Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 June 11

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June 11

Anatole is not from Anatolia

I've looked at the obvious articles, but can't see a statement of etymological connection, or non-connection, between a common if somewhat old-fashioned French male name, and a placename associated with Turkey (and, though I don't want to be contentious, sometimes bits of Greece too). Thoughts? BrainyBabe (talk) 08:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a Greek origin. See this. Oda Mari (talk) 08:57, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah it just means "east" in Greek. "Anatolia" is east of Greece, so they just called it "east". (The Turks, of course, have only been there since the 11th century.) Anatolius was an ancient Greek name, from which the French "Anatole" and the (much more common) Russian "Anatoly" are derived. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:41, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Cool. So the French name comes from Ancient Greek. Did it evolve via Old French -- were there chevaliers named Anatole riding spur to spur with Clovis? Or was the name (re)discovered or invented in the Classics revival of the Renaissance? Or did it pop up in French more recently, at a particular moment in Greek or Turkish history? (Perhaps at the sort of moment when, as Saki said, "Some countries produce more history than can be consumed locally"?) BrainyBabe (talk) 16:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Patriarch Anatolius of Constantinople is revered as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, so his name has always been available to the (traditionally RC) French. That doesn't mean the name has always been popular, though; names go in and out of fashion like anything else. —Angr (talk) 16:18, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I doubt that this was a natural French word from Greek through Latin, as it would have turned into Anateuil or something. It's definitely a more recent borrowing. I can't think of any medieval French knights with a name like that. It would be interesting to make a list of Greek names in medieval French. I think they would all be Biblical (Philip and Peter were very common, for example). For the most part, French nobility retained their Germanic names, I don't think there were even any classical Latin names in common usage. And of course, the western attitude to the medieval Greeks was mostly antagonistic. It's weird though, romances of Alexander were popular in French, and the hagiography of Alexius of Rome was also very popular, but I don't think medieval French people tended to have those names. Whenever a medieval author writes about contemporary Greeks it is usually prefaced by "effeminate" or "perfidious". Maybe it was considered uncouth to have an non-Biblical Greek name. When the French briefly conquered the Byzantine Empire, their children sometimes had Greek names - Demetrius of Montferrat for example...but those aren't normal circumstances. Well, this is kind of a tangent, but hopefully useful. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:31, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, the patron saint of France has a Greek name. —Angr (talk) 22:03, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Also the forename Hippolyte - Greek; "Leader of Horses" is unknown outside of French-speaking countries. Alansplodge (talk) 08:52, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

French Wikipedia has articles on several dozen Anatoles, of whom the earliest Frenchmen are Antoine Anatole Gédéon Jarry (1764-1819), and Anatole Devosge (1770-1850), so it seems the name first became popular there in the 18th century. --Antiquary (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

OP here. Great stuff! Thanks! Keep the knowledge coming! I quite take the point about names going in and out of fashion, but *why* did Anatole begin to trend in the mid C18? -- And, I swear I learned this just by chance the other day: Alansplodge, I regret to inform you that there is at least one notable non-French Hippolyte, namely the Czech anarchist who settled in Greenwich Village, Hippolyte Havel. Isn't Wikipedia grand? BrainyBabe (talk) 14:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Russian also has Ипполит (Ippolit), which is a regular rendition of Hippolytus in that language.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 15:17, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, a similar search for Hippolytes at French Wikipedia suggests that that name became fashionable there around 1780, though there are one or two earlier examples. I think that points to the wider truth that Greek personal names came into vogue with the rise of Neoclassicism in the arts, both high and decorative. French literature of the period backs that up – think of all those Corinnes and Irènes and suchlike, though I admit that Greek male personal names are less in evidence. --Antiquary (talk) 16:38, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Now that I think of it, there are some medieval French nobles named Heracles (fr:Héracle II de Polignac, so there must also have been a Héracle I) and Heraclius (Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem). "Stephen" was also a popular Greek name, although that was a Christian martyr. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:57, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

OP again. Thanks all! BrainyBabe (talk) 08:17, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Umlauts in Turkish

If umlauts are not available, is it more appropriate to write just the basic vowel (e.g. "Ataturk" instead of "Atatürk") or should one write an 'e' following the vowel (e.g. "Atatuerk"), like in German? Thanks in advance. Icek (talk) 12:10, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Definitely not ue. It's not an umlaut in Turkish by the way, ü and ö are seperate letters (I think, the article ü seems to suggest this, that "ue" is only acceptable where ¨ is an umlaut, so in German and Swedish, but not Turkish or Hungarian. Regardless you might see it rendered as "ue" automatically - the European trains database for example spells Győr "Gyoer", purely for technical reasons. - filelakeshoe 12:15, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

The "ue" instead of "ü" used to be acceptible in Hungarian: it was used in telegrams where it was technically impossible to send an "ü" (and "á" was changed to "aa"). This has fallen out of use now, so when people use mobile phones or computers and "ü" is not available, they always substitute just an "u". – b_jonas 17:49, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

See Computing with Turkish.—Wavelength (talk) 13:56, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know Turkish, but in Uyghur (which is quite similar) people often just write the plain vowel, as in your first suggestion, and trust context to disambiguate. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure ¨ is not an umlaut in Swedish. In Swedish, å, ä and ö are separate letters, alphabetised separately. Swedish doesn't even use the letter ü. JIP | Talk 14:30, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

True, Swedish was a bad example. According to the article I linked and the corresponding article on sv.wiki, ü is still used in German loanwords such as müsli, where it is correctly an umlaut and not a separate letter. But looking at Swedish alphabet you're right about ä and ö. - filelakeshoe 15:28, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

No, do not use "ue". That is a German convention reflecting both phonological and orthographical developments within German. The Turkish front rounded vowels are not recent developments, and the dotted letters were adopted that way with the latin alphabet spelling reform. There was no internal development in Turkish from the digraph to the umlauted letters. μηδείς (talk) 15:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

• See Trema (diacritic)#Borrowing of German umlaut notation. See also this (unrelated) article. --Theurgist (talk) 16:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

If umlauts are not available at your keyboard, but if you want to write something for Wikipedia–or for some website–you can use the HTML notations:

• Ä or Ä for Ä = Ä,
• ä or ä for ä = ä,
• Ö or Ö for Ö = Ö,
• ö or ö for ö = ö,
• Ü or Ü for Ü = Ü,
• ü or ü for ü = ü.

That will look all right (at least if the equations are true). -- Irene1949 (talk) 22:27, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Sound description in sign languages

Intuitively, I would expect sign languages to be rather less precise than spoken languages when describing aural phenomena. I would expect there to be a much smaller lexical set to choose from when describing sounds. I imagine that sign languages would not have a lot of free-standing aural terms like "chirp", "tinkle", "murmur", "rustle", "crackle", "hiss", "whoosh", etc, but would instead deal with sounds in a highly analogical manner. However, I don't really know, and I imagine that different sign languages have different approaches. Can anyone provide some information about this? I'm specifically interested in how an interpreter would translate, for instance, a poem containing a large number of sound-related terms. LANTZY^TALK 19:32, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I just want to say, I think this is a great question, really mind-stretching. I am only sorry that no one can offer any informed thoughts or referenced resources. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:06, 17 June 2011 (UTC)