Roshambo - 04/11/04 12:38 PM
AKA Rock, Paper, Scissors.
When I was a yoot we counted out the preliminaries in this game with the syllables, 'Lam, Zam, Po.' I never understood why and never really bought the explanation that it was Italian for 'one, two, three.' I had heard that the game was sometimes called Roshambo, but have just recently discovered (from none other than Uncle Cecil: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrockpaper.html) that it is so called after Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau. It just occurred to me that perhaps that was the origin of our counting phrase Lam Zam Po. The biggest jump there is from the Ro to the Lam. So my first question is, "can anyone give me good linguistic reasons for believing this?" My next question is, "What is the word for the relationship of three items where A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A?"
When I was a yoot we counted out the preliminaries in this game with the syllables, 'Lam, Zam, Po.' I never understood why and never really bought the explanation that it was Italian for 'one, two, three.' I had heard that the game was sometimes called Roshambo, but have just recently discovered (from none other than Uncle Cecil: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrockpaper.html) that it is so called after Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau. It just occurred to me that perhaps that was the origin of our counting phrase Lam Zam Po. The biggest jump there is from the Ro to the Lam. So my first question is, "can anyone give me good linguistic reasons for believing this?" My next question is, "What is the word for the relationship of three items where A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A?"
