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

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.

We have (had?) a surgeon in town named Dr. Schnipper. (Or was he a מוהל? I forget.) Is that what you mean?

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/martinamis

Maybe it's British in origin?

Jackie, thanks for autological

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.

The term aptronym or aptonym has also been used for these names.

Ha, how about the opposite? The American painter who's family name was Singer? Or a plummer who's called Baker? (contraptonym ?)

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.

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.

Are they saying here that what a thing is determines its name, or that names naturally come from the essence of a thing? For the former, family names in many European languages - Metzger, Smith, etc. - fit the bill; and for the latter, I can imagine (perhaps) the original sound to represent a thing being coined to evoke the thing in question. "Cricket," for a simple example, could imitate the sound a cricket makes. Of course, not all coinage need be onomatopoeic, but is that the idea?

hola, Ola!

I had a doctor named Payne....

I had a doctor named Payne....

And my dentist's name is Les Plack. (He tells me his uncle Morris was a dentist also.)

"Cricket," for a simple example, could imitate the sound a cricket makes. Of course, not all coinage need be onomatopoeic, but is that the idea?

Yes, it's called phonosemantics or sound symoblism. and it plays a small part in language, though some deny it. The name thing is based on the arbitrary association between the words (German) metzger 'butcher' and (English) tailor and such. Also few people with those names are in the professions. I see the physis-nomos (nature-convention) schools as the extremes on a spectrum. Besides, Plato's Cratylus, you might want to take a look at Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. He talks about the arbitrary nature of association of the signifier (sound of a word) to the signified (concept). He did not posit an association with things as earlier philosophers / linguists did. A great many signs (words) are for concepts only and no objects are involved. He also talks about onomatopoeia versus the arbitrary nature of the sign. One of his examples, (French) glas 'death knell', was used by Derrida as the title of one of his books.

There are a bunch of funny names for the various theories on the origins of language. The bow-wow theory (link) is the one based on onomatopoeia. Animals make a whole slew of different sounds in different languages.

when did surnames begin to come into play?

>Also few people with those names are in the professions.

jheem, perforce it is highly unlikely that my neighbor, Tim Baker, turns out to be in that profession. but isn't it also likely that a distant ancestor was, in fact, a baker? or have I completely misunderstood your point (once again)?

but isn't it also likely that a distant ancestor was, in fact, a baker?

Could be. Probably was. But all the non-baker Bakers in the world surely outnumber the baking Bakers. Also, the word baker (< OE bæcere) predates anybody with that name, I would suppose. And, all those non-Bakers are referred to as Baker because that's the name they inherited from their father (or chose for themselves, or married into a Baker family). I was talking about the origins of words or the semantics of words.

or have I completely misunderstood your point (once again)?

Well, I guess I didn't state it well. I tend towards the nomos (convention) side of the scales when it comes to semantics. I don't think there's much in b and k with a vowel in between that signifies a person who bakes or the process of baking.

when did surnames begin to come into play?

Depends on where you're talking about. In England, it was after the Norman invasion. Probably in the 13th century. Started with the nobles, spread to the non-nobles later.

just thinking about names and language and what we called each other before we had surnames.

"The bow-wow theory (link) is the one based on onomatopoeia. Animals make a whole slew of different sounds in different languages."

It may be discredited this bow-wow theory, but it seems so logic that it went from simple signal-sound communication ( like animals use) to a stage of communication where we crossed the line to communication in onomatopoeia sounds. Until that sort of got solid in basic conventional sounds/words?

[Was'nt there in the Skandinavian and Icelandic tradition this habit of being called such and so's daughter or son for a surname? (Also in Germany and the lowlands) ??]

[Was'nt there in the Skandinavian and Icelandic tradition this habit of being called such and so's daughter or son for a surname? (Also in Germany and the lowlands) ??]

Still ikn Iceland. The telephone book for the country (!) has listings by first names. Very few people have family names. X Yson and W Qdottir.

just thinking about names and language and what we called each other before we had surnames.

We pretty much called each other by our given names or by nicknames and epithets. If you live in a small community, there is little use for family names. You can get by with John, Little John, John the backer, or John from down the Holler.

In our paper today there was an article that mentioned Dr. Brad Black's Eye Associates. I smiled, imagining the sign outside the place reading Dr. Brad Black Eye Associates...

Here's a site related to the discussion:

http://www.google.com/search?q=History,+Meaning+and+Origin+of+Names&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS387US388&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=AjtnTNLZJcTflgeS16SfBQ&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CEYQ5wIwCg

There's a footnote in (if I remember correctly) Hollander's translation of Heimskringla that claims surnames became mandatory in England with the introduction of the so-called "poll tax."

I am reminded today* that there is (yet another) term which can be applied here: euonym - [from Gk eu, good + onym, name] a name well-suited to the person, place or thing named

*whilst updating the wwftd dictionary, to wit
the worthless word for the day is: euneirophrenia

[fr. Gk oneiros, dream + eu-, good + -phrenia]
/u NI ro FRE ni uh//
rare peace of mind after a pleasant dream

http://www.google.com/search?q=History,+Meaning+and+Origin+of+Names&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS387US388&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=AjtnTNLZJcTflgeS16SfBQ&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CEYQ5wIwCg

google.com?

This google link has given us another panavison page. Amazing. Must travel a long way along the line to find the reply button at the right.

rare peace of mind after a pleasant dream.

A very nice state of mind indeed, though the word will be hard to remember.

I know we have some Latin speakers in the crowd. Would somebody please translate for me this phrase, which I found in the death record of a distant cousin?

cosus tristissimus, reliquil septem, infantulos

cosus tristissimus, reliquil septem, infantulos

Are you sure about the first and third words? It might help to know the date of the text.

tristissimus 'very sad'
septem 'seven'
infantulos 'small children'
is there a line (macron or tilde) over the 'o' in cosus?
Is the final letter in reliquil really an 'l' or perhaps a 't'. Are the commas really there in the original?

Latin speaker - you are probably refering to me. Such easy stuff latin. It means: I cousin Tristissimus relinquish (all I own to the) seventh child.
ETA: I'll let the others tweak it for you.

The phrase was transcribed by me from a microfilm copy of a German church record from 1826. I don't have the original to hand, but the "l" may well be a "t," and I didn't notice any diacritical marks at all in the original, though they may have been there. The commas were there, but they may just be idiosyncratic.

I was leaning towards Avy's translation, but I just thought I'd double check with somebody who actually speaks the language, following Churchill's timeless principle of avoiding the spider monkey when the organ-grinder is in the room.

[Fists ready]
Whacha tryin to say I DON'T? When your seventh child gets all that money from Cousin Tristissimus you'll thank me.

Oh, never. In fact, I enjoyed your translation of Gluteus Maximus tremendously. It just resembled my approach to Latin a bit too closely.

Ah, yes ... The Big Sticky.

Such easy stuff latin. It means: I cousin Tristissimus relinquish (all I own to the) seventh child.

Well, one of the words in Latin for 'cousin' is consobrinus (the child of a mother's sister). Cosus doesn't really mean anything in Latin. I asked about the tilde over the o because that was a medieval convention for marking a vowel followed by a nasal.

Septem is 'seven', not 'seventh'. Infantulos is plural and in the accusative case. For a stretch, if the word transcribed as reliquil is a verb of some kind, septem infantulos could not be an indirect object, but it could be a direct one. "He Xes the seven babies."

If the commas are there in the original, they don't make much sense. Was there more? You should have paid the couple of pfennigs and printout out the page from the microfilm.