[Sca-cooks] Eastern European History Cooking with Bonzer. . .

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>--
>[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
>In a message dated 2/11/2002 1:06:02 AM Mountain Standard Time, troy at asan.com
>writes:
>
>
>>  Or a Germanized variant of his actual name (so speaks Gwydion ap
>>  Adamnan, a.ka. G. Tacitus Adamantius). For example, I believe Paul
>>  Kovi, in his intro reference to Rumpolt, refers to him as Marcus
>>  Rumpoldt, and it took me a while to figure out who he meant.
>>
>
>And in that case it is now next to impossible to tell what the original was.
>It just looks like an odd  German name now.

Yes, but why are we suddenly discounting the fact that he _tells us
specifically_ he was born a Hungarian and that his ancestry is
Wallachian? Apart from a very basic "if he is to be believed"
caveat/qualification, why is this somehow less important than the
etymology of his name? Why would he lie? Is he nouveau riche trying
to hide a shameful past? Especially when names, especially given
names, often don't follow any rules to speak of. For example, my
mundane name neither indicates Macedonian ancestry nor any particular
love of horses. And as for the late River Phoenix, what are linguists
of the future going to gather from _that_?

>  > I think "little Wallachia" isn't so much to distinguish it from some
>>  other Wallachia, as with, say, White Russia, just a reference to its
>>  being little, probably in comparison to various enemies. Not unlike
>>  the occasional references we see to Little Israel; they're still just
>  > talking about Israel.
>
>Quite possible, especially since I haven't found any other reference to it
>yet.  It's been a fun exercise at any rate

Yep. Actually the main source I've seen for using "Little" in
connection with Israel are perhaps not the most reliable indicators
of mainstream thought... they're Kahanists, and, well, suffice it to
say that Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson probably aren't the best
source for mainstream English usage either.

>  > You ought to read it: it's an abysmal story, well written, as opposed
>>  to "Frankenstein," which is a glorious story, abysmally written. But
>>  you should probably read Rumpolt first ;-).
>>
>
>I probably should, however any of these books would be more interesting than
>my current reading selections at work, but anything is probably more
>interesting that state workers' compensation statutes. :->

Huh, Interesting! My brother does compensation law and has a roomful
of books describing , in a very detached sort of way, legal
precedents and case studies based on, for example, practical jokes
performed by workers at sausage plants in New York State. Seems they
had this cool air compressor for inflating and checking the integrity
of sausage casings, and since sausage casings are intestines, they
decided to "pants" some guy and... .

Well, you probably get the idea... my point is only that in an odd
way, compensation statutes can occasionally be entertaining in a
"Ripley's 'Believe It Or Not'" sort of way. "Jeez, how stupid can
somebody be???" But then statutes and case studies are different.

Adamantius