18 February 1999, 854 words
"Savages and barbarians believe in a magical connection between persons and their names," wrote Bertrand Russell. "Philosophers find it difficult to remember the distinction between words and what they designate."
Magical connection or merely logical, I sometimes feel that the unconscious belief people have in the power of names can and does influence their destinies. For a man named John Bobbitt to beat a woman with Latin blood and then fall into a drunken stupor, for example, was simply asking for trouble. And it is quite possible that Stompei Seipei's first name encouraged Winnie Mandela's Football Club to kick him to death. Nor may it be a coincidence that Richard Seed is pushing for human cloning clinics, or that Marilyn Vos Savant has the world's highest measured IQ. And, closer to home, would Basdeo Panday have had any chance of becoming the country's first Indian-descended Prime Minister if his surname didn't include an integral part of our creole culture?
For this reason, people should really be more careful about naming their children. If your last name is already "Assam", for example, it is criminally irresponsible to saddle the child with a first name like, say, "Mervyn." The child will inevitably become a man who talks like that. Same thing happens if your surname is Bereaux, which is merely a vowel away from being a government department or desk, and on top of that you name the child Hegwidge. Naturally, he will grow up to be a politician who behaves like that. On the other hand, naming your daughter "Kamla" (goddess) seems to work fairly well, as our country's Legal Affairs Minister demonstrates. But, perhaps because Trinidadian Hindus speak an English dialect, a name like "Sat" lends itself to all sorts of obvious neuroses.
This superstitious attitude towards names is rooted in the belief that persons who possess a mastery of language have skills beyond the merely linguistic. The root of the word "grammar", for example, goes back to the Latin word grammatica, which in medieval times denoted not merely literacy but general learning, including knowledge of occult sciences such as astrology and magic.
Because of this, people in the old days were a lot more careful about calling names. The Hebrew name for God, for example, was so sacred that it was never pronounced. The Hebrew alphabet consists only of characters for consonants, with vowel indicated as points or dots in characteristic positions above or below. Thus, God's name was transliterated as YHWH. In some texts, vowel points for "Adonai" (Lord) were substituted, indicating that that word should be spoken instead of YHWH. But Christian scholars of the Renaissance mistakenly used the vowels of Adonai, leading through Latin and English to Jehovah, so that nowadays we have people who come to your gate on Sunday morning calling themselves by a name that is an error.
If this seems a rather duncey-head thing to do, don't be surprised. The word "dunce" comes from the name John Duns Scotus, a13th-century scholastic theologian. In the early 16th century, the humanist scholars of classical Greek and Latin and the religious reformers criticized the Dunses, or followers of Scotus, for their resistance to the new learning of the Renaissance and the new theology of the Reformation. By the end of the16th century, "dunse" or "dunce" had acquired its present meaning of "a stupid person".
However, such close-mindedness has characterised believers long before medieval times. That is why the word "fanatic" originally referred only to religion. The root of the word goes back to the Latin fanaticus ("belonging to a temple") which comes from fanum ("temple"). The earliest recorded English use of the noun "fanatic" refers to a lunatic, while its use as an adjective is first recorded in reference to demonic possession. In the17th century when religious controversy between Puritans and Royalists was at its height, the noun and adjective were applied to religious zealots. (I have much more to say about them, but you'll have to buy a Weekend Independent to read it.)
Of course, words frequently move very far away from their roots. "Bizarre", which means "eccentric, grotesque, weird", comes from the Basque word "bizarra" which means only "beard". On the other hand, when you see the unshaven Thusians on TV and recall their habits of whipping an eleven-year-old girl and peeping at her while she bathed, perhaps the word hasn't travelled so far after all.
Sometimes, though, a word's journey from its original meaning is only apparent. "Calypso", for example, comes from the Greek verb kaluptein which means "to conceal." A calypso, as originally conceived, had of course exactly the opposite intention. But it may be that the form came to be called "calypso" because the slaves had to hide from the planters to sing their mocking songs. So calypso's etymological root seems contradictory only because its ideological root is ironic - which, of course, is entirely appropriate. Besides, word meanings are never set in stone: thus, if the UNC and the Maha Sabha leaders have their way, calypso may well become an artform kaluptein once again.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh