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Hello, will anyone in this corner of the internet know?
My partner and I were looking for the word that describes self-descriptive proper names, such as the type of character names that Dickens used or that we sometimes hear in our day-to-day dealings (my accountant's surname is Pennywise) - and we found the word "cratylic". What is the origin of this word? Where was it first used? And is there a less obscure word that defines the same thing?
Thank you Ola
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Carpal Tunnel
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Um--autological will do the trick for me; and welcome aBoard, by the way.
I couldn't find cratylic except in some British ref.'s. I've not heard it before.
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We have (had?) a surgeon in town named Dr. Schnipper. (Or was he a מוהל? I forget.) Is that what you mean?
"I don't know which is worse: ignorance or apathy. And, frankly, I don't care." - Anonymous
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Beck - yes! Or perhaps a seamstress (or musician) called Singer. Jackie, we found reference to the word in some online essays about Dickens, as well as in discussion about Martin Amis characters. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/13/martinamisMaybe it's British in origin?
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Jackie, thanks for autological
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There were a group of these aptly-named individuals in the Reagan administration. Whitehouse spokesperson Larry Speaks, for example. And the only other I remember was the Whitehouse groundskeeper, whose last name was Greene. There were so many, in fact, that I secretly felt that it was being done on purpose.
"I don't know which is worse: ignorance or apathy. And, frankly, I don't care." - Anonymous
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The term aptronym or aptonym has also been used for these names.
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Ha, how about the opposite? The American painter who's family name was Singer? Or a plummer who's called Baker? (contraptonym ?)
Last edited by BranShea; 08/12/10 11:37 AM.
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we found the word "cratylic". What is the origin of this word?
I couldn't find it in any dictionaries I looked it up in (OED, Onelook, etc.). I assume it comes from the Greek proper name, Cratylus. He is a character in one of Plato's Socratic dialogs of the same name. He champions the idea that language is natural (physis) and not conventional (nomos). So rather than an arbitrary association of objects and words, the association between an object and its name is determined.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I love the ideas here.
Faldage - aptronym is a good one. When I googled it, I also found a wiki entry for the term "nominative determinism" which included a few inventive synonyms.
BranShea, we would just call those folks stubborn contrarians :p
zmjezhd - very interesting.
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