today.

Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.

The smallest unit of time is the yoctosecond.

A baby blue whale is twenty-five feet long at birth.

The only two mammals to lay eggs are the echidna and the platypus. The mothers nurse their babies through pores in their skin.

In 1859, twenty-four rabbits were released in Australia. Within six years, the population grew to two million.

Human beings and the two-toed sloth are the only land animals that typically mate face to face.

At least one species of lizard is known to reproduce by parthenogenesis.

A dragonfly has a life span of four to seven weeks.

A square mile of fertile earth has thirty-two million earthworms in it.

No wonder they put up the seagull monument. A large swarm of locusts can eat eighty thousand tons of corn in a day.

There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas.

The poison arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.

Marine iguanas, saltwater crocodiles, sea snakes and sea turtles are the only surviving seawater adapted reptiles.

The tuatara lizard of New Zealand only has to breathe once an hour.

A chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body.

Snakes, like cows, cannot activate their vitamin D without the presence of sunlight.

A group of geese on the ground is called a gaggle, but in the air they are called a skein.

A group of goats is called a trip.

A group of hares is called a husk.

Kangaroos in a group are known as a mob.

A tribe of rhinos is called a crash.

A group of toads is called a knot.

A bale of turtles, a clowder of cats, a gam of whales and a streak of tigers.

A parliament of owls.

We’ll see you next week.

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Composing Music

Posted on February 24, 2013 by J L tagged.

I started writing melodies and songs when I was about this age, just as all the other babies do.

Some babies don’t stop singing songs and painting pictures. They remain babies in this sense (and perhaps in other senses as well) all their lives, whether they move onto piano stools or hold an instrument in their hands.

Writing about writing music is strange because we all played music long before we evolved rules for making music.

Art cannot be explained, but technique can, so I’ll talk a bit about the technique of composing music.

First comes rhythm. That happens when your heart starts beating. If I had it all to do over again, I would have played drums for a couple of years right at the beginning, say, when I was six or seven. I bought my own drum kit after reading reviews on websites like Instrumentfind.com and it was one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

If you play guitar, try muting the guitar strings with your fingering hand and and playing all kinds of rhythms with you strumming hand. This way you’ll concentrate on the rhythm alone. When you get something good going, start playing a few notes or chords in that rhythm. Maybe look into getting some dj equipment to mix your sounds together, creating something unique through your music.

Melody is mysterious and sacred. There are rules for writing melodies and they are good, but the best melodies come from somewhere inside you. They are almost like a gift.

Sing it first. You should be able to sing any melody that you write. Melodies should sound inevitable. A melody is like a line in drawing. Very simple but it is the foundation to everything.

Every time I take a long walk, there is a song that goes with me. My feet hit the ground and that is the basic rhythm. Then, a melody comes out of me whether I want it to or not. That is the theme of my walk. This melody is so obsessive that sometimes I want to run away from it, so I do. I invent a second melody. It is worth noting here that fugue means “flight.”

As I walk, I improvise a countermelody that is busier than the first melody. One of these melodies comments on the other, sometimes in a spirited and witty fashion, sometimes plodding along. I hear both melodies together even though I am “writing” them (imagining them) sequentially.

The sound of your feet walking along the ground can be subdivided by two, three, five, six, seven, anything. You don’t have to stick to 4/4 or 3/4. If you’re willing to wait long enough, your feet will beat out an 11/8 tempo, if you want them too. I wrote a song called Godzilla of Love in 11/8 while I was out walking.

The first melody that comes to me on a walk can be derivative, childish, or an outright imitation of someone else’s song, but the counterpoint, the second melody that goes with the first, is more often original, even eccentric, odd, uninhibited, fugacious.

Before the walk is over, I try the counter melody in every style I can think of.

Go ahead, make a melody of ten, twenty notes, I’ll wait. Some rules for melody making: stepwise motion is good with occasional leaps. Mainly, though, just be loose and natural. Don’t worry about whether it’s original or not. That part will take care of itself.

Another rule is to keep the melody human. Try to have the entire range of the melody within a tenth, that is, an octave and a third. You don’t want to write to the extremes of a voice, or any other instrument for that matter. Good to have everyone comfortable. Especially the singer. If the singer or the instruments want to get wild, good, but give them a melody, a coherent, structured frame for their elaborations.

I can sing this range, and probably most people have a range of more than a tenth, but a vocal in a nice, easy compass will often sound the best and most natural. If you are writing for someone else, try to work well within her range, so she is comfortable and happy. Keep it to an octave and a third.

Find out the strengths of your singer and accent her best ideas.

When we started Big Brother, I was playing a lot of Bach and the above composition appealed to me. Herr Bach used this motif (the first five notes) in many places in his music. I put it in G minor and used it as the organizing theme for Summertime, along with an idea I got from Nina Simone about weaving classical lines through a popular tune. (She did it on another Gershwin tune, You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To.)

A friend showed me this minor descending line which I put in the root of the chord and transposed it to G minor and that was the rhythm part for Summertime, all of which worked well with Janis Joplin’s amazingly beautiful voice.

There are melodies everywhere. I was once in a post office in Moscow writing postcards home and people would walk through a gate to get to the back of the counter.

When the rusty gate swung slowly to and fro, its creaking played something like this, a blues melody of maybe six notes, rich in texture because of the wood in the gate. When the gate sung back into its original position, it played the melody backwards.

Once you have the original melody in mind, the second melody can be found intuitively, or by the rules, or by a combination of the two.

There are many rules for setting a second melody against the first, and many people have spent a lifetime organizing, clarifying and understanding these principles which came to be called polyphony or counterpoint.

If the second melody is closely parallel to the first, it is usually called a harmony part. It makes a series of chords with the first melody. Here the voices are moving closely together, mostly in thirds and sixths, which are inverted thirds.

Here the soprano, alto, tenor and bass are moving much more freely in relation to each other.

Here they imitate each other as if they were echoes.

Remember singing Row, Row, Row, Your Boat while the other side of the room sang the same tune but starting when you reached the second line? This is called a round or a catch. It’s a very simple form of counterpoint.

Sophisticated examples of the round are called canons, fugues, inventions.

Finding the second melody to go with the first can be done intuitively, with a great deal of study, or, ideally, intuitively and with study.

In the early jazz groups in New Orleans, everyone in the band played “lead,” that is, each person played a melody, and all the solos worked together beautifully, because the band agreed on the chord changes before they began. The chord changes were the organizing principle. Every body knew the tune and the harmony and they played their variations on the tune all at the same time.

Let’s say you agreed to do a piece of music where the chord changes were C E7 F F#dim C/G A7 D7 G7 with, say, two beats per chord change. Each musician could play a solo in this framework, a solo that took account of these harmonies, and if they all played their solos at the same time, this would be a natural counterpoint, as in early jazz around 1910 in New Orleans. This is a glorious sound, happy and free and more than a little giddy.

In the music of J.S. Bach and Palestrina there are many voices singing different melodies and counterpoint was the technique for learning how to do this, a technique that could take years of delightful study to master. In this style, it seemed as if the different voices moving against each other create the harmony (the chords) as an afterthought rather than having the chords dictate the boundaries of the melody as they do in jazz and rock and roll. It’s a kind of reverse freedom from the New Orleans style.

Sixteenth century polyphony took the same approach as early jazz only backwards. Instead of the chords creating the harmony, the individual voices created the chords. Depends which way you look at it. Vertical or horizontal. You’re looking at the same phenomenon, but vertically or horizonatally? Improvising musicians answer this question more or less subconsciously every time they play. Is the melody line more important or is the chord matrix more important? What will guide the music more, the melody or the harmony?

The difference between harmony and counterpoint is whether you perceive the two or more voices as vertical (harmony) or horizontal (counterpoint).

Monophony, then, is one melody, simple. Homophony is a melody supported by chords, which are, in effect, many voices working in parallel. It is probably homophony that we hear most often, especially when we listen to popular music. Polyphony is two more or less independent melodies played together.

Counterpoint is polyphony, two or more different melodies played at the same time. This is a very potent technique, especially in popular music where it is rare.

One of the first records I owned was by Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. They did a lot of contrapuntal playing, two truly independent melodies played against each other. The effect was beautiful, especially with a baritone saxophone and a trumpet with such different ranges and textures.

King Oliver hired a very young Louis Armstrong for his group and they did a lot of playing in thirds, incredibly swift playing. They also played counterpoint when they soloed together.

So, then, the idea is come up with a beautiful easy to sing melody and then set another melody against it.

An often used approach is to make the first main melody a soprano part and then to put the the counter melody in the bass.

Then the idea is to thicken each melody part with “inside” harmonies for the alto and tenor voices.

In a symphony orchestra, this will often mean that the violins have the first melody, the basses, way down below, the second, and other instruments will fill out the space between, but, of course, any combination of instruments can perform any of these functions. This is a matter of arranging and orchestration.

Say you have this chord (C, E, Bb, D# and Gb), a C7b5#9 chord: In the strings, this could be the bass viol playing C, the ‘cello playing E, the viola playing Bb, second violin playing D# and the first violin playing a Gb. Any family of instruments, the strings, the woodwinds, the brass can play this set of tones, or all of them could play it. Who plays what is called orchestration. How they play it and where they pass it off to another family of instruments in the orchestra could be called arranging. All of this together is composing for a large group of musicians, an orchestra.

Explore the rhythms. Try a lot of different times for the melodies, 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 6/8, 5/4.

Begin the meldoy right on beat one, then try it entering before the first beat, then try beginning it in the middle of the measure. Where the melody enters can make a big difference.

Let’s say you have a decent melody played by a soprano instrument, and, then, for the basses, you have a good counter melody. Now, you have to give the inside voices something decent to play. This can be a challenge.

You want to enrich the lives of second violinists, viola players, and second chairs everywhere, by writing some fun things in the middle, that won’t, however, upstage the soprano melody and the other idea in the bass.

It’s a good idea to know how to play every instrument, at least a little, and that way you will be acquainted with each player’s strengths and weaknesses.

There are families of instruments, often with the same fingerings, but in different sizes, so this puts them in different keys.

The violin is the soprano string instrument, agile, capable of playing quick passages and she often carries the melody.

The violin’s range is four octaves, although it might be good at first not to use the top octave.

Stay in this three octave range at first. The violin player can use natural and artificial harmonics, and these are fun to write and play.

The viola is the alto voice of the strings and, indeed, music for the viola is written in the alto clef. Artificial and natural harmonics are available for all stringed instruments.

That bottom note is sound of the third fret, fifth string of the guitar, an octave below middle C.

The ‘cello is the tenor voice of the strings. The name ‘cello is an abbreviated form of violoncello. This is an expressive and beautiful instrument.

The guitar and the trombone are also tenor instruments and are quite close in range to the ‘cello.

A ‘cellist learns to read three clefs and so does someone who writes music for her.

The double bass (bass viol, string bass, upright bass, bass fiddle, doghouse bass, contrabass, standup bass, bull fiddle) is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2. The double bass is a standard member of the string section of the orchestra and smaller string ensembles.

Notice that the bass strings are the same as the four lowest strings of the guitar (E,A,D,G) but an octave lower. The guitar is a transposing instrument in that its music is written an octave higher than it actually sounds. The bass range sounds an octave lower than it is written.

Thus, the string family has its soprano, alto, tenor and bass instruments.

Most of the other instrument families in the orchestra have their separate ranges also.

Many of these are transposing instruments because of their different sizes. When they play their C, it is not the C that a piano plays. When the Eb alto saxophone plays a C, the sound you hear is Eb. This is because people wanted to keep the same names for the same fingerings on instruments of different sizes.

The guitar is an instrument ‘in C,’ that is, when it plays a C, that C sounds the same as the piano C. It’s a “real” C. In my first band, I had two saxophone players, an alto and a tenor. One of the first questions they asked me was, “What key is the guitar in?” This was a very surprising question to me, so I answered, “I don’t know, it must be in E, because there are a lot of Es on it.” After some going back and forth, we realized that the guitar is a concert instrument and thus in C.

When the guitar plays a C, that is a real C, but the guitar is a transposing instrument in that the music for it is written an octave higher than it sounds.

The best place to see a few members of the guitar family is in a mariachi band. I see a requinto, a guitarrón and of course a tenor guitar, which is the main one we know.

This is a charango from Bolivia.

The charango has several tunings or afinaciones. (Afinado is in tune. Desafinado is out of tune.)

When I was 18, I played a silver Eb clarinet, which has always been used in military bands, but was brought into the concert orchestra at the beginning of the 20th cenntury. Berlioz was probably the first to use it. Schoenberg, Varèse and Berg also wrote for the Eb clarinet, which has a hard, biting quality.

The Eb clarinet is written a minor third lower than it sounds.

I have played in a few clarinet ensembles and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The clarinet has a large range and sounds beautiful in its lower (chalumeau) register which is woody and rich, and, in fact, sounds quite a bit like that old gate in the post office in Moscow.

I once played the bass clarinet in a wind ensemble as a kind of a stand in for the basset horn on a Mozart piece.

This was actually the music that Salieri was somewhat unethically perusing in Amadeus. when Mozart’s wife Costanze was delightedly eating the tettarelle di Venere that Salieri had offered her as a bribe.

Tettarelle di Venere means tits of Venus and they must have been delicious because Stanzi was completely distracted.

The bass clarinet is written in the treble clef a major 9th higher than it sounds, and it is a strong bass in the woodwind group. The lower octave is full and rich and the bass clarinet is often used as a solo instrument. It can be doubled with the ‘cello or bass to provide strong clarity to a bass line.

The flute in C needs to have a nice quiet background for its lower and middle registers.

However, the high register is strong, clear and brilliant.

The alto flute is the next extension downward of the C flute after the flûte d’amour. It is characterized by its distinct, mellow tone in the lower portion of its range. It is a transposing instrument in G and, like the piccolo and bass flute, uses the same fingerings as the C flute. The tube of the alto flute is considerably thicker and longer than a C flute and requires more breath from the player. This gives it a greater dynamic presence in the bottom octave and a half of its range.

The high register of the alto flute is not really needed, but the low register has a better quality than the regular C flute.

The oboe, a double reed instrument of the woodwind family, is a descendant of the medieval shawm, which sounded remarkably similar. Oboes are the sopranos of the woodwind family and are a double reed instrument made from a wooden tube roughly 60 cm long, with metal keys, a conical bore and flared bell. The oboe sound is produced by blowing into the (double) reed and vibrating a column of air. The sound is piercing and otherworldly. The oboe was called the hautbois (haut [“high, loud”] and bois [“wood, woodwind”]) in the time of Händel, and this is still the best name for it. Before the advent of electrictronic devices, the oboe was the one who gave the A to the orchestra for tuning.

The oboe is a melody instrument and doesn’t sound well playing inner voices of chords, because it has that penetrating, individual voice. The best range for the oboe melody is a D below the staff to a Bb a line above. Don’t give the oboist a lot to do. The player has to breathe more often than those who play other instruments, probably because s/he is blowing into that double reed.

The English horn (cor anglais) is a large oboe used mainly for expressive solo passages.

The lower octave and a half of the English horn sounds the best and it goes well with violas, ‘celli and the lower clarinets.

This is a double reed instrument. The music is written in the bass clef except for very high notes which are written in the tenor.

The bassoon is the bass of the woodwind family but it is a good melody instrument which almost always makes me feel giggly for some reason. I love the sound.

Bassoons and clarinets are a good blend. Two bassoons and two French horns sound good also. All three registers, low, middle and upper, are good.

Contrabassoon is very low like the bass viol and it sounds an octave lower than written.

The main function of the contrabassoon is to strengthen the bass line.

The point here is that the contrabassoon needs a simple part with plenty of rests. The best use is for ensemble playing.

There are many kinds of trumpets in many different keys, but the one most used today is in Bb.

Double and triple tonguing are not difficult for the trumpets, but don’t have them do it for a long time.

Music for trumpet is written one step higher than it actually sounds.

The trombone is also in Bb and it is a tenor instrument.

Music for the trombone is written mostly in the bass clef and sounds as written.

If you’re going to write music for the trombone, it might be a good idea to play the instrument yourself or to have a friend who does because there are places where it is not good to write wide skips into and out of (like the 7th position, for example, especially from there into the 1st position).

Three trombones sound well as a unit.

The bass trombone in G is notated in the bass clef and sounds as written.

As the name indicates, humans originally used to blow on the actual horns of animals before starting to emulate them in metal.

This original usage is still retained in the Shofar, ram’s horn, which has an important role in Jewish religious ritual.

Early metal horns were less complex than modern horns, consisting of brass tubes with a slightly flared opening (the bell) wound around a few times. These early “hunting” horns were originally played on a hunt, often while mounted, and the sound they produced was called a recheat. Change of pitch was effected entirely by the lips (the horn not being equipped with valves until the 19th century). Without valves, only the notes within the harmonic series are available. The horn was used, among other reasons, to call hounds on a hunt and created a sound most like a human voice, but carried much farther.

The horn (also known as the corno and French horn) is a brass instrument made of about 12–13 feet (3.7–4.0 m) of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player (or less frequently, a hornist). In informal use, “horn” refers to nearly any wind instrument with a flared exit for the sound.

Descended from the natural horn, the instrument is often informally known as a Horn in F or French horn. However, this is technically incorrect since the instrument is not French in origin, but German.

Therefore, the International Horn Society has recommended since 1971 that the instrument be simply called the horn. French horn is still the most commonly used name for the instrument in the United States.

Pitch is controlled through the adjustment of lip tension in the mouthpiece and the operation of valves by the left hand, which route the air into extra tubing. Most horns have lever-operated rotary valves, but some, especially older horns, use piston valves (similar to a trumpet’s) and the Vienna horn uses double-piston valves, or pumpenvalves.

A horn without valves is known as a natural horn, changing pitch along the natural harmonics of the instrument or by actually building new sections, called crooks, into the instrument. As you might imagine this is a very slow process and is usually done at the beginning of the piece, or during longish interludes.

Three valves control the flow of air in the single horn, which is tuned to F or less commonly B?. The more common double horn has a fourth valve, usually operated by the thumb, which routes the air to one set of tubing tuned to F or another tuned to B?.

Triple horns with five valves are also made, tuned in F, B?, and a descant E? or F. Also common are descant doubles, which typically provide B? and Alto F branches. This configuration provides a high-range horn while avoiding the additional complexity and weight of a triple.

The bass clef is used for the lower register of the horn and the treble clef for the upper.

These instruments fall into the soprano, alto, tenor and bass ranges. They can be the voices for chords and those chords can change in harmony.

For hundreds of years, in the era of what is known as common practice (1600-1900 CE), chords in music tended to move in fourths and fifths.

That is, if you were dealing with a C chord, the most likely place it was going was to an F chord. In the key of C, here is a very well traveled road of harmony: C F Bdim Em Am Dm G7 C. You see? This is up four notes (or down five notes) every chord change. This is still a very strong pull in music. It’s called the circle of fifths. Much miusic is still being written with these chord changes up four notes or down five. This motion is usually taught in chapter one of the harmony books.

For three hundred years or so, chords tended to move COUNTERclockwise around this circle. They still very often move in this motion.

Then came the twentieth century and chords started to go anywhere they wanted. C could go to C# and then to D#. C could go to F#, an interval that was called diabolus in musica (the devil in music) for centuries. In Big Brother we do a song called It’s Cool that uses C to F# as an organizing principle.

The world grew smaller because of radio and recording and we all heard non Western music that sometimes seemed to have no chords, or chords that didn’t move in a circle of fifths at all.

The piano with its ease of playing, say, a C13#5b9 chord gave way to the guitar which was much more comfortable with a basic C chord or a C7 chord, and because this chord was simple, it had a power that the more complicated harmony did not. Most painters will tell you that a primary color will have an impact that eludes a blended hue. Both primary and blended have their place, of course, but by 1900 in classical (serious) music and by 1960 in popular music a need was felt for simple, basic harmonies. So in simple terms, piano sheet music paved the way for new harmonies and tunes to emerge.

Chords began to be built in fourths and fifths rather than in thirds.

Because we were listening to folk music and folk blues, we began to think modally. In the song Down On Me, the chord changes are D C G A, which has nothing to do with the circle of fifths, and the “dominant” chord in this progression, which would have been A not so long ago, was now C.

We began to hear and play songs like this. Here, as in Down On Me, the “dominant” chord, instead of being an A7, as it was for Mozart, is a C chord.

Harmonies (chord progressions) became extremely simple or nonexistent. This is almost a basso ostinato (obstinate bass) part in that the bass plays the same figure for a long time. We began to play long pieces, such as Hall of the Mountain King that had one chord, E minor, or, really, E modal. Over this E sound, we would play a melody in any scale, really, but very often in something like E F G A B C D E. In classical harmony this would be a Phrygian mode, but we didn’t think of it that way, and would just as often play a G# as a G natural or a Bb instead of a B natural. This was not planned, but instinctively felt.

Bass lines rather than guitar/piano chords began to organize such ideas as G Bb C G Bb Db C G Bb C Bb G G.

This progression, which seemed to be in every other song in the 1950s, and now too, fell out of use in the 1960s. When I was eighteen, I called these chords The Fabulous Four although I thought of them as C A minor F and G. Doo Wop chords.

In the 60s, we were just as likely, more likely, to play these which we would have called C Ab Bb F .

These harmonies aren’t based on the major scale as C A minor F and G are. They are modal or based on minor (Aeolian, Phrygian, Mixolydian) modes.

Recognize this? Definitely mixolydian mode. Dumbed down a little bit for the beginner. For a long time, every guitar player knew this riff.

This song by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer (Jack Hammer?) used the minor and major modes together.

Often there was no third at all in the rhythm parts which often sounded like a jack hammer.

The bridge (what the Beatles called the “middle”) of the tunes often went into a different time signature.

We could look into this further, but it might be time to make up some music of your own.

Try something different.

Thank you for being here and I’ll see you next week.

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Clerisy Heresy

Posted on February 17, 2013 by J L tagged.

Clerisy: German clerisei Latin clericia Educated people as a group, scholars.

“After the Revolution, a learned body, or clerisy as such, gradually disappeared.” Samuel Coleridge 1834

Nova is new and no va is “it doesn’t go,” so you might want a Nova but you don’t want it to no va. This is not a trivial consideration if you are trying to sell cars in South America.

Because of snowfall, for a few weeks each year K-2 is taller than Mount Everest.

The D in D-day stands for “day.” The French for D-day is J-jour. Peter Albin was born on D-day.

The earliest document in Latin in a woman’s handwriting is an invitation to a birthday party from the first century CE. This was found in either Hadrian’s or Antonine’s wall, I can’t remember which. Hadrian’s, I think.

The most common given name in the world is Mohammed.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61%. You ever get the feeling that they just make these statistics up as they go along?

The McDonald’s at the Skydome in Toronto is the only one in the world that sells hot dogs.

Canadians don’t pronounce the second ‘t’ in Toronto. This is one of the tests they use in spy movies.

The citrus soda 7-Up was created in 1929. 7 was selected because the original containers held seven ounces. “Up” told you which way the bubbles go.

In Denmark, they found out that Carlsberg lager tastes best at 510 to 520 cycles per second. Let’s see, A is 440, so that would make it… hmmm, let me think about that.

Australian chemist John Macadamia discovered the Macadamia nut, probably because he was one.

Awww, no, really? Eating raw onions is good for unblocking a stuffed nose.

Pomology is the study of fruit. Once in Ravenna, I wanted to ask for the red fruit behind the counter and said, “Poma?” ”Mela,” she said, not unkindly. Well, it’s pomme in French.

Adam and Eve might have eaten an apricot. More plentiful there near Baghdad where they lived.

Somebody alert the Who: There are more brown M&Ms in plain M&Ms than in peanut M&Ms.

Two million different combinations of sandwiches can be created from a Subway menu. I stick with one, Veggie Delight, or whatever you call it. Elise and I split a foot long, and make of that what you will. Lots of mayonnaise and mustard on whole wheat.

Jung and easily Freudened: Fortune cookies were invented in America by Charles Jung in 1918.

An army travels on its stomach: Almost 425, 000 hot dogs and buns and 160,000 hamburgers and cheeseburgers were served at Woodstock ’99.

Passing wind? Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

My friend Andrew Perrins should know this: Worcestershire sauce is basically anchovy ketchup.

Because it feels so good when I stop: In every deck of cards, the King of Hearts is sticking his sword through his head. That’s why he is often called the Suicide King.

Beats the hell out of In God We Trust: A penny made in 1727 was the first to bear the words United States of America. It was also inscribed “Mind your own business.”

Also dicey for doing business in South America… Colgate in Spanish means “go hang yourself.”

Something to remember when you’re tuning your alto saxophone: Most toilets flush in Eb.

Jeans were named after Genova, Italia, and denims were named after de Nîmes. And we in Big Brother and the Holding Company just did interviews at our old house in Lagunitas, which is now owned by the very gracious heirs to the everybody wearing copper studded trousers enterprise.

If done perfectly, any Rubik’s Cube combination can be solved in seventeen turns.

Camera shutter speed B stands for “bulb.”

Oops! The Ramses brand condom is named after the great Pharaoh Ramses II, who fathered more than 160 children.

I must be in the other 32%: According to a market research survey, 68% of consumers who receive junk mail actually open the envelopes.

I am so sorry to see her go: In Alaska, it is illegal to shoot at a moose from the window of an airplane or other flying vehicle.

The Midwaste: In Indiana, it is illegal to ride on any public transportation for at least thirty minutes after eating garlic.

Well, who says they’re wrong? Sumerians thought that the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.

The things that happen in Okinawa: In 1281, the Mongol army of Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan but they were ravaged by a hurricane/typhoon that destroyed their fleet. This typhoon was called “divine wind,” (KamiKaze) by the Japanese.

So much for malpractice suits: Surgeons in ancient Egypt who lost a patient during an operation had their hands cut off.

What about bees? Romans believed that birds mated on 14 February.

Hey, mama was American: Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

People in their 20s are going to ask, what is that? Kotex were first manufactured as bandages during World War II.

So, THAT’S why: When the Titanic sank, there were seventy-five hundred pounds of ham onboard.

Robert E. Lee was the only person to be graduated from West Point without a single demerit.

They made them way before that: Evidence of shoemaking exists as early as 10,000 BCE.

Los flamencos: The Spanish Inquisition once condemned the entire Netherlands to death for heresy.

So, why is there no Saint Euripides? Euripides was the first person on record to denounce slavery.

Taphyphobia, fear of the tomb, all the Victorians had it. The fear of being buried alive. This was the reason for the graveyard shift. They wanted to make sure someone was there all the time… just in case.

Makes me think of my mother: Het Wilhelmus, the national anthem of the Netherlands, is an acrostichon, the first letters of each of the fifteen verses represent the name Willem Van Nassov. The Netherlands and the United States both have anthems that do not mention their countries’ names.

The highest motorway in England is the M62 Liverpool to Hull. It reaches 1,221 feet above sea level over the Saddleworth Moor.

We’ll see: The Hoover Dam was built to last two thousand years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another five hundred years.

Now, if we could only get Sarah to do that: The University of Alaska stretches across four time zones.

And the town of Blaine has five letters. Think about that: If you divide the Great Pyramid’s perimeter by two times its height, you get pi to the fifteenth digit.

Sigh of Relief department: Three Mile Island is only 2.5 miles long.

America, fuck yeah! Central Park is nearly twice the size of Monaco.

Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.

If you lived in a monastery, these hours would be important to you: matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers and compline.

Oh, yeah? There’s one in Italy that has a vial of the Blessed Mother’s milk: A temple in Sri Lanka is dedicated to one of the Buddha’s teeth.

Ain’t life grand? The three most valuable brand names on earth are Marlboro, Coca-Cola and Budweiser.

You sure it’s not more? What about Congress? Organized crime is estimated to account for 10% of the United States’ national income.

Baseball’s home plate is seventeen inches wide.

Soccer is played in more countries than any other sport.

You have a better idea? Ben Hogan’s reply to a question about how to improve one’s game: Hit the ball closer to the hole.

Boxing rings used to be round.

A hockey puck is one inch thick.

Oh, come on, you can do better than that. The only bone not broken so far during any ski accident is the one located in the inner ear.

Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors, and they were probably left handed since he was.

Something I’ve always wondered about… An inch of snow falling evenly on one acre of ground equals about 2,715 gallons of water.

You’d think that would damage his space suit. Buzz Aldrin was the first man to pee his pants on the moon.

You can add this to that 55 limit: Earth is traveling through space at 660,000 miles per hour.

They are seriously underestimating the singularity: Experts at Intel say that microprocessor speed will double every eighteen months for at least ten years.

Vegetarian alert: The Venus Flytrap can eat a whole cheeseburger.

It takes one fifteen to twenty year old tree to produce seven hundred paper grocery bags.

The electron is the fastest thing in the world. That’s what the U.S. Bureau of Standards says anyway.

Iron nails cannot be used in oak because the acid in the wood corrodes them.

A jiffy is an actual unit of time: 1/100th of a second.

A baby bat is called a pup.

Every single hamster in the United States comes from a single litter captured in Syria in 1930.

The male fox mates for life and if the female dies he remains single for the rest of his life.

The female fox, however, is differently constructed. If her mate dies, she finds a new one.

Eighty percent of the creatures on this planet have six legs.

The male gypsy moth can smell the virgin female gypsy moth from eight miles away.

Mosquitos are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.

Toads don’t have teeth, but frogs do.

A newly hatched crocodile is three times as large as the egg from which it has emerged.

Snakes can digest bones and teeth, but not fur or hair.

A group of finches is called a charm, and right now there is a charm outside my window.

Difficult for a pig to see a charm of finches. It is physically impossible for swine to look up at the sky.

Dinosaurs lived on earth seventy-five times longer than humans have so far.

The Latin name for moose is alces alces.

That cat around your house can hold her tail vertical while she walks, but wild cats can’t.

The killer whale isn’t a whale at all. It’s the largest member of the dolphin family.

Priorities: The eyes of some birds weigh more than their brains, and their feathers can weigh more than their bones.

The male bellbird of Central and South America makes a clanging sound like a bell which can be heard from miles away. The loudest bird in the world.

Albatrosses can sleep even when they’re flying.

The great horned owl can turn its head 270 degrees.

There are more species of fish than mammals, reptiles and birds combined.

Tuna swim nine miles an hour forever, really. They never stop because if they stop they suffocate. They need water moving past their gills. A fifteen year old tuna has probably traveled a million miles in her lifetime.

Dolphins jump out of the water to conserve energy. Easier moving through air than water.

A shark doesn’t even have to be born to be dangerous. An ichthyologist was bitten by a sand tiger shark embryo while he was examining its pregnant mother.

Makes sense: A male sea lion can have more than one hundred wives and often goes months without sleeping.

There is no record of a nonrabid wolf attack on a human.

A male Indian elephant waits until he’s twenty-one before he starts fooling around with a female elephant.

That part of the horse’s foot between the fetlock and the hoof is called the pastern.

Know what a geep is? A cross between a goat and a sheep.

Camel’s milk does not curdle.

An armadillo can walk underwater.

What’s the definition of an optimist? A guitar player with a mortgage.

How do you make a chain saw sound like an electric guitar? Add vibrato. (That’s a D chord, by the way. They must be going to the bridge.)

Americans spend more than $5.4 billion on their pets each year. That can’t be true. We spend more than that at our house alone.

Cows in India have a Bill of Rights.

Hope the air conditioner works. It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.

Hey, I just did that. Two out of five husbands tell their wives daily that they love them.

Sweden has the least number of murders annually.

Sadistics, I mean, statistics: More than 50% of Americans believe in the devil, and about 5% claim to have talked to her personally.

It wasn’t for me: the safest age of life is ten years old.

22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank account in the next hour.

George Washington had to borrow money to go to his own inauguration.

Senator Eagleton alert: Abraham Lincoln had a nervous breakdown in 1836.

Gerald Ford was once a male model.

Mutti, ich bin zuhause! Ronald Reagan once wore a Nazi uniform while acting in a film.

Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico with an ice pick.

Louis XIV bathed once a year, whether he needed it or not, and he had a thousand wigs, including a special “tubby wig” for bath time. No, no, I just made that up.

Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.

All of Queen Anne’s seventeen children died before she did.

Van Gogh did it to his left ear. His Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear shows the right one bandaged because he was looking in a mirror to do the painting.

Napoleon did his battle planning in a sandbox and he was afraid of cats, who were probably doing some sandbox planning of their own.

Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula. We saw these beautiful islands when we traveled to Mostar in Bosnia.

Louis Armstrong and Telly Savalas died on their birthdays.

Roseanne Barr used to be the opening act for Julio Iglesias.

That’s because they practiced: The Beatles performed their first U.S. concert at Carnegie Hall.

Gandhi took dance and music lessons in his late teens.

The song “I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-O, Beat-O Flat-On-My-Seat-O, Hirohito Blues” was written by Hoagy Carmichael.

The tango originated as a dance between two men for partnering practice.

Samuel Beckett’s play Breath was first performed in April 1970. The play lasts thirty seconds and has no actors or dialogue.

And who better? Cheryl Ladd played both the singing and talking voice of Josie in the 1970s Saturday morning cartoon Josie and the Pussycats.

Mickey Mouse is a Scorpio.

The second unit films movie shots that do not require the presence of actors.

OK, well, all right, then, see you next week.

I was not at Woodstock, but I might as well have been since I wouldn’t have remembered it anyway.

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Names

Posted on February 10, 2013 by J L tagged.

Names are fascinating. They are capsules of history and drama. Everyone has a name and every name has a meaning. Some names have many meanings. If you’re interested, you can even find your surname meaning at sites like genealogybank.com.

You will notice, in the meanings of the names below, that the phrasing sounds Native American. That is because Yankees, confronted by unpronounceable Native American names, translated almost all of them, and so the nomenclature sounds very basic, but all names sound very basic when translated.

To the Romans, this man would be Nero Falco. We dont know how his name sounded to his own people. The settlers called him Black Hawk, which is English for Nero Falco. Hear God Man sounds Native American, doesnt it? Its Sam Andrew. How about Rock River Lake Color? Thats Ishikawa Akane, a Japanese name. Wolfway LoveGod? Wolfgang Amadeus. Pedro Aguilar is rock eagle, and so it goes.

Lee is the most frequently heard family name (surname) on Earth, because it is very common in China (where it is the second most popular name) and also well known in the West (Robert E. Lee), although Lee East and Lee West have different meanings.

If someone says, Its just a name, meaning its just a sound, s/he hasnt considered the matter enough. A name is never just a name.

Li (?)

The word name comes from Old English nama; related to Old High German and Sanskrit ????? (naamas), Latin nomen, and Greek ????? (onoma), possibly from the Proto Indo European (PIE) *nomn.

Adam Hebrew: ????? Arabic: ???

In the Old Testament, the names of individuals are meaningful, just as they are everywhere else. Adam is named after the earth (Adamah) from which he was created, and his name has come to mean man in the Semitic languages.

Arabic: ??????? ?Ibr?h?m Abraham

A change of name indicates a change of status. For example, the patriarch Abram and his wife Sarai were renamed Abraham and Sarah when they were told they would be the father and mother of many nations (Genesis 17:4, 17:15). Simon was renamed Peter when he was given the Keys of Heaven (Matthew 16). Saul became Paul on his way to lawyering for Christ.

Solomon meant peace, and the king with that name was the first whose reign was without warfare.

Jews in the Torah did not have surnames which were passed from generation to generation but instead used patronymics, that is, they were typically known as the child of their father. For example: ??? ?? ??? (David ben Yishay) meaning, David son of Jesse. Sons used their fathers first names as their own surnames, as is still done by most Muslims today. The ben in Jewish names is replaced by bin or ibn for Muslim males, binte, binti or ibnu for females. Sometimes names include Al-, Ali-, -allah, -lah/-llah or -ullah meaning a servant to God or Gods servant.

Onomastics is the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. The word is from Greek: ??????????? (onomastikos), of or belonging to naming from ?????, name. Toponymy or toponomastics, the study of place names, is one of the principal branches of onomastics. Anthroponomastics is the study of personal names.

Japanese names (?????? nihonjin no shimei) consist of the surname, followed by a given name. Middle names are not generally used. The name above is Yamada Taro. Yamada is the surname (family name) and the four characters mean mountain rice field great son, although Japanese dont think of the meaning of the name that way, just as we do not think of the meanings of John and Smith when we say John Smith.

Japanese names are usually written in kanji, as they are here. There are usually, but not always, two characters for the surname which comes first and two characters for the given name.

Japanese names are often written in kanji, which are characters of Chinese origin. The kanji for a name may have a variety of possible Japanese pronunciations, but parents might use one of the other writing systems such as hiragana or katakana, or even romaji, our alphabet, when giving a birth name to their newborn child.

???

Male names often end in -r? (? son, but also ? clear, bright; e.g. Ichiro) or -ta (? great, thick; e.g. Kenta), or contain ichi (? first [son]; e.g. Kenichi), kazu (also written with ? first [son], along with several other possible characters; e.g. Kazuhiro), ji (? second [son] or ? next; e.g. Jiro), or dai (? great, large; e.g. Daiichi).

The female name Akane (???, ???) is the Japanese word for madder (?, Akane, Rubia cordifloria) and is associated with red (from the red dye made from its roots). I love to use this color when I paint.

Female names often end in -ko (? child Aiko) or -mi (? beauty; e.g. Yumi), although many modern Japanese women no longer use -ko which they see as a diminution.

Other popular endings for female names include -ka (? scent, perfume or ? flower; e.g. Reika) and -na (?, or ?, meaning greens; e.g. Haruna).

Abigails name means my father is joy (Hebrew) ??????????

Adina: ???????? (adina) slender, delicate

Aguilar: El apellido Aguilar proviene de la palabra con que se designa al αguila. Aguilar comes from a word that means eagle.

Tiene el mismo origen que Aguiar. Maybe Aguiar came first. At any rate, both from aquila, Latin, eagle.

Albert: From the Germanic name Adalbert, which was composed of adal noble and beraht bright. The Normans introduced it into England, where it replaced its near Anglo Saxon relative Ζπelbeorht.

Albin: Le prιnom ancien Albinus est inspirι du terme latin albus qui signifie blanc. Aubin (the same name as Albin) fut un prιnom assez rιpandu dans la France rurale davant la Rιvolution. Il est ensuite devenu rare mais a retrouvι vie depuis les annιes 1980. Albin comes from albus white and is also from and related to Albanus, Alban.

Alexander: ?????????? defending men from Greek ????? (alexo) to defend, help and ???? (aner) man (genitive ??????).

Alfred: alf supernatural being elf rad, red wise, counsel (Rathaus Ratskeller). The Rathaus is the central building in every German town and is the city hall. The Ratskeller is down in the basement (cellar) where food and drink are served. The red in Alfred is the same as rat, rad, red. Reden is speak. Kein Wort reden. Dont say a word.

Allen: Variants are Allen, Alain. In Breton, Alan is a colloquial term for a fox and may originally have meant deer, making it cognate with Old Welsh alan. The Irish form of the name may be a diminutive of a word meaning rock. For example, the modern Irish ailνn means little rock. The Alans were an Indo Iranian people who lived north of the Caucasus Mountains in what is today Russia. According to historian Bernard Bachrach, the Alans settled in parts of what is today France, including Brittany, in the early Middle Ages.

Alma: Latin almus, which means kind, fostering, or nourishing, most familiar from its use in the term alma mater which means fostering mother. Alma in Spanish is soul, and it is one of those words like programa, artista, mano, which are contrary to rules of gender. El alma, el dia, el programa, el artista, la mano. These are tricky for the beginning Spanish learner. In French, la main. This is because manuus in Latin is a fourth declension feminine noun. It looks masculine, but its feminine. Also la mano in Italian.

Alvin, Alvina: elf friend; noble friend. From the elements aelf meaning elf, supernatural being + aethel meaning noble, honorable + wine meaning friend. The first name is derived from both the old forms Aelfwine (Old English) and Aethelwine (Old English), which gave rise to the forms Alwin or Alewyn after the Norman Conquest.

Andrew: (Greek) man ???????, which was derived from ???? (aner) man (genitive ?????? andros of a man). Andrew was the first apostle mentioned in the New Testament. He was the brother of Peter. Both of these names are Greek, and Andrews real Aramaic name is not known.

The surname Andrew was one of the earliest settler names in America, Anthony Andrew being recorded in the first listings for the state of Virginia in 1623. The very first recorded spelling of the family name anywhere, is probably that of William Andreu, which was dated 1237, in the ancient charters of the county of Buckinghamshire, England, in the year 1237.

Anna: Form of Channah Hannah

Anthea: feminine form of Antaeus, son of Poseidon. Can also be derived from the Greek for flowery blossom, as my friend Anthea wrote: Greek literal meaning flowering.. to flower.. ?????, ?????, ???????, ????? a goddess AnThea flowering goddess?

Antea is the Italian version of Anthea.

Anthony: Marcus Antonius, the general (Shakespeares Marc Antony), said that his name came from Anthon, son of Hercules.

Antonia: Derived from the Latin Antonius, an old Roman family name of unknown etymology, probably dating from the Etruscans. origin of the name was Anthon, son of Hercules.

ossibly m

Aristotle: ??????????? excellent purpose. Derived from aristos meaning best, excellent ; telos meaning purpose.

Arnold: Old High German Arenwald, having the strength of an eagle, from arn eagle + wald power. The phrase Oy gewald is related to this name. Hφhere gewald is Yiddish for an act of providence.

Arthur: could be derived from the Roman nomen gentile Artorius, possibly of Etruscan origin. King Arthurs name only appears as Arthur, or Arturus, in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Art?rius (although Classical Latin Art?rius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects).

Arthur could also be derived from a Brittonic patronym *Arto-r?g-ios (the root of which, *arto-r?g- bear-king is to be found in the Old Irish personal name Art-ri) via a Latinized form Art?rius.

Yet another possible etymology of Arthur could be from the Latin Arcturus, Greek ?????????, the brightest star in the constellation Boφtes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear, ultimately from ?????? (arktos), bear + ????? (ouros), watcher, guardian.

Barak: ?????? (Hebrew) lightning

Barbara: ???????? foreign She is the patron of architects, geologists, stonemasons and artillerymen. The Greeks thought that non Greeks sounded as if they were saying bar bar over and over, so they called them ????????.

Barry: English form of the Irish names Bareth (short for Fionnbharrth), de Barra, Barrath, Barenth, Barold, Bearrach or Finbarr. The Irish meaning is spear. Also, a nickname for Bartholemew, Baruch.

Bartholemew: ???????????? Greek form of an Aramaic name Talmai meaning son of. In the New Testament Bartholomew is the byname of an apostle also known as Nathaniel.

Benjamin: The Hebrew word (ben) son, and the Hebrew noun (yamin), meaning right hand or right side, but with many connotations. The right hand was seen as the seat of ones power. When facing east, the right hand is on the south, so Yemen means Southland. The name Benjamin means Son Of The Right Hand (meaning, Son Of Strength; Son Of The South).

Berg: Mountain From Middle English bergh, berg, from Old English berg, beorg (mountain, hill), from Proto-Germanic *berghaz, from Proto-Indo-European *b?erg? (height). Cognate with Dutch berg, German Berg, Swedish berg, and Russian ????? (bιreg).

Bjorn: Bear From Old Norse bj?rn (bear), from Proto-Germanic *bernuz, northern form of Proto-Germanic *berτ, probably from Proto-Indo-European *b?er- (brown, shining).

Bridget: Celtic/Irish from the noun brνgh, meaning power, strength, vigor, virtue. There was a tribe in England/Ireland called the Brigantes and Bridget is thought to come from this name also. The name was so popular for Irish girls that Biddy (nickname for Bridget) was used as a slang term for an Irish girl in English speaking countries. I have often heard old biddy but did not realize that it was Bridget or even Irish.

Bruce: Norman surname, which originated in Britain with Robert de Bruis, a baron listed in the Domesday Book. His son, a friend of David I, king of Scotland, was granted by that king the lordship of Annandale (1124), and Davids son, Robert, founded the Scottish House of Bruce.

Bullis: (Cambridgeshire): Middle English bulehus bull house, from bul(l)e, bol(l)e bull + h(o)us house. Latvian: nickname or metonymic occupational name from bullis bull.

Burkhardt The name is first found in Swabia (Burkhard, Burkhart, Burckhardt, Burket and Burkett): from an Indo European root bhergh (high) hill and hill-fort and descendant words relating to city. Burg (city in Old Saxon, Old High German and Old French) evolved into borough. This word is present in such names as Barrow, Strasbourg, Statesboro and Freiburg. A caution here: burg is city and berg is mountain. They are easily confused. The second Indo European element in Burkhardt is kar (hard, hardy, bold, strong). In German, this element is often spelled hart, hard, hardt. Thus, Burkhardt can mean a citadel on a hill, or a strong inhabitant of a hill city. Remember the Martin Luther hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, which was often reworked by J.S. Bach? In German this is Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.

Carla: from the Old English ceorl meaning man, freeman in turn from Hari army, warrior. The Indo European root is *karlaz meaning free man.

Carmi: ???????? vine (Hebrew) This is the English form of Hebrew karmiy, a vinedresser, or my vineyard. The word can also mean gardener.

Cayman: 1570s, from Portuguese or Spanish caiman, from a Carib word, or perhaps from a Congo African word applied to the reptiles in the new world by African slaves. The name appears to be one of those like anaconda and bom, boma, which the Portuguese or Spaniards very early caught up in one part of the world, and naturalized in another.

Chad: modernized form of the Old English given name Ceadda, influenced by the Welsh word cad meaning battle. The word cad in the perjorative sense comes from Italian cattivo, bad, and has nothing to do with Chad, who is one of the great guitar players.

Charles: Germanic *karlaz meaning free man, which survives in English as churl (< Old English ?eorl). In the form Charles, the initial spelling ch- corresponds to the palatalization of the Latin group ca- in Central French and the final -s to the former subjective case (le cas sujet) of masculine words in Old French (< Latin -us). The root meaning of Karl is old man, from Indo-European *?er-, where the ? is a palatal consonant, meaning to rub; to be old; grain.

Cheryl: English version of Cherie or Cher which in turn is the French form of the Latin Cara, which means dear. Whore also came from cara, which is what the Roman soldiers called prostitutes.

Chessι: Un nom de famille qui reprιsente un nom de localitι dorigine, nom de hameau landes et a du dιsigner loriginaire de cette localitι. Ralph Chessι, 1900-1991 (the little boy in the sailor suit on the far right), was the patriarch of a large creative family. As his son Bruce writes, Ralph was a Renaissance man in the grandest sense with diverse interests in the arts: theatre, sculpture, puppetry, painting, writing and music.

Joseph Alexander Chessι was born in 1802. He married (or lived with) a slave named Justine Olivier in 1830 and subsequently moved to New Orleans. On the census records all the Chessιs were listed as black.

A Chessι arrived with Bienville in 1698 at the mouth of the Mississippi. Bienville was the one responsible for the original survey to determine where the city of New Orleans would be located. The ships manifest has a Michael Chessι listed as a freebooter (pirate).

Chet: (Latin castra) means fortress or camp. It is an uncommon name of English origin, and originated as a surname to identify people from the city of Chester, England.

Chloe: (also Chloλ, Cloe, Chlφe, Chloι, Clowy, Kloe, Khloe, Khloλ, Khloι, Kloι or Kloλ), a first or given name for girls, especially popular in the United Kingdom. The name comes from the Greek ????, meaning young green shoot and is one of the many names of the Greek goddess Demeter.

Christopher: (sometimes Kristoffer or Kristopher) is the English version of a Europe-wide name derived from the Greek ??????????? (Christσpheros). The constituent parts are ??????? (Christσs), Christ, and ?????? (phιrein), bear: the Christ bearer.

Both Kris and Kristofferson are Scandinavian variants of Christopher.

Kristina can be the feminine form of ???????.

Clarke: an English surname, ultimately derived from the Latin clericus meaning scribe, secretary or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educated. Clark, Clarke evolved from clerk. First records of the name are found in 12th century England. The name has many variants. Still today, clerk is pronounced clark in Britain.

Cleo: Greek prefix often translated to mean pride, fame or glory. Also Clio.

Conrad: Derived from Germanic elements kuoni brave and rad counsel.

Cynthia: ??????, Kynthνa, from Mount Cynthus on the island of Delos. Cynthia was originally an epithet of the Greek goddess of the moon, Artemis, who was sometimes called Cynthia because, according to legend, the goddess was born on Mount Cynthus.

Dale: Old English dζl dale, valley, gorge, from Proto Germanic *dalan valley (Old Saxon, Dutch, Gothic dal, Old Norse dalr, Old High German tal, German Tal valley), from Indo European *dhel- a hollow. This name reflects the lasting Norse influence in north of England. A Neanderthal was someone from the Neander valley in Germany.

Daniel: ?????????? ?????? The first part of the name Daniel comes from the Hebrew verb (din), meaning to judge, contend, plead. The second part is (El)the abbreviated form of Elohim God. God is my judge. God rules me. Danilo is one way to say Daniel in Spanish.

Darby: derived from Old Norse djϊr (deer), and the suffix bύr (farm/settlement). The oldest recorded surname dates to the period of 1160 1182 in Lincolnshire. The English city Derby is pronounced darby.

Dario, Darius: Latin D?r?us, D?r?us, Greek ???????, Aramaic drw, dryw, Elamite Da-ri-ya-(h)u-(ϊ-)i, Akkadian Da-(a-)ri-mu, Egyptian tr(w), trjw, intr(w), intrjw, Lycian Ρtarijeus-, and Old Persian D?rayau, are short forms of D?rayavau, composed of D?raya- [hold] + va(h)u- [good], meaning holding firm the good. My friend Dario is Italian from Belluno. Ciro (Cyrus) is also an often used Italian name.

Deborah: ????????? bee (Hebrew) Dvorah was a heroine and prophetess in the Book of Judges.

Diane (pronounced with long ? and ?) is an adjectival form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later divus, dius, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia and in the neuter form dium meaning the sky. The name Diane is rooted in Indoeuropean *d(e)y(e)w, meaning bright sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus, (god) and dies (day, daylight).

On the Tablets of Pylos a theonym ????? is supposed as referring to Diana, a deity precursor of Artemis.

The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of D??na as allied to that of dies and connected to the shining of the Moon.

Dionysius: ???????? ???????? ????????? The dio- element has been associated since antiquity with Zeus (genitive Dios). The earliest attested form of the name is Mycenaean Greek di-wo-nu-so, written in Linear B syllabic script, presumably for /Diwo(h)n?sos/, found on two tablets at Mycenaean Pylos and dated to the 12th or 13th century BCE.

The second element -n?sos is associated with Mount Nysa, the birthplace of the god in Greek mythology, where he was nursed by nymphs (the Nysiads) but according to Pherecydes of Syros, n?sa was an archaic word for tree. Dionysus had been with the Greeks and their predecessors a long time, and yet always retained the feel of something alien. Variants include Dennis, Denis, Dion, Dionisio, Denison, Denny, Tennyson, Tyson.

Dennis: Greek and English origin, a follower of Dionysius.

Django: I awake. (Romani language nickname of Jean Reinhardt.) Django gave himself this name when he was quite young.

Donna: The word donna in Italian means woman. The materfamilias, the woman who was in charge of her Roman household was called the domina. This word came down into the Romance languages. In French it is dame, in Spanish dueρa and in Italian donna. The name has the idea of house (domus) and so is familiar and eternal. Dominus, the lord of the house, is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *dem- (house). Dom in French, don in Spanish. In Church, we used to say Dominus vobiscum, Lord (go) with you. The response was Et cum spiritu tuo. And with thy spirit.

Dorothy: ??????? ????? (d?ron), gift + ????, god. Notice that Dorothy and Theodore are really the same name with the basic elements reversed.

Dupuis This name can mean from the well, at the well The Latin for well is puteus. It occurs, of course, in many languages. Names like Poggio, Dupuis, Atwell, Poηo, Inoue (Japanese), Pozzo, Pozo all connote someone who lived near a well.

Edmond: Old English Eadmund, from ?ad (prosperity) + mund (protection).

Edward: Old English Eadweard, prosperity-guard, from ead wealth, prosperity + weard guardian.

Edd: e?d (rich) Hell think thats rich.

Elise ??????????? ???????? Elisheva Russian E???a?e?a My God is abundance. My God is an oath. Elizabeth, Elisabeth, Bettina, Betty, Tetty, Isabel, Isabella, Lisa, Elsie, Elsa, Liese, Lilli, Lillian, Lilliane. Elise can be a German variant transcription of Alice, but, more often, Elise is a contraction of Elizabeth (English, Greek, and Hebrew).

Liz and Elise both have the same name etymologically speaking.

Emily is the English form of the Latin Aemilia. The name is derived from the Roman clan name Aemilius, one of the five ruling clans of Rome descended from Mamercus Aemilios. Mamercus was given the surname of Aemilios for his eloquence and refinement. Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, named his fourth son Mamercus Aemilios and the great lineage of the Aemilios clan was from him. In the English-speaking world Emily was not common until after the German House of Hanover came to the British throne in the 18th century; the princess Amelia Sophia (1711-1786) was commonly known as Emily in English, even though Amelia is an unrelated name.

Engrid or Ingrid is Old Norse. The first element ING refers to a Germanic god of fertility, who was also known as Ingui or Yngvi. The second element could be fridr (peace, beautiful, fair) or rida (to ride). Thus the name can mean Ings beauty or Ings ride. The name was first used in the 13th century, but English speakers took it up only from the mid 19th century.

Esther: ????? star (Persian) Ishtar Hester

Eugene: ??????? (eugen?s), noble, literally well-born, from ?? (eu), well and ????? (genos), race, stock, kin. French Eugθne, from Latin Eugenius.

Eunice: ?????? good victory

Eve In Sanskrit the meaning of the name Eva (???) is one who gives life. In Hebrew ??? (?awwah, often anglicized as Chava) means life or living one.

Ezio: Aetius (Latin) and Aλtios (Greek) are older forms of Ezio. The name is derived from Aλtius, a Roman family of Etruscan origin, and Aλstios, Greek name from aietos (eagle). Flavius Aλtius was a 5th-century Roman general who defeated Attila the Hun at the battle of Chalon.

Farhat: used predominantly in the Turkish language, and it is derived from Persian and Turkish origins. From Turkish roots, its meaning is joy, bliss, happiness.

Finola: In Gaelic and Irish, the name Finola is a variant of Fenella: white shoulder, blonde.

Fletcher: arrow-maker, early 14th century (as a surname attested from 1203), from Old French flechier, from fleche arrow, probably from Frankish *fliugica (Old Low German fliuca, Middle Dutch vliecke). One meaning of fledger, still today in English, is someone who puts the feathers on arrows.

Fougeirol: une commune franηaise, situιe dans le dιpartement de la Haute-Saτne et la rιgion Franche-Comptι. Ses habitants sont appelιs les Fougerollais. Une fougθre is French for a fern, so there may be a connection there.

Frida, Frederick: frid peace, beauty ric power, ruler, Reich

Gabriela, Gabrielle, Gabriel: comes from the verb gabar (gabar), meaning to prevail, be mighty, have strength. The noun gabar (geber) means man. The word geber can be found in modern Israel on doors of mens bathrooms.

The second part of the name Gabrielle is (El), the abbreviated form of Elohim , Elohim, God.

George: from the Greek name ???????? (Georgios) which was derived from the Greek word ??????? (georgos) meaning farmer, earthworker, itself derived from the elements ?? (ge) earth and ????? (ergon) work. Yuri in Russian. Jordi in Catalan. Jψrgen (Danish), Jerzy, Jurek (Polish).

Gerard: ger, gar spear hard hardy, brave

German: Spanish for Herman. The name can also be one of relationship, and derive from the pre 8th century Old French word germain, meaning cousin or person of the same stock. Another possible origin is that people with the name were originally spear-men engaged as mercenaries by different monarchs throughout Europe. The derivation here being from the German word geri meaning spear plus man(n), meaning one skilled in its use.

Gudrun: run secret rune

Guy: Norman French form of WIDO. (Italian Guido) The Normans introduced the name Guy to England, where it was common until the time of Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) when it virtually disappeared and is only now returning.

Haas: Old Dutch *haso, from Proto-Germanic *hasτ and Jewish (Ashkenazic): Hase hare, hence a nickname for a swift runner or a timorous or confused person, but in some cases perhaps a habitational name from a house distinguished by the sign of a hare. As a Jewish name it can also be an ornamental name or one of names selected at random from vocabulary words by government officials when surnames became compulsory.

Hart: Old English heorot hart, stag, male deer, from Proto-Germanic *herut- (cf. Old Saxon hirot, Old Frisian and Dutch hert stag, deer, Old High German hiruz, Old Norse hjφrtr, German Hirsch deer, stag, hart), perhaps from the Proto Indo European root *ker- horn. (Cyrillic spelling ????) Now this word hart denotes a male red deer after its fifth year. The hind is the female. Roger Hert appears in the Pipe Rolls of Norfolk in the year 1166, and Simon le Hert is noted in the tax rolls known as the Feet of Fines for the county of Kent in 1194. One of the earliest settlers in the New World was John Hart, who embarked from the Port of London, aboard the ship Phillip, bound for Virginia in June 1635. The first recorded spelling of the family name Hart is shown to be that of Aelfric Hort, which was dated circa 1060, in the Olde English Byname Register, Hampshire, during the reign of King Edward, known as The Confessor, 1040 1066.

Heather, Heidi is from the English/German (die Heide) word for the variety of small shrubs with pink or white flowers which commonly grow in rocky areas. It is derived from Middle English hather. Heath is a male version. Heather is also a color, a light purple shade with a hint of grey.

Heidi is also a German diminutive of Adelheid. Heid is a noun maker in German. For example, Adel is noble and Adelheit is nobility. Pagus is the Latin word for district and it refers to a non city environment, the country. So, a paganus, a rural dweller, was not civilized and was a pagan. Similarly, with someone who lived on the heath, there was a sense of not having city ways and thus the person was a heathen. Thus, pagan is Latin and heathen is Germanic.

Herman: her army, warrior Herzog Arminius

Holly: the name of the plant, from the Old English word holen.

Hoekstra is a Frisian name that means from the hook or from the corner. Frisian is the language spoken in Friesland, a province of the Netherlands. Comprised of the northwestern portion of the Netherlands mainland, along with a major portion of the Frisian Islands (a chain which extends from the Netherlands into Germany), this province is populated by an ethnic people whose language and customs are more closely related to the English than the Dutch.

The Hoekstras may have lived at a crossroads (corner, hook) or that their ancestors originated from the Hoek of Holland. The suffix -stra is Frisian, and is used in place of the Dutch prefix van, meaning from or of. Hookster might be an English equivalent of Hoekstra.

Homs: (Arabic: ???? ?im?), previously Emesa (Greek: ?????, Emesa), a city in western Syria and the capital of the Homs Governate. It is 501 metres (1,644 ft) above sea level and is located 162 kilometres (101 mi) north of Damascus. Located on the Orontes River, Homs is also the central link between the interior cities and the Mediterranean coast.

Houston: Hughs town, a habitational name from a place near Glasgow, so called from the genitive case of the medieval French given name Hugh, from the Germanic element hug, meaning heart, mind, or spirit.

The second element of the name Houston comes from Middle English (1200 -1500) tune, toun, settlement, village, derived from the Old English pre 7th Century tun, enclosure, settlement. Town might be the oldest word in the English language.

Howard: of Middle English origin, the first part of Howard can come from the same root as Houston, that is, hug, heart, mind, spirit, added to hard, hardy, bold, strong. Yet another derivation is haward, high guardian.

Huget: from an Old High German word related to hugu mind, soul, thought.

Irene: ?? ????? Irene ?????????? ??? ?? ???????? Irene, ?? ????? ???????? ????????? ??? ????????? ??????. The name Irene is derived from the Latin Irene and was written ?????? in Greek. ?????? is the goddess of peace. ????????? means peaceful.

Jacob: ??????? ??????? The English names Jacob and James derive from the same source, with James coming from Latin Iacomus, a later variant of Iacobus. In England, Jacob was mainly regarded as a Jewish name during the Middle Ages, and the variant James was used among Christians. The name meansheel (in the Genesis narrative, Jacob was born grasping Esaus heel and later bought/stole (?) Esaus birthright. Jacob can also therefore mean supplanter.). Jacob came into general use as a Christian name after the Protestant Reformation. Coby, Coos, Jake, Jack, San Diego, Iago, Santiago, all are variants of Jacob. The time when James I came to the throne of England from Scotland, where he was James VI, is called the Jacobean Period to distinguish that time from the Elizabethan which came before and the Hanoverian which came after.

Janis: Sanskrit has a word janis that means a woman, but Janis is usually thought to be derived from John: Latin Iohannes, from New Testament Greek ???????, contraction from Hebrew ???????? (Johanan) J???n?n, perhaps from a former ?????????? (Yehochanan) J^?hτ??n?n, meaning God is gracious.

Jennifer: Welsh Gwenhwyvar (Guinevere), from gwen fair, white + (g)wyf smooth, yielding. Espinosa, Espinoza, her surname, means thorny from Latin spina.

Jill: Latin sweetheart or youthful.

Jill was used as a short form of the female given names Jillian and Gillian, and now it is often an independent name.

Joel jo Yahweh, Jehovah el god

John: The first element is jah , which is the abbreviated form of the appellative YHWH , which in turn is YHWH, the Name of the Lord. The second part of the name comes from the verb (hanan) meaning be gracious, pity, beseech, implore. Yahweh Has Been Gracious. Yahweh Is Gracious. The Lord Graciously Gave.

Joseph: The name can be translated from Hebrew ???? ?????? Yihoh Lhosif as signifying YHWH (Yahweh) will increase/add. Biblical son of Jacob and Rachel, from Late Latin Joseph, Josephus, from Greek Ioseph, from Hebrew Yoseph (also Yehoseph, cf. Ps. lxxxi:6) adds, increases, causative of yasaph he added.

Julie, Julia: Latinate feminine form of the name Julius. Julius was a Roman family, derived from a founder Julus, the son of Aeneas and Creusa in Roman mythology, although the names etymology may possibly derive from Greek ?????? downy-haired, bearded or alternatively from the name of the Roman god Jupiter, Jove (adjective Iovilios, Iovilius).

Julius: Latin Iulius, name of a Roman gens, perhaps a contraction of *Iovilios pertaining to or descended from Jove.

Karen: medieval variant of Katharina, Catherine. Katharos which means pure. The name evolved as a Scandinavian form of Katharina. It could also be derived from the phonetically similar Latin word carus (dear).

Kate: short form of Katherine, from Latin, French, English, and Welsh origins. The name literally means either pure or blessed. The Greek word Catharsis is from the same root.

Knight: Old English cniht (boy or servant), cognate of the German word Knecht (servant, bondsman). This meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages (Old Frisian kniucht, Dutch knecht, Danishknζgt, Swedish knekt, Norwegian knekt, Middle High German kneht, all meaning boy, youth, lad, as well as German Knecht servant, bondsman, vassal). Anglo-Saxon cniht had no particular connection to horsemanship, referring to any servant. A r?dcniht (meaning riding-servant) was a servant delivering messages or patrolling coastlines on horseback. Old English cnihth?d (knighthood) had the meaning of adolescence (period between childhood and maturity) by 1300.

Kurt: Low German short form of Conrad. Derived from the Germanic elements kuoni brave and rad counsel. Kurt is nominative and accusative. Kurts is genitive and Kurti is dative. Curd, Curdt, Curt, Kunto, Kurd, Kurre, Kurth, Kurtti. (may be from Proto-Indo-European root *gher-)

Lange German feminine long. So lange wie mφglich. As long as possible.

Laura: Feminine form of the Late Latin name Laurus, which meant laurel.

In ancient Rome the leaves of laurel trees were used to create victors garlands.

When a woman is graduated from a university in Italy, she is said to be laureata, and instead of a cap and gown she wears laurel leaves.

Lee: Shelter, sheltered from the storm in Old English. The leeside of the island is the opposite side from windward.

Lee is the most common surname on Earth, but it is this womans middle name.

People named Lee are so great in number because the Chinese Li is often spelled Lee in English. Lee or Li is written with the characters ? tree + ? children, and means plum tree.

A legend about the Li family is that those who are the directly descended from rebel Emperor Zhuanxu have a genetic trait noticeable in their feet. The last toe on each foot would be pointing inward a little rather than being straight like the rest of the toes. In addition, the nail on this foot has two sections, with one section appearing to override the other. According to the legend, this distinguishes the true Lis from the other families with the name, who were born with perfect feet.

Leland: Laege = fallow. Place name, which meant meadow land, fallow land, pasture ground in Old English. Leah meaning wood, clearing or meadow and land.

Lillian: Used since the sixteenth century, possibly originally a pet form of Elizabeth, but generally accepted as a variant of Late Latin lillium lily.

Linda: the linden tree, from Germanic lind meaning soft, tender ultimately from a Celtic root. Linda may also come from the Latin (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) word linda, which is the feminine form of lindo, meaning beautiful, pretty, cute or clean.

There is a Japanese concept that has the same connotation of cute, small, clean that Linda does. It is kawaii (????), which can mean it is clean, pretty, neat. One hears this word a lot in Japan, the land of the cute. Kawaiiii des neeee! It often seems as if teenage girls, who are very kawai themselves, use this word in every other sentence.

???? means, lovable, cute, or adorable and is the quality of cuteness in context of the Japanese culture.

The word kawaii is formed from the kanji ka (?), meaning acceptable, and ai (?), meaning love. Kawaii has taken on the secondary meanings of cool, groovy, acceptable, desirable, charming and non-threatening. All of which describe Linda very well. By the way, these are construction barriers at Narita airport in Tokyo. Can you imagine such a thing here in the macho USA? A Japanese girl seeing this barrier in Tokyo would say, Kawaiiiiiiii!

Lucie Feminine form of Lucius with the meaning light (born at dawn or daylight, maybe also shiny, or of light complexion). Luce in Italian, Luz in Spanish, Lucy in English.

Lynn: From place names in Norfolk and Scotland, Scottish Gaelic linne (stream, pool) or from corresponding Old English/Celtic words.

Margaret: (??????????) pearl. Margaret may be related to the Sanskrit word ?????? maρjar?. Also Margaret might be of Persian origin, derived from marvβrid (???????), a pearl or daughter of light. Many, many variations: Maggie, Madge, Marge, Meg, Megan, Mog, Moggie, Rita, Daisy, Greta, Gretel, Gretchen, Magee, Marg, Margot, May, Molly, Margo Sanna, Margi Meggie, Peggy and Peg. Margherita (Italian). A tequila margarita looks very like a pearl.

Marc, Mark: ?????? from Etruscan Marce of unknown meaning, Mars?

Marshall: early 13th cenutry surname; mid-13 century as high officer of the royal court; from Old French mareschal commanding officer of an army; officer in charge of a household (Modern French marιchal), originally stable officer, horse tender, groom (Frankish Latin mariscaluis) from Frankish *marhskalk horse-servant (Old High German marahscalc groom, Middle Dutch maerschalc), from Proto Germanic *markhaz horse + *skalkaz servant ( Old English scealc servant, retainer, member of a crew, Dutch schalk rogue, wag, Gothic skalks servant). Cognate with Old English horsώegn (horse thane). From c.1300 as stable officer; early 14c. as military commander, general in the army.

Mari, Mary, Marie, Miriam English versions of the name Maria, which was in turn the Latin form of the Greek names ?????? and ?????, or Maria, forms of the Hebrew name ??????? or Miryam. Spice ??? m-r-r meaning bitterness found on the hillside in Israel (myrrh could be a form of this name), used, as rosemary was, to heighten the taste of food. Salsa!

Mari has hundreds of variants, among them, Molly, Meg, Peg, Margaret, the list is almost endless. Other meanings can include rebelliousness (??? m-r-y), or wished for child or Our Lady (?? ???? Sha Mrih) or beloved lady, referring to the Christian reverence for the Virgin Mary. Mary/Mari/Miriam could also be a name of Egyptian provenance, perhaps from the word elements mry, meaning beloved or mr, meaning love.

Matilda: French Mathilde, of Germanic origin, literally mighty in battle; Old High German Mahthilda, from mahti might, power + hildi battle, from Proto Germanic *hildiz battle, from Indo European *kel- (1) to strike, cut.

Melina (bee) can be a combination of Mel with the suffix -inda. Mel can also be derived from names such as Melanie meaning dark, black in Greek (melanin), or from Melissa meaning honeysuckle.. Melina is also associated with the Greek word meli, meaning honey, and with linda, meaning gentle, soft, tender in the Germanic languages. Melina was the name of a nymph that cared for the young Zeus.

Michael ???????? (Mikhael) meaning who is like God? The patron saint of soldiers. Common in all languages, but especially Russian ??????. Romania (Mihail), Poland (Micha?), and Portugal (Miguel). In the Roman dialect Michele is often pronounced Mige.

Monica is an ancient name of North African origin whose etymology is unknown. The earliest reference to the name is found in ancient Numidian inscriptions. The name might include a reference to the ancient Libyan god Mon. It has also been posited that it may have been derived from the Latin monere, meaning to advise. Saint Augustines mother was named Monica, and she was born in Numidia, North Africa, although she also was a citizen of Carthage, and so her name may be of Punic origin.

Nicole means victorious people, evolved from a French feminine derivative of the name Nicholas and ultimately from Nike, victory. The town of Nice in France is named for this goddess.

Niehaus: Topographic name from Middle Low German nie new + hus house or a habitational name from a common North German and Westphalian farm name with the same meaning.

Nigella Sativa is an annual flowering plant, native to south and southwest Asia, but the womans name Nigella is most likely a diminutive of Nigel, which name is derived from the Latin Nigellus from the Latin niger, meaning black. The Latin word nigellus gave birth to Old French neel (modern nielle), meaning black enamel (same word as niello).

Nina: Brought into English in the nineteenth century, apparently from several sources. Many borrowings are of Russian ????, the name of a Georgian fourth century saint, also known as Nino, of obscure origin and meaning, possibly connected with the Assyrian king Ninus. Other sources are, for example, the Italian diminutives like Annina from Anna and Giovannina from Giovanna.

The name Noah ( Noah ) comes from the verb nuah (nuah) meaning rest, settle down. Derivatives of this root are: nahat (nahat), rest, quietness; Noah (noah), the name Noah; nihoah (nihoah), quieting, soothing; hanaha (hanaha), a giving of rest; manoah (manoah), resting place; menuha (menuha), resting place, rest.

Noel: Latin (dies) natalis, referring to the nativity of Christ, the original French spelling being Noλl and Noλlle.

Obama: an African surname. It is a fairly common Luo name, and it is derived from Swahili referring to members of the Luo tribe who converted to Islam.

Obama is also Japanese and it means little beach. The Obama family (???) were a samurai clan of feudal Japan.

The third line is written in kanji and the first character is o little. The second character is hama beach. Japanese sound laws are such that when you put o and hama together, the pronunciation is obama (little beach).

Obama-shi (Obama city) is of course right on the water. (Its the little blue green dot.)

This is Obama written in katakana, the alphabet used for foreign names, and it specifically refers to the President and not to the town of Obama.

Oscar: The name is derived from two elements in Irish: the first, os, means deer; the second element, cara, means friend. It can also be Old English ?s (god) and g?r (spear). (Oswald, Osborn, Oswid, Osric, Oslak), so it depends upon whether the person is Irish or English. This Oscar is English.

Osmond: os god divine mond protector

Oswald: Anglo-Saxon name meaning divine ruler, from os (god) and weald (rule).

Patterson: A patronymic meaning son of Patrick, which in turn derives from patricius, nobleman, in Latin. The name is first found in Ross-shire where the Pattersons had a family seat from early times and the first mentions come from census rolls taken by the early kings of Britain to determine tax rates for their subjects. Patterson, Paterson, Pattersen, Pattison. Another possible origin: pater father in Latin and son.

Paul: The Greek word (pauros) means feeble or little, and pauo means to pause, stop, retrain, desist.

After his humbling conversion experience, Saul of Tarsus became known as Paul, a man who wrote over half of the New Testament.

Paula: Roman family name Paulus meant small or humble in Latin as it did in Greek. The Latin, Paulo post means a little after. Pablo, Pavel, Palle (Danish), Paolo, Pαl (Swedish), Paulino are all variants of Paula.

Penelope: Greek ???? (pene) threads, weft and ?? (ops) face, eye. In the Odyssey this is the name of the wife of Odysseus, she who was the weaver.

Perry: English origin from either Old English pyrige (pear tree), or the Norman French perrieur (quarry), possibly referring to a quarryman. Perry was recorded as a surname from the late 16th century in villages near Colchester, Essex, East England, such as Lexden and Copford.

Pettigrew: One theory is that this name is originally derived from the Old French words petit, meaning small or little, and cru, meaning growth. The phrase petit cru, meaning in this context, small person, was introduced into Britain after the 1066 Norman invasion, when French became the official language. Originally petit cru was used as a nickname of endearment. I always thought that Pettigrew had a common origin with pedigree. The word pedigree is a corruption of the French pied de grue or cranes foot, because the typical lines and split lines in a family tree or pedigree resemble the thin leg and foot of a crane (grue).

Piliwale: The Piliwale sisters were four kupua creatures with sharp teeth, stick-like arms and legs, claw-like hands, and huge, swollen bellies. They were able to cause landslides and floods, but their greatest power, if you could call it that, was their appetite. Pili wale means to cling without reason or cause. The term is often used to describe people who live off of others without giving anything in return. When you visit T?t?, dont you dare be a Piliwale, means that youd better help out. The Piliwale stones of H?ena stand as a warning to people who are pili wale, and old-timers of the district like to say, H?ena is not the place for a Piliwale to visit.

This is Silver Piliwale, a direct descendant of Piliwale, who was the tenth Alii Aimoku of Oahu. Piliwale reigned as the titluar chieftain or King of the island of Oahu and all the territories Oahu claimed at the time. His wife was the High Chiefess Paakanilea, descent not known. The name Silver is probably related to Silva, a Portuguese name that meant forest or wood as in Silva, Sylvia, Sylvania. This man is my wifes grandfather. He is something of a legend in the Hawaiian Islands. Many streets, valleys and other geographical sites there are named for him.

Rachel (Hebrew: ?????, Standard Ra?el Tiberian R???l, R???l; also spelled Rachael, meaning sheep; one with purity.

Raquel is Spanish for Rachel.

Rafael, Rafaela: Hebrew ??????? (Rafael) God has healed.

Ralph: Short form of Radulf, from Old Norse Raπulfr (Old English Rζdwulf), wolf-counsel, from raπ counsel (read, rat, rad) + ulfr wolf.

Reinhard: rein pure hard hardy, brave

Richard: Middle English Rycharde, from Old French Richard, from Old High German Ricohard, from Proto Germanic *rik- ruler + *harthu hard. One of the most popular names introduced by the Normans.

The rich in Richard is cognate with Reich, so meaning power, kingdom, might, and hard meaning strong, bold, hardy. Strong power, strong ruler, strong kingdom.

Robbie, Robert: Old North French form of High German Hrodberht bright with glory.

Robert or Roberta is derived from hrod- fame, glory + -berht bright.

Rollins: (Rolin, Rolins, Rollin, Rollins, Rollings) Norman French, derived from either Rolf or Rollo, popular throughout the European continent 500-1000 CE.

The Normans introduced Rolf and Roul both meaning Fierce wolf in 1066, and Rolin or Rollin is a diminutive Little fierce wolf.

I read the French national epic, La Chanson de Roland, when I was twenty-two, twenty-three, read it in the original. Its an action story, so not that difficult. Roland held the passes in the Pyrenιes for Charlemagne. Orlando Furioso by Ariosto (XVI century) is another version of the same story. (Rolin, Roland, Rolins, Rollin, Rollins, Rollings)

Examples of Rolf or Rollo are to be found in the surviving church registers of the city of London, including Andrieu Rolin (Andrew Rollins!).

The first spelling of the family name in England is John Rolins (another version of Shane Rollins). This was dated 1327 in the Subsidy Tax Rolls of Suffolk during the reign of King Edward III.

Russo: In Italian, to say Russian, you say russo, meaning the language or the nationality, but I think that Russo may also have meant red (rosso) and even Russia itself can mean red. Nella seconda metΰ del IV secolo, says one source, alcune fonti riferiscono della tribω dei Rosolani, che vivevano nel bacino del fiume Ros (tributario del Dnepr, vicino lodierna Kiev), che cominciarono ad usare frequentemente la parola Rus, referring to the origin of the word Russia being derived from the Ros river, a tributary of the Dnieper. Thus, to the Italians Russo calls to mind Slavic tribes who migrated into Italy very early. However that may be, I am still holding out for Russo being at least partially related to Rosso, red. The name is very common in Italy, and it also calls to mind the French name Rousseau.

Ruth: ??? rut, possibly from the Hebrew for companion. In Israel Ruti is a common nickname for Rut (Ruth). Ruthie, Tootie, Tootsi, Tuti are all variants of Ruth.

Samantha might be from Samuel with the addition of anthos, Greek for flower.

Samantha: could also be derived from an Aramaic noun ?????? (em?anta, listener). This calque of the name could also relate to the story of Samuel, who heard God.

Samuel: The first part of the name comes from the Hebrew word Shem (shem), meaning name, and the second part of the name Samuel is (el) God. In between these two elements is the letter waw, which is a linguistic coupling, so that the name Samuel could mean Name Of God. This name could be a relative of Ishmael and, if so, would be derived from shama (shama) to hear, listen to, obey and el which would fit the story of Samuel a bit more closely, since it would mean Hear God. In Israel, Shmuel can mean Samuel and Shlomo can mean Sam.

Schuyler: Dutch surname scholar, student (from Germanic schul), brought to America by seventeenth century Dutch immigrants. The surname Schuyler was originally introduced in North America by 17th century settlers arriving in New York. It became a given name in honor of prominent members of the New York family, such as Philip Schuyler, and so became the given name of Schuyler Colfax, the 17th vice president of the United States.

Shane: Anglicised version of the Irish Seαn, which is John. Shane comes from the way the name Seαn is pronounced in the Ulster dialect, as opposed to Shaun or Shawn.

There are many, many interesting variants of Shane in many, many languages. Gjon (Albanian), Yahya (Arabic), Ganix, Ion, Jon (Basque), Ioannes (Biblical Greek), Yann, Yannick (Breton), Ioan, Ivan (Bulgarian), Joan (Catalan), Jowan (Cornish), Ghjuvan (Corsican), Ivan, Janko (Croatian), Ivan, Jan, Janek, Honza (Czech), Jens, Jannick (Danish), Jan, Johan, Johannes, Hanne, Jo, Joop, Hans (Dutch), Jaan, Johannes, Juhan (Estonian), Jani, Janne, Hannu (Finnish), Jean, Yann, Jeannot, Yanick, Yannic, Yannick (French), Xoαn (Galician), Ivan, Jovan, Janko (Serbian), Jαn, Janko (Slovak), Juoan, Xuan, Juanito (Spanish),Jens, Hampus, Hasse, Janne (Swedish), Ivan (Ukrainian),Evan, Iefan, Ieuan, Ifan, Ioan, Iwan, SiςnIanto (Welsh).

Sidiropoulos: ???????????? Sidiros = iron and -opoulos is a patronymic, that is, this name can mean son, daughter of iron. Iron was a precious commodity in Greece, but you could also make a case for this name meaning Smithson, since a smith is an iron worker. The daughter of a Sidiros would be a Sidiropoulou, but Greeks now keep the same surname over the generations. Papadopoulos, for example, the most common Greek surname, means son of a priest.

In Scandinavian, the name Sigourney means conqueror. Sigourney can be a male or female name.

Silvia: Feminine form of Silvius, from Latin silva (forest). In Roman mythology, Rhea Silvia was the mother of famous twins Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.

Socrates: ???????? derived from ??? (sos) whole, unwounded, safe and ?????? (kratos) power.

Sophia: ?????, the Greek word for Wisdom.

???????: of the cross, Cross Greek ???????, from ??????? meaning cross. This can be a given name (Stavros) or a family name. Both given name and family name are very common in Greece.

Stephen: ???????? crown was a deacon who was stoned to death, as told in Acts in the New Testament, and he is regarded as the first Christian martyr. Esteban or Estavan in Spanish. Sometimes Steffen and Steven in English.

Suzanne: Hebrew name ??????????? (Shoshannah). This was derived from the Hebrew word ???????? (shoshan) meaning lily (in modern Hebrew Shoshannah also means rose).

Tara: a female Buddha and a goddess in Hinduism. Tara is sometimes written/translated as Dara, meaning star. In Irish Gaelic, the Hill of Tara, or Teamhair na Rν, was the seat of the kings of Ireland from neolithic times (c. 5000 BC) to the 6th century or later. Tara is then taken to mean Queen.

Tatiana: Feminine form of the Roman name Tatianus, a derivative of the Roman name Tatius. Tatiana was the name of a 3rd-century saint who was martyred in Rome under the emperor Alexander Severus. She was especially venerated in Orthodox Christianity, and the name has been common in Russia and Eastern Europe. The name Tatiana was not regularly used in the English-speaking world until the 1980s.

Teagen comes from the Welsh word teg, which means beautiful or fair. Teagen may be related to the Irish name Tadgh or Taidgh, which means poet. Some of the variants are Teigue and Teige, which could have transformed into Tegan or Teagan. As a surname, it most likely arose as a patronymic, McTeague or McTague, meaning son of Teague. The surname is Irish in origin, specifically from the region of Connacht.

Thomas: ????? Greek form of the Aramaic name ????????? (Taoma) which meant twin. In England the name was introduced by the Normans and became very popular due to Saint Thomas ΰ Becket, 12th-century archbishop of Canterbury and martyr. Another notable saint by this name was the 13th-century Italian philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, who is regarded as a Doctor of the Church. Tom, Tommy, Maas (Dutch), Masaccio (Italian), Tomasso are variants of Thomas.

Timothy: ???????? meaning honoring God, in Gods honor, or honored by God

Thorstein: In Norwegian, the name Thorstein means thors rock. The name Thorstein orginated as an Norwegian name. Thorstein is most often used as a male name.

Torsten: Scandinavian given name: The Old Norse name was ήσrsteinn. It is a compound of the theonym Thor and sten stone.

Tristan: originates from the Brythonic name Drust or Drustanus. It derives from a stem meaning noise, seen in the modern Welsh noun trwst (plural trystau) noise and the verb trystio to clatter. The name is perhaps also influenced by the Latin root tristis (tant triste in the medieval French version of the myth), meaning sad or sorrowful.

Veronica: Latin form of Berenice, influenced by the Church Latin phrase vera icon true image associated with the legend of Saint Veronica who wiped the face of Jesus on the way to Calvary. Or more probably from the ancient greek ???????? she who brings victory.

Vesper: ( late 14th century) the evening star, from Old French vespre, from Latin vesper (masc.), vespera (fem.) evening star, evening, west, related to Greek hesperos, and ultimately from Proto Indo European *wespero- (Old Church Slavonic ve?eru, Lithuanian vakaras, Welsh ucher, Old Irish fescor evening), from root *we- down (Sanskrit avah down, downward). Meaning evening is attested from c.1600.

Vitale: Italian and Jewish (from Italy) from the medieval personal name Vitale (Latin Vitalis, a derivative of vita life). The name was popular with Christians as a symbol of their belief in eternal life, and was borne by a dozen early saints; it became especially popular in Emilia-Romagna because of two saints, San Vitale of Bologna and Ravenna. As a Jewish personal name it represents a calque of the Hebrew personal name Chayim life. Compare Hyams. I have explored the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, a beautiful place.

Walter: (wald, power) Old North French Waltier (Old French Gautier), of Germanic origin; cf. Old High German Walthari, Walthere, ruler of the army, from waltan to rule (wield) + hari host, army.

Walton: Prefix wald (a wood), or walh, a farm worker or walesc a foreigner. The suffix is -ton, a town. I would have thought wall town.

This Wesley is named for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who was born on the same day I was. The wes portion of the name refers to the Western cardinal direction, while the word lea refers to a field, pasture, or other clearing in a forest. Thus, the names origin refers to a western lea, or a field to the west.

Wilhelmina: In German it was spelled Wilhelmine, resolute, will, helmet. This is my beautiful mother and she was named for the queen of the Netherlands.

William Willahelm, composed of the elements wil will, desire and helm helmet, protection.

Names are music, full of meaning, rich and potent.

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Tumble

Posted on February 3, 2013 by J L tagged.

Anthea Sidiropoulos was walking into a church when she saw a sign that the janitor had put up in front of an area where he was mopping: Please Don’t Walk On The Water.

Elephant to naked man: How do you breathe through that thing?

A good listener is usually thinking about something else… or not thinking at all.

The thing about being on time is that there’s never anyone else around to appreciate it.

When a man brings his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason.

We’re happily married. We wake up in the middle of the night and laugh at each other.

The degree of one’s emotion varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts… the less you know the hotter you get.

You’ve been married for fifty years, how do you do it? I close my eyes and pretend it’s not happening.

I was walking down the hill the other day and saw some men roofing a house and one of the guys hammering a nail called me a big ugly ham… in Morse code.

My friend Sam, one of the best people ever. It’s confusing when we get mail, though.

We would have broken up except for the children. We were the children.

Democrats are better lovers than Republicans. You never heard of a good piece of elephant, did you?

My wife’s an air sign. I’m a fire sign. There’s a lot of hot air, that’s for sure.

New summer camp in the Adirondacks for Native American kids: Camp Shapiro.

The only thing my wife and I have in common is that we were married on the same day.

Marrying a man is like buying something you’ve admired in the shop window. When you get it home it might not go with anything that is in the house.

In Hollywood, all marriages are happy. Trying to live together afterwards is what causes problems.

Justin Bieber was kind enough to do a benefit at a senior citizens’ home and, approaching one of the elderly ladies, said, “Do you know who I am?” And she says, “No, but go to the front desk, they’ll tell you who you are.”

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished. Zsa Zsa Gabor

The guy who said two can live as cheaply as one has a lot of explaining to do.

American, Russian, Iraqi and an Israeli walking down the street. Roving Reporter says, “Excuse me, we’re conducting a public opinion poll about the meat shortage.” Russian says, “What’s meat?” American says, “What’s a shortage?” Iraqi says, “What’s public opinion?” Israeli says, ”What’s ‘excuse me?’ ”

I’ve been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she’ll kill me. Henny Youngman

A person is never drunk as long as she can lie on the floor without holding on.

I said to my wife, do you feel that the sex and excitement have gone out of our marriage, and she said, let’s talk about it during the next commercial.

If god dwells within us, I hope she likes enchiladas, because that’s what she’s getting.

Married men don’t live longer than single men. It just seems that way.

A New Age church in California has three commandments and seven suggestions.

If you were my husband, said Lady Astor, I’d put poison in your coffee. And if I were your husband, answered Winston Churchill, I’d drink it.

Mrs. Pop to Mr. Pop: No way we’re naming this kid Iggy.

Marry me, and I promise I’ll never bother you again.

Besides “I love you,” what three words does a woman want to hear the most. “Ill fix it.”

Marriage means commitment. So does insanity.

It was a really big shoe. That guy who was half Jewish and half Japanese was circumcised at Beni Hana’s.

I was engaged once to a contortionist. She broke it off.

Doctors: they give you an appointment in a month and then ask why you took so long to see them.

She’s a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one. Oscar Levant to Harpo Marx.

A WASP’s idea of affirmative action. Hiring South American jockeys.

I love these people. Silvia and Franco.

Carrie Clores, right, is married to my old friend Rob who played keyboards in Love, Janis, NYC.

Man rules the roost. Woman rules the rooster.

Dad: Son, if you masturbate, you’ll go blind. Son: I’m over here, Dad.

Patient: Doctor, I have no memory. Doctor: Now, keep calm, how long have you had this problem? Patient: What problem?

Men are not dogs. Dogs are loyal and faithful.

A smart husband thinks twice before not saying anything.

Where do you find a man who is truly committed? In a mental hospital.

What is the difference between men and pigs? Pigs don’t turn into men when they get drunk.

How does a man plan for the future? He buys two bottles of vodka instead of just one.

I may be seventy-one but every morning when I get up I feel like a twenty year old. Unfortunately there’s never one around.

Why don’t lobsters share? Because they’re shellfish. (I knew you would like that one.)

Did you hear about the psychic amnesiac? She knew in advance what she was going to forget.

A WASP is a guy who gets out of the shower to take a leak.

As long as the world keeps turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes. Mel Brooks

If I had my life to live over, I’d make all the mistakes much sooner.

When you’re dead, your fingernails, toenails and hair continue to grow for three days. After that your e mails taper off.

Fabulous new diet: you can only eat bagels and lox… and you have to live in Syria.

The new heroin diet is interesting… most of your food falls on the floor.

I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I lost two weeks.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Behind every successful man stands a proud wife and an astonished mother-in-law.

How many musicians does it take to change a lightbulb? One, with ten on the guest list.

Adam to Eve: Hey, I wear the plants in this family.

How many New Yorkers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Hey, fuck you, forget about it.

I’m now at the age where I’ve got to prove that I’m just as good as I never was.

The secret to staying young is to exercise regularly, eat sparingly and lie about your age.

My wife calls our waterbed The Dead Sea.

The optimist created the airplane. The pessimist created the seat belts.

I’m so old, my blood type was discontinued.

Confidence: what you start off with before you completely understand the situation.

My wife always lets me have her way. And that’s OK.

If you don’t drink, when you wake up in the morning, that’s the best you’re going to feel all day.

I heard two guys talking in Arabic in a bar the other day. I said, “Hey, you’re in America now, speak Spanish.”

Jewish foreplay is three hours of begging. Italian foreplay is, “Honey, I’m home!”

How many Amish does it take to screw in a lightbulb? The Amish don’t have lightbulbs. They bake pies.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but that’s what it is… an institution.

Joe: You’re always wishing for something you haven’t got. Flo: What else is there to wish for?

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met. Henny Youngman

I wanted to sign up for Paranoids Anonymous but they wouldn’t tell me where they were.

A marriage license costs twenty dollars now, and everything you’ve got for the rest of your life.

The drinking age and the voting age should be the same. Some of the people we vote for, you need a drink.

If someone says, “My kid is a conservative, how did that happen?” remind them that when we took all those drugs in the 60s, we were told that our children would be brain damaged.

Let me get this straight. I can’t sleep with anyone else for the rest of my life, and, if things don’t work out, you get to keep half my stuff? What a great idea.

My doctor keeps sending me to other physicians. I don’t know if he’s a doctor or a booking agent.

Texan: How big is your farm? Kibbutzer: Two hundred by three hundred feet. How big is your ranch? Texan: I get in my car, drive from sunrise to sunset and never reach the end of my land. Kibbutzer: Yeah, I had a car like that too.

What is the difference between a dog and a fox? About five drinks.

Frank goes to a meeting once a week to make him stop drinking, and it works. Every Wednesday between five and six he doesn’t drink.

Patient: How much to have this tooth pulled? Dentist: Ninety dollars. Patient: Ninety dollars for just a few minutes work? Dentist: I can extract if very slowly if you like.

I used to take two hits of acid so I could have a round trip.

Four out of three people have trouble with fractions.

Docotr: You’ll be able to resume your love life when you can climb two flights of stairs without becoming winded. Patient: Why don’t I look for a woman who lives on the ground floor?

When her enemies stopped booing, she knew she was slipping.

I’m so old that when I order a three-minute egg, they ask for the money up front.

She never hated a man enough to give him his jewelry back.

I was recently born again. It was a glorious experience, but I can’t say that my mother enjoyed it a whole lot.

Chinese guy having a drink when Roy Goldberg knocks him off the stool. “Hey, what’s that for?” ”That’s for Pearl Harbor.” ”Yeah, but I’m Chinese,” the guy says. “All the same to me,” says Goldberg. A little later, the Asian man walks over and slugs Goldberg. “That’s for the Titanic.” “The Titanic,” answers Roy, “was hit by an icberg.” “Iceberg, Goldberg, they’re all the same to me.”

Tell me. darling, where have you been all my life? Well, for the first fifty years of it I wasn’t even around.

Are you living a life of quiet desperation, or are you married?

That new synagogue in Harlem is called Beth You Is My Woman Now.

Robert Altman took this of Chet Helms.

I’ll never make the mistake of being seventy again.

I just had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.

Bumper sticker in Canada: I’d rather be driving.

Dad, he said, I play this guy who’s been married for twenty-five years. That’s great, son, enthused his father, one of these days maybe you’ll work up to a speaking part.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. Mark Twain

I finally got it all together. Now I’m too old to pick it up.

Or, to put it another way, experience is a comb that life gives you after you’ve lost your hair.

The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.

Politics is the art of looking for problems, finding them everywhere, diagnosing them incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

What’s the difference between baseball and politics? In baseball, you’re out if you’re caught stealing.

Rick Santorum says that gay people getting married would violate the sanctity of marriage. Are you married? Do you feel sanctified?

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it’s important.

Marriage is grand. Divorce is a hundred grand.

Why don’t Baptists make love standing up? They’re afraid it might lead to dancing.

A WASP proposes marriage: How would you like to be buried with my people?

Don’t marry for money. It’s cheaper to borrow it.

If god has anything better than sex to offer, she’s keeping it to herself.

Why is psychoanalysis quicker for men than for women? When it’s time to regress to their childhood, most men are already there.

He doesn’t have an enemy in the world, but all of his friends hate him.

How many psychoanalysts does it take to screw in a lightbulb? How many do you think it takes?

I had to give up masochism. I was enjoying it too much.

The thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most trouble is sex.

Honey, am I your first? Why does everyone ask me that?

No problem is too big to run away from.

The thing about being unemployed is that when you wake up, you’re on the job.

The amount of sleep required by the average person is about five minutes more.

I’ve noticed that nothing I’ve never said ever did me any harm,

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

We’ll see you next week.

Sam Andrew

Big Bother and the Folding Company

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Geology of the San Francisco Bay Area

Posted on January 27, 2013 by J L tagged.

The geology of the San Francisco Bay Area is a nightmare of jumbled, mixed, chaotic rocks. It looks in many places as if a giant had stuck a stick in the Bay and stirred wildly.

One of the most interesting such mélanges in the world.

The San Francisco Bay itself is the drowned mouth of the Sacramento River.

The sea level rose three hundred feet when the continental ice sheets melted about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and it submerged the river entrance into the Bay Area.

Since then the river has been slowly, slowly filling the Bay with mud.

In a few thousand years, the Bay will be a flatland, grassy and beautiful.

The Sacramento is the only river that cuts through the Coast Range to the ocean, so it must have been flowing before the range emerged so that it could erode the rocks as quickly as they rose.

The San Francisco Bay is 300 feet deep in places so the Golden Gate is like a drain in a bathtub constantly scoured by a huge volume of water that flows in and out of a tiny opening as the tides change.

Without the deep sea valley known as the Golden Gate and without the Sacramento River, San Francisco would be just another stretch of the California Coast Ranges. This opening in the Coast Range is so small that Spanish explorers in the fog missed it for two hundred years, as did Sir Francis Drake. In the nineteenth century, before the Bridge, this opening was known as Chrysopylae, Greek for “golden gate.”

Gray sandstone, red chert and blue-green serpentinite at Baker Beach.

Diatomaceous chert consists of beds of diatomites which were converted into dense, hard chert, and strata several hundred meters thick have been found in sedimentary sequences such as the Miocene Monterey Formation occuring in rocks as old as the Cretaceous.

An ekphrasis on an oil painting I did called Death Shall Have No Dominion: this is a depiction of the silica skeletons of diatoms and radiolarians, microscopic animals that live in the sea. Billions of these animals live and die and form chert several hundred meters thick.

The term “flint” is reserved for varieties of chert which occur in chalk and marly limestone formations.

Serpentinite is prone to landsliding because it is slick and soft. Baker Beach is at the north end of a band of Franciscan mélange that runs to Hunters Point.

My wife Elise and I recently took a long walk to look at a Franciscan outcrop near 15th Avenue and Noriega in San Francisco.

This is in the Sunset District which was once covered with giant sand dunes, some of which remain.

Under its homes and streets, San Francisco is about one-third sand dunes, but these were tamed in the 1870s and only a few remain along Ocean Beach.

The south end of Ocean Beach has a thick section of the Merced Formation, Pleistocene river and beach sediment uplifted by more recent tectonic movement.

Volcanic ash beds like this allow dating of the rocks and help show that the Golden Gate first opened about 600,000 years ago, changing the sediment mix here.

We climbed these stairs at about 31st and Moraga. This entire hill is a sand dune overlying Franciscan rock.

A very high sand dune. When people came to San Francisco they built over the dunes, leveled them out, civilized them.

Elise, an amateur geologist, in the field taking notes and samples.

We climb higher…

… and higher.

And then trudge up the Grandview steps all the way to the top.

This ribbon chert at Grandview Park is part of the same terrane, or wide belt of bedrock, making up the Marin Headlands to the north and many hills in the city.

It’s exciting to find wild sections of the City peeking out here and there.

Telegraph Hill is a knob of graywacke of the Alcatraz terrane. Recognize the couple in this shot? William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Telegraph Hill has been extensively and clumsily quarried to help fill in the old shoreline. The old quarries are now occupied by homes and shops. Occasionally one of the rock faces deteriorates and collapses in a rockslide.

Montgomery Street was once the waterfront, and North Beach was a beach. Sailors fetched their vessels up here during the Gold Rush and simply abandoned them. The ships sank and became landfill for the area east of Montgomery Street, so, now, when crews are excavating foundations for new buildings (such as a concrete foundation for a garage, to name one example), they will sometimes find these old pioneer ships.

Alcatraz is an island consisting of graywacke that has been heavily modified during Alcatraz’ years as a lighthouse, fort and prison.

Russian Hill consists of coarse sandstone, or graywacke, of the Alcatraz terrane.

Long slices of the Coast Range have slid into the Bay Area along the San Andreas Fault and so have several fault branches such as the San Pablo and Hayward faults. This sliding of plates, their rubbing past each other, is a continuing process and is, of course, the source of earthquakes.

The rocks on the sea side of the San Andreas Fault are granite.

Montara Mountain, south of San Francisco, is a knob of bare granite.

The Coast Range granites have migrated here from the southern Sierra Nevada, sliding along the faults on their way northward.

Outcrops between the San Andreas and Hayward fault zones expose Franciscan rocks from the northern Coast Range. These Franciscan rocks underlie the hills of San Francisco and Marin County.

The Franciscan is a crazy catchall mix that consists largely of dismembered sequences of graywacke, shale, and lesser amounts of mafic (volcanic) rocks, thin-bedded chert, and rare limestone, dark colored muddy sediments, , red, green and brown cherts, and lava flows of black basalt. It’s a mishmash.

All of this Franciscan rock was once on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and then it was scraped into a trench at the edge of the ocean about a hundred million years ago.

Long strips of green serpentinite from deep in the earth’s mantle make smaller faults in this section of the Coast Range.

East of the Hayward fault, there are also Franciscan rocks, but they are submerged under thick deposits of muddy sediments, and are weak, younger rocks, which can erode to form soft, rounded hills subject to constant landsliding.

Many of these areas are becoming developed which will cause a problem later unless building code regulations are adopted and scrupulously enforced.

Cuts make hills unstable because they pull out the “foundation” of hills, and fills make hills unstable because they add weight on to the slope above. All it takes is a big rain or leakage from pipes somewhere and the ground will give way and slide.

Ground subsidence is the sinking of the land over man-made or natural underground voids, often caused by undercutting a hill, or building over what was once a body of water.

A lot of buildings in the City look like this. Those windows and that garage were once at street level. They have subsided, probably because the building is sitting on an ancient marsh, or for any of the other reasons listed above.

The San Francisco peninsula was once dotted with streams and lakes. Elk Glen Lake, in Golden Gate Park, is one of several that remain. Lake Merced is another. Building atop dried up or drained streams and lakes makes for shaky ground.

During the construction of ring-shaped Stow Lake in the 1890s, great boulders of the local chert were turned into this rustic bridge.

Strawberry Hill, inside Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, has some beautiful chert specimens.

This is ribbon chert in the Japanese Tea Garden.

Also in the Tea Garden are local basalt and greenstone (serpentinite) of the Franciscan Complex.

Chocolate-colored ribbon chert (the same terrane as the Marin Headlands) on Bernal Hill, south of the Mission District in eastern San Francisco. Chet Helms and I once shared an apartment building in this area (Bernal Heights). The Bay Area is home to many attractive properties that frequently draw Americans to the region (like those on this site: https://reali.com/san-francisco-bay-real-estate/). One of the most popular is Oakland, and it’s easy to see why. With its historic neighborhoods, vibrant social life, and friendly and creative locals, luxury apartments in the city, like those of Atlas Oakland, are getting snapped up fast.

Many small San Francisco parks preserve rock outcrops. This one in Golden Gate Heights shows the typical sandstone of the San Bruno Mountain terrane.

There are many slopes in the Bay Area which are becoming landslides and can be touched off by a heavy spring rain, an earthquake or even an excavation by a construction company.

1870 oil painting of the Mission District, including the lagoon, which was a tidal inlet, but probably not a year-round lake as it appears here. In the foreground is today’s Dolores Park, then a Jewish cemetery.

Corona Heights west of the Castro district has been heavily modified by quarrying, but now its outcrops of Franciscan chert are preserved in a park.

The chert of Corona Heights displays a great deal of texture due to fracturing during deep burial and tectonic movement.

On the north side of Corona Heights is a very good example of a slickenside, or polished fault surface.

The Corona Heights look over San Francisco and the East Bay as well as the Sutro Tower and the flanks of Mount Davidson to the southwest.

We are overdue now for the Big One, which many geologists believe will happen on the Hayward Fault. The earth’s crust is not a solid shell; it is broken up into huge, thick plates that drift atop the soft, underlying mantle and the plates rub against each other.

The plates grind against each other, hitching along in sharp jerks as the edges of the slabs catch and stick together until they stretch enough to snap free.

Predicting or retrodicting earthquakes is a matter of spotting the places along a fault where the opposite sides have caught, and seeing how far and how fast the rocks are bending.

If a way could be found to free the rocks on the opposite sides of the fault, or to prevent them from sticking in the first place, then earthquakes could be prevented, or at least managed.

What we need is a brobdingnagian crowbar, say, about fifty miles long, to pry the plates apart and then pour a lubricant in between them to let them slide freely past each other.

This would be difficult for Lilliputians like us to manage, so preparing for a sudden plate sliding emergency might be the wiser course.

As long as the plates are moving relatively freely, the opposite sides glide smoothly past each other and release small earthquakes. This is the best situation to hope for, and it has been happening fairly well for a long time now. Creeping is much better than locked.

The plates are slowly moving past one another at a couple of inches a year – about the same rate that your fingernails grow. But this is not a steady motion, it is the average motion. For years the plates will be locked with no movement at all as they push against one another. Suddenly the built-up strain breaks the rocks along the fault and then the plates slip a few feet all at once. In 1906 the plates slipped twenty feet.

No one has ever been killed by an earthquake. The damage that does happen is caused by falling objects, landslides triggered by the quake, fires, and epidemics caused by contaminated water.

Driving the Coast Road (Highway 1) is a slow, meandering affair best suited to frequent stops for views and looking at pretty rocks such as chert which can be composed of diatoms and radiolarians, which, though very tiny, have skeletons of silica, and build up over millions of years.

Even the sand is beautiful if you look closely enough. This is not the golden sand of Southern Calfornia or Florida, but there is gold in this sand, real gold.

You can see ribbon chert along the Freeway on your right as you drive onto the Golden Gate Bridge from Marin County.

If you motor up Highway 1 to Bodega Bay, you will find this mighty green stone.

And some hornblende schist too.

Many of the serpentinites contain chunks of blueschist,

green eclogite, in which you can see tiny garnets,

and even jade.

The trip on Highway 1 between San Francisco and Point Arena is geologically fascinating because you observe beautiful rocks and minerals in the road cuts, and you can track the wind and wave action shaping the shoreline.

North of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Coast Road leads you to Stinson Beach which sits directly on the San Andreas Fault.

The houses in Stinson Beach are built on a sandspit, a very unstable foundation material, right on the Fault, so it would be difficult to imagine a more dangerous place to be when the ground starts moving as it definitely will one of these days.

In Bodega Bay there is a similar situation. The town is built on loose sediment deposited directly on top of the San Andreas fault zone, and thus Bodega Bay is destined to be destroyed every time the Fault releases a major earthquake.

Some of the buildings in town have lasted a while, though. This is the schoolhouse where Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Birds. An old friend of mine, Randal Myler, was in this film, and in this building, when he was nine years old.

The Point Reyes peninsula is a well defined area, geologically separated from the rest of Marin County and almost all of the continental United States by a rift zone of the San Andreas Fault, about half of which is sunk below sea level and forms Tomales Bay.

The fact that the peninsula is on a different tectonic plate than the east shore of Tomales Bay produces a difference in soils and therefore to some extent a noticeable difference in vegetation.

Point Reyes is a stray scrap of Sierra Nevada granite which has been transported some 350 miles north by displacement along the Fault.

A little farther to the north, Jenner has serpentinites which embed large chunks of unusually beautiful blueschist.

Coast Range serpentinites often have angular fragments of this rare and beautiful rock. The blueschists are heavy, bluish-black rocks that are flecked with intensely blue crystals.

Serpentinite has all sorts of interesting properties. It is green and seamed by webs of closely spaced fractures that are often white.

Senate Bill 624 in the California legislature calls for serpentine to be removed as the state rock of California. The bill is in the Assembly, and if passed there, will move on to the Senate, where it will be voted on by August 31. Supporters of the move condemn serpentinite as somehow evil because it contains at times a form of chrysotile asbestos. This is more of a symbolic protest, with which it is easy to sympathize, than any real concern about asbestos poisoning from the rocks themselves.

Some serpentinites have a soapy feel and are indeed called “soapstone.” You can carve soapstone with a knife, and it is usually lighter in color than other serpentinites. The rock is inherently so fractured that it is difficult to find a solid piece of it as large as your fist.

I once discovered someone swimming up the creek behind our house, writhing like a salmon over the rocks. I asked him what he was doing and it turned out that he was on the prowl for soapstone (serpentinite) which he carved into interesting shapes. He gave me a piece of it from “our” creek. I was grateful.

Serpentinite has a chemical composition that suggests an origin deep in the earth’s mantle beneath the continental crust. Bodies of serpentinite intrude themselves into enclosing rocks as if they had been forced there while molten magmas, but nothing else about serpentinite suggests a molten origin.

Jade is another rock often found in serpentinites. Like blueschist, it forms under extremely high pressures and chunks of it are found in serpentinite outcrops. Jade is hard and tough, and so will outlast serpentinite in a creek, enduring as a smooth, rounded rock.

Jade can look like pebbles of green chert, but jade is heavier and not so friable. A tap with a hammer can smash chert, but jade can take a hit heavy enough to drive a nail.

North of Bodega Bay and up to Fort Ross, the San Andreas Fault is offshore.

Between Fort Ross and Point Arena, the Fault is onshore and it looks like a gentle valley.

The rocks west of the Fault at this point began life as sediments in Santa Barbara.

To the east of San Francisco, Highway 50 crosses the Sacramento Valley and enters the foothills of the Sierra Nevada between Sacramento and Placerville.

The eastern half of the route between Sacramento and where the road enters the Sierra foothills crosses old placer mine tailings.

I have often said that “placer” comes from Spanish placer, meaning “to please,” (pleasure) and, indeed it does, but the true origin of the word here is actually from placer meaning shoal or alluvial sand deposit (Catalan placer, sandbank, shoal), from plassa, (place) which comes in turn from medieval Latin placea (place) the origin word for place and plaza in English. The word in Spanish/Catalan is thus ultimately derived from placea and refers directly to an alluvial or glacial deposit of sand or gravel.

Placer mining refers to mining gold and gemstones found in alluvial areas-sand and gravel in modern or ancient stream beds, or occasionally glacial leavings. Since gems and heavy metals like gold are considerably more dense than sand, they tend to accumulate at the base of placer deposits. Mining of course, was very important back in the day, in fact it still is now. We can obtain energy sources from reactions within metal ores. For example, Uranium Production, which is a type of emission free energy.

Placers supplied most of the gold for a large part of the ancient world. Hydraulic mining methods such as hushing were used widely by the Romans across their empire, but especially in the gold fields of northern Spain after its conquest by Augustus, 25 BCE.

One of the largest sites was at Las Médulas, where seven 30 mile long aqueducts were used to work the alluvial gold deposits through the first century CE.

Placer mining was one of the earliest methods used by the ’49ers. This type of mining used manual techniques and tools such as sluice boxes, pans, and rockers located near rivers and streams.

In the early mining history of California, after the rapid working out of’the shallow placers of the high bars, attention was turned to the river channels as the next most certain source for a large gold yield, and in 1852, 1853, and 1854, a very large amount of this river mining was done, and most of the gold yield of the State at that time came from this placer mining in streams.

Placerville is but one more of the many settlements that had its beginning when James Marshall discovered gold in nearby Coloma in January, 1848. Jack Perry lived for a while in Placerville, and he’s still looking for gold.

She could be called ????? ???? (Athena Earth), but Anthea Sidiropoulos, is her real name, and we are going to play some musical events with her in Australia so we are all excited about that.

Goodbye till next week.

Keep on rocking.

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Hotchpotch

Posted on January 20, 2013 by J L tagged.

Hotchpotch

Cher’s real name is Cherilyn la Pierre.

Sophia Loren’s sister was once married to the jazz piano playing son of Benito Mussolini.

Life in the Ivy League: Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were roommates at Harvard, and George W. Bush and Oliver Stone were in the same class at Yale.

Spuere is Latin for “spit.” Spew and sputum come from this word. Conspuere is to spit with a lot of other people and this is the origin of the word “cuspidor.”

Jack Nicholson appeared on The Andy Griffith Show… twice.

Two of the Beatles were left-handed, Paul and Ringo. Easier to tell with Paul.

Carnegie-Mellon University offers a major in bagpiping. Bagpipes were once made from the skin of a sheep, presumably after the haggis had been taken out.

When Mozart was born, they wrote Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart in the church record. Theophilus means “love god” and so does Amadeus. One is Greek, the other Latin. Gottlieb is the German way of saying Theophilus.

At age fifty-three, Rolling Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman married Mandy Smith, nineteen, but the marriage only lasted a year. A little later Bill’s thirty year old son Stephen married Mandy’s mother, age forty-six. That made Stephen a step father to his former step mother. If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father’s father-in-law and his own grandfather. Mick Jagger should have written a song about THAT. They could have done the tune on the Grand Ole Opry.

Real band name: A Life-Threatening Buttocks Condition

One in every four Americans has appeared on television. I first appeared on television in Japan when I was sixteen with my band The Cool Notes.

Kermit the Frog has eleven points on the collar around his neck, and he is left-handed.

Yasser Arafat was addicted to watching television cartoons.

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, put his intials into his drawing of Homer. M is Homer’s hair, and G is Homer’s ear.

Tweety used to be a baby bird without feathers until the censors decided he looked naked. Can’t have Tweety corrupting the morals of America, now can we?

Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse for Mickey Rooney, whose mother he had dated for some time. Mickey Mouse’s original voice was Walt’s.

Mickey Mouse won an Oscar. In Italia Mickey si chiama “Topolino.” In Italy Mickey is called “Topolino.”

Can’t have Donald corrupting the morals of Finland, now can we? Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.

One day Margaret Herrick, librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, remarked that the statue looked like her uncle Oscar, and the name stuck.

Alfred Hitchcock never won an Academy Award for directing.

King Kong was Adolf Hitler’s favorite movie.

Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

In Italy, James Bond is known as Mr. Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang.

There was not a single Civil War battle scene in Gone With The Wind.

There is not a single mention of the mafia in the Godfather.

When The Wizard of Oz came out, critics said it was stupid and uncreative.

Real title of a how-to book: Keeping Warm With an Axe

Mary Shelley was nineteen when she wrote Frankenstein.

Virginia Woolf wrote all of her books standing up. Smart woman.

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote the fifty-thousand word novel Gatsby without any word containing ‘e.’ This is vEry difficult for mE to bEliEvE.

Chicken or Egg? In Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg.

Papaphobia is the fear of popes.

The sixth sick Sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick. Easy for you to say.

Tonsurphobia is the fear of haircuts.

Mattresses used to be set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To keep the ropes taut, one would use a bed key to take up the slack. This is the origin of the phrase “sleep tight.”

Before 1776, Americans used all kinds of coins and demoninations. The British pound, the German Thaler, and the Spanish real were a few. The real could actually be cut into eight pieces and they were called pieces of eight, as in the old pirate chantey. Two of these pieces equaled one quarter dollar and this is the origin of the phrase “two bits.”

In the 1940s, the Bich pen, originating in France, was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it “bitch.” Biche means a creature or a deer in French, and “bitch” does indeed come from this same word root.

When the first regular phone service was established in 1878, people picked up the phone and said “Ahoy.” In Italian, they say “pronto,” ready.

“Hocus pocus,” the magician’s phrase, is a corruption of “Hoc est enim corpus meum,” a sentence in the Roman mass, This is my body. Once, when I was learning to serve mass in the third grade, I said this phrase in imitation of the priest, and was reproved by a nun for getting above myself.

The Boogey people live in an area of Indonesia and they are pirates, Watch out, “the boogeyman will get you” refers to these reprobates.

It can get very cold in the Australian outback, and when it is so chilly that three dogs are needed to keep an aborigine warm, then it’s called a “three dog night.”

Assassination and bump were invented by Shakespeare. He coined many, many other words as well

The U in U-boat stands for unterwasser, underwater.

The word constipation comes from a Latin word that means “to crowd together.” Diarrhea is Greek for “flowing through.”

Accordion comes from the German word Akkord, which can mean agreement, harmony, but if you say Akkord to a German musician, it will always mean “chord.” My grandfather, Albert Mann, who came from Alsatian people, played the accordion so well. He did all those tunes from the old country and it was an extreme pleasure to hear him.

These guys know about Mexican, German, Czech and Polish musicians in Texas. I see Sir Doug, Martin Fierro, and, is that Dr. John?

Disease was the evil influence of the stars, believed many people, and perhaps many people even believe it now. Influence in Italian is “influenza.”

Truth and Falsehood went swimming. Falsehood came out of the water first and dressed herself in Truth’s garments. Truth, unwilling to assume those of Falsehood, went naked. The women here above, Betz and Linda, are truthful to a fault. It is an honor to know both of them, and that’s the Truth.

A deltiologist collects postcards. I would have thought records by Bukka White, Howlin’ Wolf, Kid Bailey, Muddy Waters, Junior Parker.

She so fine. She so fine. Linda LaFlamme.

I’m a klazomaniac. Hey, that sounds like a line from I’m A Caterpillar by Peter Albin. Klazomania is an urge to shout. Yes, hallelujah!

And talking of Peter, he made this Christmas tree ornament, which looks more like a Horus tree ornament.

A libricubicularist is someone who reads in bed.

Anthropophagist, cannibal, they are pretty much the same thing.

German is called a sister language of English. Other sisters are Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian.

A fox’s tail is called a brush.

The ball on top of a flagpole is called a truck. If you devoted yourself to the study of vexillology, this would be one of the first things you would learn.

Diastima is a gap between your teeth.

Oh, god, do I love this woman. Lisa Mills, folks, from Birmingham, Alabama. She paints, she sings, she raises a family and hell at the same time.

Lethologica is the state of not remembering the word you want to say. Retrieval becomes so much harder as we get older. I used to say all the answers (or questions, rather) on Jeopardy before Alex had even finished formulating them. Not any more.

Nictitating is winking. Cats have a nictitating membrane that we don’t. A woman who winks at men is called a nictitating woman. Interesting that there is no mention of the male in this, because I wink at women all the time. It’s a deplorable nervous tic.

A poem composed for a wedding is called an epithalamium. I have written some epithalamia and maybe you have too?

Says here, alma mater means “bountiful mother.” I always thought alma mater meant “soul mother.” I’m sure both meanings are good. (The meaning is closer to “nourishing” mother.)

Dégringoler is French for “rouler précipitamment du haut en bas.” The figurative meaning is “déchoir rapidement,” to fall, fail rapidly.” Degringolade in English means to fall and disintegrate.

Dibble means to “drink like a duck.” When I was fourteen I sang a song with the line “if the ocean were whisky, and I was a diving duck, I would dive to the bottom, and never come up.” An old blues tune. I think I learned it from Joe Turner.

Groaking is watching people eat in the hope that they will offer you some.

Hara kiri is the vulgar term. It means “belly cut.” Americans often say “harry carry.” Seppuku is the correct and more elegant term.

Karaoke means empty orchestra, just as karate means empty hand. I seem to remember on my Scholastic Apptitude Test such questions as if karaoke means empty orchestra, and karate means empty hand, which part of the word means “empty.” Even then I thought these were really stupid questions.

Marcia Ball, oh, my god of music, what a wonderful woman she is

Kemosabe means “soggy shrub” in Navajo.

Koala is Aboriginal for “no drink.” I have to remember this the next time I sidle up to the bar.

Scatologists are scientists who study feces, and presumably coproliths, or maybe not.

The “You Are Here” indicator on a map is called the IDEO locator.

Uh, oh, the third year of marriage is called the Leather Anniversary.

Japanese for switch is suitchi and for sex is sekkusu. Japanese are like Italians in that they want a vowel in between every consonant.

The Sanskrit word for war means “desire for more cows.”

A coward was originally a boy who took care of cows. A ward of the cows.

This symbol # is called the pound key, yes, but the two dollar word for it is anoctothorpe.

The word set has more definitions in the dictionary than any other English word.

Rhythm and syzygy are the longest English words without vowels. They are both good words too.

Skepticisms is the longest typed word that alternates hands.

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of elements, probably because J did not exist in Latin or Greek. Julius Caesar was Iulius Caesar in his langauge.

A left-handed guy kissing his wife.

I loved this band, the Sons of Champlin. Still do.

Lynn Asher and her very beautiful feet.

The letter W in our alphabet is the only one that doesn’t have one syllable; it has three. (It’s really just a “double U.”)

The longest one syllable word in English is screeched. In Middle English, Chaucer would have pronounced this word screech ed (screetch Ed), because they pronounced the past participle ending in those days.

Is there Hope for Lynn? Oh, yes, definitely.

Most used letter in English, E. Least, Q.

Oldest word in English, town. Youngest, Samified. Means you have undergone the Sam experience.

Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables.

Hey, how did Kurt Huget get in here? Good looks? Charm? Positive attitude? Plays well with others? Being with Terry Haggerty?

Fifteen letter word that can be written without repeating a letter: uncopyrightable.

Racecar and kayak are palindromes.

Muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate, duumvir, and residuum. That’s it. The six words in English that use uu.

Eye, ear, leg, arm, jaw, gum, toe, lip, rib, hip. Three letter words.

There was no punctuation until the fifteenth century. Reading Latin in inscriptions is a nightmare because it’s all caps and it’s all run together. It’s like reading Russian.

A portmanteau word is one combined of two formerly separate words, such as, motel or brunch.

Just exactly what are you boys planning here? Well, madam, we are preparing to, er, ambulate across this ‘ere Abbey Road, that’s if it’s awl right with you, of course.

Bookkeeper is the only English word with three consecutive double letters.

Cleveland spelled backward is DNA level C.

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.” So, does Arsenio Hall mean a corridor with white powder in it?

There are only twelve letters in the Hawaiian alphabet, and, as in Japanese and Italian, every consonant must have a vowel before and after it, so Kahlúa is not a Hawaiian word, but Kahului is.

In England in the 1880s, pants was a dirty word. Of course in the 1880s, everything was dirty. Pianos didn’t have legs. They had limbs.

Four is the only English number that has the same amount of letters as its value.

Stewardesses is the longest English word that is typed with one hand.

Words that are very difficult to use in a rhyming song: month, orange, silver, purple. You can rhyme them, but only if you are a sloppy rhymer.

Quisling is the only English word that starts with quis. It’s not really an English word, that’s why. It’s a Scandinavian person’s name. Quis means who in Latin.

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

1961 is the same right side up and upside down. The next number that will be that talented is 6009.

There are five thousand (and probably more) languages spoken on this planet. I can read about ten of them, but some days I wake up and can’t speak even one. The Mexicans in the kitchen at Aroma Café all routinely speak three or four languages. Spanish is not their first tongue. Mayan is. There are something like twenty-six completely different languages in the area of Oaxaca alone. The tragedy is that these languages are disappearing rapidly. Knowing this can make a linguist slightly crazy. It’s like watching a beautiful painting slowly disappear before your eyes.

Maybe the plot comes at the end… in the cemetery.

Sam Andrew Vinnie Martel Tom Doyle (I’m telling you, this Manny’s Car Wash green room is like a coffin. Maybe that’s the plot.)

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part fifteen. 2003

Posted on July 12, 2012 by J L tagged.

2003

18 January 2003 Porterville Auditorium Porterville California

Back to the Beans and Bangers circuit.

13 March 2003 The Brook Southampton UK

Peter Albin Victoria Sidley Sam Andrew

14 March 2003 The Rayners London Harrows UK I asked Kacee Clanton to sing with us on this trip, and she did a good job. I said, “Only thing is, don’t bring anyone with you, and pack extremely light. We only have a small van to travel in. Also, where we will be staying, there are often no elevators and many flights of stairs,” so Kacee showed up with her girlfriend and the largest suitcase I have ever seen. She’s been to Europe many times since then. I bet her luggage was lighter each time.

Once a year we go to Europe. Sometimes twice.

The band this time: Sam Andrew, Chad Quist, Glenn Halvarsson, Kacee Clanton and Peter Albin.

The band with the van.

15 March 2003 Borderline London

16 March 2003 Borderline Diest Belgium Quite a coincidence to play two clubs with the same name in two different countries on two consecutive nights.

17 March 2003 Club Banana Peel Ruiselede Belgium This was a tent in an open field. A happening place, though.

It was fun and educational to be in the Netherlands.

One of the best men who ever lived: Vincent Van Gogh. I read his letters to his brother Theo, and, even allowing for the fact that he is putting on his best face for a dear relative who is going to send him money, comfort and love, still, the piety, honesty, penetration, sheer energy and deep feeling of Vincent are amazing and very affecting. If he had never painted a stroke, he would still be a very remarkable person.

Van Gogh’s birthplace.

He was born in Zundert, in the far south of the Netherlands.

18 March 2003 Stairway To Heaven Utrecht Netherlands

19 March 2003 Rijksmuseum Amsterdam I went to this museum long ago when I was in the Kozmic Blues Band, and back now.

20 March 2003 Wilhelmina Eindhoven Netherlands

My mother’s name was Wilhelmina.

She was named for this queen of the Netherlands.

21 March 2003 Patronaat Haarlem Netherlands This is the hometown of Frans Hals, an extraordinary painter.

Franz Hals visited this home for retired men and painted the inhabitants in the very room where I saw his work. One of the quickest artists ever, he handled all that 17th century lace with verve and accuracy, alla prima, very few corrections. It was a privilege to be in the same room where he did that.

Hals did this painting in this building in about three hours. If you look closely at the original, you can see the almost incredible rapidity of the brushstrokes.

22 March 2003 Iduna Drachten Netherlands

Some of these towns were so destroyed in World War Two that they are brand new and even strip mallish today.

Hengelo is almost due east of Amsterdam, close to Enschede.

23 March 2003 Kleine Kunst Hengelo Netherlands “Kleine Kunst” means “little art.”

Janis Joplin

Now we drive far south to Velden am Wörthersee, Austria.

Gúðrun Kofler (center above) has brought us here to her place many times now.

25 March 2003 Bluesiana Rock Café Velden am Wörthersee Austria

Velden is way down in the south of Austria between Villach and Klagenfurt, very close to Italy and Slovenia.

This marquee greeted us on entering Velden which has aspects of Tahoe and Santa Barbara.

In old Germany the catchphrase was Kinder Küche Kirche (Children Kitchen Church). Here it’s Konzert Keller Kofler, something like that: Concert Cellar Kofler, Gudrun’s surname.

Chad can not only bowl, he can also rock and roll.

We had fun. I apologized for George W. Bush, but otherwise we had a wonderful night.

Monika Pabst ! ”Papst,” exactly the same pronunciation, means “pope,” and I think she would make a great pope. Papst Monika Pabst.

Glenn Halvarsson, sommelier for the Swedish tap water tour.

Chad giving his Victory salute.

One of the all time great guitar players. Clean, intelligent and always interesting.

Die Freundlichkeit. Austrians are light, witty, schpritzy like Mozart’s music.

An example of this is down the street at the Stehbar (the stand bar). You think a US bar would advertise this way ?

26 March 2003 Planet Music Vienna

28 March 2003 Colos-saal Aschaffenburg Germany The name of the club is a Wortspiel, a pun. Koloss (Colossus) is a giant, and Saal is an auditorium (like French Salle).

29 March 2003 Alter Gasometer Zwickau Germany The old gasmeter or the old gas company. I like the reuse of these buildings. This one is a beauty.

“East” Germany was under Soviet domination for a long time and there was not a lot of money under Communist rule, so, paradoxically, many places were left “unimproved” and as they were in the 1930s. Indeed, Prague in many places looks much as it did in Mozart’s time, which is why they filmed extended portions of Amadeus there instead of in Vienna. Communism had the inadvertent virtue of preserving an older way of life.

When I stay in an old hotel room in eastern Germany, I think a lot about the lives lived there under Communism. The faded walls, ancient appliances and creaky floors speak to me of all the people who simply tried to make it through those parlous times.

The “cookwash.” Laundromats are great places for guitar playing. Somehow they filter out the mistakes.

The Sword of the East. Don’t get me wrong. There were a lot of beautiful ideas in Communism. The rights of women, for example, were recognized under that system, and in old Soviet films you see women engineers on locomotives, women doctors, a real gender equality only beginning to be seen in the West.

Communism, though, had the misfortune to be directed by human beings and we all know how selfish and venal they can be, and how even a little power can pervert the finest ideals.

So, in the former East Germany, I see much evidence of the wreckage of hope and ambition and comfort. This can be dispiriting.

The times, though, as someone once noted, are a changin’. All of these old buildings and old lives have a new lease now. Suddenly former East Germany is hip. The people in the DDR were “hillbillies” not so long ago. Now they are “authentic” and preserved from the olden times. This is a familiar scenario. Social regentrification, I suppose you could call it, and it’s worth a lot more than nothing.

It’s just that, when I am in those old hotel rooms late at night, I think of the ones who didn’t make it, the ones who died shortly before the Wall came down and thus lived their entire lives in desperate hope, cramped conformity and, sommetimes, in terror.

We are the people.

Vacation in the DDR, the Orwellian named Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Now that it’s over, everyone wants to reëxperience life under Communism. The “Ford” in the East Germany of that time was called the Trabant (the Trabi) and now everyone wants to have one and especially that little tent that was erected on top of the car. It’s so chic, don’t you know ?

How quickly we forget and how easy to remember the “good old days,” which, of course, never were. Nostalgia for neuralgia.

Brezhnev and Honneker, the East German leader, certainly seemed to be feeling the love, but there wasn’t a lot of trickle down. There never is. There never will be.

31 March 2003 Objekt 5 Halle Germany

1 April 2003 Musiktheater Rex Lorsch Germany

Albert Ellis made this button.

2 April 2003 Rockfabrik Ludwigsburg Germany

It’s funny to me, because “Rock” in German means “skirt,” and fabrik could be cloth, but it really means Rock Factory. Rock und Blouse could be a skirt and blouse, or it could be Rock and Blues. Depends on how good your spelling is.

4 April 2003 Fismo Einsiedeln Switzerland My room was right across from this monastery.

Fismo is an acronym: Fédération Internationale des Sports Mécaniques Originaux.

The CH = Confoederatio Helvetica The Helvetic Confederation. In his book The Gallic War, Julius Caesar used the word “Helvetica” for what is now Switzerland.

6 April 2003 Albani Music Club Winterthur Switzerland

My niece Emily Bullis Rollins came to see me in Winterthur. We had such a good time. I wish I would have had her sing a jazz standard or two.

From Winterthur to Dallas… culture shock.

Cathy Richardson sang with us and Joel Hoekstra played guitar, two hot Chicagoans.

9 May 2003 Wildflower Arts & Music Festival Richardson Texas

28 June 2003 Jenner By The Sea California

17 July 2003 Point Breeze Webster Massachusetts

18 July 2003 Ocean Beach Park New London Connecticu

19 July 2003 Vetrock Mason Field North Attleboro Massachusetts

Elise Piliwale midtown Manhattan.

27 July 2003 Central Park Summer Stage New York City Simone and Elise.

Diane Lotny and the fabulous Rob Clores.

Ashley Kahn and friends.

This is where we met the beautiful and talented Sophia Ramos. Sophia sang Ball & Chain and she stopped the show.

Couple Number One : Carrie and Rob Clores.

There was an embarrassment of riches that day: Annisette, Baby Jane Dexter, Chan Marshall, Christine Ohlman, Caron Wheeler, Diane Lotny, Genya Ravan, Judith Owen, Kate Pierson, Lene Lovich, Little Queenie, Milini Khan, N’Dea Davenport, Phoebe Snow and Simone.

Judith Owen.

Kate Pierson was her usual charming self.

Miz Happiness and Joy, Milini Khan.

Brad Campbell and Snooky Flowers came, and we pretended we were the Kozmic Blues Band with Rob Clores and Maury Baker, the original drummer.

Milini Khan belongs to Chaka, and Simone belongs to Nina, so we had some royalty there.

Liz Getz and Elise Piliwale.

Phoebe Snow came by and sang Piece of My Heart. It was so good to see her… and hear her.

Diane Lotny, Kate Pierson and Elise Piliwale.

Chan Marshall.

Chan sang Down On Me.

Cat Power.

Ry Cooder came to Central Park because he was playing with some Okinawan musicians.

My first oil painting, 2003.

18 September 2003 Sky Church Experimental Music Project Seattle

19 September 2003 The Kenworthy Performing Arts Center Moscow Idaho

20 September 2003 First Orcas Island Music Festival Orcas Island Washington

I did these paintings in three hours… and they rather look it.

25 September 2003 Justin Herman Plaza San Francisco

4 October 2003 The Landmark Hotel bathroom sink, room 105 Los Angeles Photo: Howard Sounes

Yes. We still think of her all the time. Photo: Didier Richard

12 October 2003 Avalon Ballroom San Francisco

Wendy Rich sleep learning.

6 November 2003 Skihuette Oberwangen Switzerland

Oberwangen is very close to Bern. We often play also in Rubigen (in the l0wer righthand corner of this map).

7 November 2003 The Krone Bar Einsiedeln Switzerland

8 November 2003 Baden Halle 36 Baden Baden was a famous spa. Dostoyefsky set a novel there, Der Spieler, The Gambler. This word “Messe” can mean “a mass” or a “tradefair.” You see it a lot with city names. ”Messe” can merely mean “town center” or something to that effect, since the fair, and the mass, were usually held in the center of town.

9 November 2003 Albani Music Club Winterthur Switzerland Lovely people here.

Wendy Rich Glenn Halvarsson Glenn is Swedish, don’t you know. In fact, he’s a big Swedish meatball.

Sound checks. I love them so much. (That is an example of irony.) During this one, which was actually pleasant, we performed Blue Bossa and Cry Me A River, which Wendy Rich sang to perfection. The jazz ballad is really her strong point.

Wendy with that dazzling smile.

Wiedersehen !

11 November 2003 Hirsch Nürnberg Germany To some, this town connotes trials of World War Two gangsters. To me, it is the home of Albrecht Dürer.

Typically restrained crowd at one of our, pardon the expression, concerts.

I visited Dürers house in Nürnberg, and pulled this print on his own press upstairs. Big thrill for an artist.

Dürer was a very successful artist. He was the Norman Rockwell of his time, in that his art was instantly understood and very popular.

I love his work too, and have made many copies of it.

13 November 2003 Das Movie Bielefeld Germany

Bielefeld doesn’t exist! For some reason, internet users in Germany write this a lot. I know it exists. I’ve played there a couple of times.

Michael Spörke is writing a very interesting book about Willie Big Mama Mae Thornton and I am helping him with translation and editing. Maddie Fields wrote Ball & Chain and Big Mama sang it so memorably. Big Mama was big, in every way. She looked like a truck driver. When she and Nick Gravenites were together, it was like two truck drivers. The rest of us would cower in the corner when they were holding forth backstage.

Michael published the German edition of his book Big Brother and the Holding Company, Die Band, die Janis Joplin berühmt machte, in 2003 or so. This title in German has a double meaning that is impossible to translate into English. It can mean either “the band that made Janis Joplin famous,” or “the band that Janis Joplin made famous.” Rather a neat ambiguity there.

Elaine Mayes took this interesting photograph.

14 November 2003 Alte Mälzerei Regensburg Malz = malt, so this could mean The Old Maltery, a brewery.

Da läuft was. Something’s going on (t)here.

The Cotton Club Zug Switzerland

Zug is a little south of Zürich. “Zug” means a train or a column (of, say, marching soldiers) or a procession, so it’s an odd name for a town.

Katy Did Did and Peter Bilt. Peter, good guitar player, used to play with Pearl Harbor and the Explosions about the same time that I played with Pearl Heart.

Ellen Janet Deible-Stachurski Dan Andrew

30 December 2003 Sudsy Malone’s Cincinnati Ohio

31 December 2003 The Rose Medina Ohio

See you next week !

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

Hey ! Little Richard !

______________________________________________________

Big Brother and the Holding Company, part fourteen. 2002

Posted on July 8, 2012 by J L tagged.

2002

19 January 2002 Turlock California

28 January 2002 Chanhassen Minnesota

31 January 2002 Area 22 Newport Rhode Island

1 February 2002 Bank Street Café New London Connecticut

Every time I play at the Bank Street Café, someone asks me about my brother Dan who went to the Coast Guard Academy in New London.

Study for a painting.

2 February 2002 The Company Theatre Norwell Massachusetts

After playing in Norwell, we fly over the amazing Atlantic Ocean to England.

13 February 2002 The Astor Theatre Deal UK I feel as if Charles Dickens may have written about this place.

Right on the English Channel. Dover is a bit farther south down the coast and Southampton more so.

14 February The Brook Southampton UK

Beth Hart played many of these same places just before us. We once followed Yngvie Malmsteen all over Europe in a similar fashion.

I suppose you could call it the Beans and Bangers Circuit.

15 February 2002 The Point Cardiff Wales As we were entering Wales, our driver said, “Do you have your passports?” I started and replied, “No, no one told us to… ” He smiled. We fell for it. I fell for it… and her.

The French call Wales the pays de Galles. It’s a land of singers, poets, actors.

Bards

People of the voice.

Charlotte Church

The Point used to be St. Stephen’s Church and it still felt like it.

16 February 2001 The Flowerpot Derby

Derby is in the north and center of England.

It’s pronounced “darby,” as in Darby Slick.

I asked a Black Country man how he pronounced the name of this big city and he said, “BUH min ghum.” Rather different from “Birming hayam,” as they say in Alabama.

17 February 2002 The Stables Milton Keynes UK Cleo Laine, the American singer, lives here and she and her husband built this place.

Chad Quist Sam Andrew Lisa Mills Todd Vinciguerra Peter Albin

20 February 2002 The Limelight Crewe UK

Crewe is in the northwest of England, in Cheshire, where the cat lives. Crewe is the home of the Bentley automobile.

And the Limelight.

21 February 2002 Picture House Beverley UK This is such a beautiful place.

Beverley is near Hull on the Humber river.

Brierley Hill is in the West Midlands, the Black Country.

Brierley Hill is in Dudley. Samuel Johnson grew up in the town of Lichfield on the east side of Birmingham, the other side.

22 February 2002 Robin Hood Brierley Hill UK This is where Robert Plant came and stole Lisa Mills away from us. Hood Robin.

Oh, well, I have stolen and I have been stolen from, and so it goes. Paul Kantner paid me the compliment of stealing Cathy Richardson from me.

And then once or twice they took Sophia Ramos also.

I’ll just take it as a salute to my good taste in singers.

Just call me the unpaid talent scout for the Jefferson Starship. But I have stolen many a musician from them, and Jimmy Page saved my life once, so, eh?, we’re even.

23 February 2002 The Boardwalk Sheffield UK

24 February 2002 The Mean Fiddler London

27 February 2002 Piesel Fulda Germany

28 February 2002 Theater Rex Lorsch Germany

We took this photo in Liverpool, but I’m using it for Lorsch.

Laura Albergante Visconti took this photograph.

Then we went to Schwerin, Germany, way up north. It felt like going to the end of the world.

1 March 2002 Speicher Schwerin Germany

2 March 2002 Blues Garage Hannover Germany

This is where we met Michael Spörke who wrote a book about our band called: Big Brother and the Holding Company, Die Band, die Janis Joplin berühmt machte. I translated this book and in English it is now called: Living With the Myth of Janis Joplin. Michael is writing a new book about Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton and I am doing some light translating and editing on that one too. It’s an interesting story. We played many times with Big Mama and she was a fascinating character, so Michael’s book is well worth reading.

“Alte Weberei” could mean “the old weavery.”

3 March 2002 Alte Weberei Cottbus Germany

Cottbus is very far east, almost in Poland, and it feels like it.

4 March 2002 Hahn (which means “hen”) is the other airport near Frankfurt, smaller, a lille easier to negotiate. It’s like La Guardia compared to JFK.

Our friend Elena Lichtenberger (upper left) is from Kaiserslautern.

Saint Anthony (San Antonio) praying over my head.

Muddy Waters and his wife. She’s playing an A and he’s making it play.

I stole the Muddy image from Jessie Brawer. Jessie, thank you.

23 March 2002 The Powerhouse Pub Folsom California

6 April 2002 Center for the Arts Grass Valley California Drew (great name for an artist, right?) Friedman did this drawing.

20 April 2002 The Majestic Theatre Streator Illinois

Alex Call and I wrote a couple of songs together. I recorded one of them with Mary Bridget Davies, Ben Nieves and Jim Wall just last December.

At that same recording session, we did a couple of songs that Wendy Rich and I wrote just about the time this photograph was taken.

3 May 2002 Avalon Ballroom San Francisco

23 May 2002 Melba Theatre Batesville Arkansas

Beverly Ambort

Thank you, Rona Walstra.

Beverly Ambort Chad Quist Help ! Chad has a giant Bud growing out of his head. No, not that kind of Bud.

An illustration from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, artist Edmund J. Sullivan.

Some singers sound like they have a microphone in their throat. She sounds as if she has the whole PA in there.

24 May 2002 Pop’s Sauget Illinois

26 May 2002 The Waterfront Covington Kentucky

From my fingerpainting period.

“Tatemae honne,” the title of this painting, is Japanese for the public face and the private self.

Sam Andrew Lisa Mills

1 June 2002 The Thirsty Ear Columbus Ohio

One of my first sculptures.

2 June 2002 Motown Harley Davidson Taylor Michigan

14 June 2002 Constable Jack’s Newcastle California

Two good friends of the band: Judy and Todd Bolton.

15 June 2002 Lake County Fairgrounds Lakeport California On the west shore of Clearlake.

Sam Andrew senior year Kubasaki High School Okinawa Japan

29 June 2002 Tussey Mountain Amphitheatre Boalsburg Pennsylvania

7 July 2002

Musicians for Love, Janis in San Diego.

12 July 2002 Festival Grounds At The Pier Buffalo New York

27 July 2002 Kronberg Germany In a gemütliches Gasthaus. Very typical post gig scene.

31 July 2002 Woodstock Swiss style

8 August 2002 Point Breeze Webster Massachusetts

9 August 2002 Fall River Celebrates Fall River Massachusetts

10 August 2002 Ocean Beach Park New London Connecticut

15 August 2002 Coeur d’Alene Casino Worley Idaho

16 August 2002 Whitehorse Mountain Amphitheatre Darrington Washington

17 August 2002 Grant County Fair Moses Lake Washington

4 October 2002 The Landmark Hotel, room 105 Los Angeles

12 October 2002 Avalon Ballroom San Francisco I was watching Manhattan (Woody Allen) in this cinema when Alan Weiss approached. “Recognize the place ?” I looked around and it slowly dawned on me that this was the Avalon, a place where I had been caught in the broom closet with Dany and a joint. I swallowed the joint and tried to swallow Dany too.

Sign for our road when we lived in Lagunitas, California.

19 October 2002 Center For The Fine Arts Grass Valley California

20 October 2002 Spirit of Peace San Francisco Civic Center

26 October 2002 The Brookdale Lodge Brookdale California

Marie-Hélène Castelain

Françoise Hardy When I lived in Paris, Françoise Hardy and Johnny Hallyday were the king and queen of the scene.

I was barely aware of them, but in restaurants I would see them on Scopitone, a kind of proto MTV, video jukeboxes that would play a song for a franc.

27 November 2002 When musicians play snatches of other melodies during a solo, they are said to be “quoting.” These are some of the quotes I use when s0loing on Blindman.