What’s in a name? As Osumaka Likaka argues in this illuminating study, the names that Congolese villagers gave to European colonizers reveal much about how Africans experienced and reacted to ...colonialism. The arrival of explorers, missionaries, administrators, and company agents allowed Africans to observe Westerners’ physical appearances, behavior, and cultural practices at close range—often resulting in subtle yet trenchant critiques. By naming Europeans, Africans turned a universal practice into a local mnemonic system, recording and preserving the village’s understanding of colonialism in the form of pithy verbal expressions that were easy to remember and transmit across localities, regions, and generations.     Methodologically innovative, Naming Colonialism advances a new approach that shows how a cultural process—the naming of Europeans—can provide a point of entry into economic and social histories. Drawing on archival documents and oral interviews, Likaka encounters and analyzes a welter of coded fragments. The vivid epithets Congolese gave to rubber company agents—“the home burner,” “Leopard,” “Beat, beat,” “The hippopotamus-hide whip”—clearly conveyed the violence that underpinned colonial extractive economies. Other names were subtler, hinting at derogatory meaning by way of riddles, metaphors, or symbols to which the Europeans were oblivious. Africans thus emerge from this study as autonomous actors whose capacity to observe, categorize, and evaluate reverses our usual optic, providing a critical window on Central African colonialism in its local and regional dimensions.
This article examines the evidence of ancient authors on the unofficial nicknames of Achaemenid Persian kings. It pays special attention to the interpretation of the nickname of Μακρόχειρ. Two ...variants are considered for its translation. In the first case, one must talk about the ancient authors’ perceptions of this nickname as relating to a person who had one arm longer than the other. In the second case, the nickname is interpreted metaphorically: it is believed to be used for a ruler who is seeking an extension of his possessions. The possibility of applying the nickname of Μακρόχειρ to each of the three Persian kings – Darius I, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes I – is investigated.
Novella V.1 of the Decameron recounts the transformation of a Cypriot youth given two names in the tale: Galeso and Cimone. Love changes the uncouth protagonist, given the brutish nickname Cimone in ...childhood, into a sophisticated man of letters worthy of his aristocratic birth name, Galeso, a transformation evoking classic Neoplatonic and Stilnovistic tropes. Boccaccio's narrative undermines these, however, when the post-transformation protagonist chooses to keep his nickname rather than revert to his more genteel birth name. This study explores the relationship between Galeso/Cimone's two names and his pre-and post-transformation natures. I argue that the recurring lack of correspondence between the protagonist's name and his nature destabilizes the ancient exegetic strategy of interpretatio nominis, which holds that the etymology of the former gives the reader clues for interpreting the latter. Whereas previous scholarship has explored the etymological implications of the nickname Cimone for disrupting this interpretive framework, I trace the classical roots of the more seemingly noble birth name, Galeso. I maintain that its rustic classical associations, in particular, its evocation of Ovid's uncivilized Cyclops-shepherd, Polyphemus, prompt the savvy reader to question interpretatio nominis as an effective heuristic tool.
This article is the first in a series devoted to nicknames of well-known people in Greece of pre-Hellenistic times. In it general considerations are primarily expressed about the role of nicknames in ...human societies (including ancient Greek), relations of nicknames to personal names and divine epithets, terminology of nicknames among the Greeks, and the possible reasons for not very broad development of the practice of nicknaming in Greece during this period.
A nickname is a fundamental phenomenon of the history of culture, and its real significance has not yet been appreciated. Nicknames in particular served as means of distinguishing individuals within any society. The names of the ancient Greeks had originally resembled nicknames as much as possible. Onomastic units in Greek poleis were mostly meaningful.
Nicknames can be assigned—not from a semantic but rather from an emotional point of view—to three basic types. We deal with nicknames of a) a positive, exalted character (“Olympian” as to Pericles); b) a negative, pejorative character (“Coalemos”—“Simpleton” as to Cimon the Elder); c) a neutral character—those that show a certain characteristic appearance of an individual (e.g., “One-Eyed”), or some kind of memorable detail of his biography (Hipponicus the “Ammon” in Athens at the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries BC).
Another interesting thing took place in pre-Hellenistic times. Nicknames were more often connected not with politicians and state figures but with people from cultural spheres—poets, philosophers.
The use of nicknames in films serves as a way to add an additional layer of character history and identity without overwhelming the audience with unnecessary explanations. Nicknames are often used to ...illustrate character traits, past experiences, or backgrounds, and they can be both flattering and derogatory. In crime-oriented films, nicknames are particularly common and are used to highlight the shady nature of the characters. However, nicknames are not exclusive to criminals and can be found in various genres. The act of naming can be seen as a performative action, and the bearer of the nickname can choose to accept or reject it, thus shaping their own identity. Overall, nicknames in films serve as a narrative tool to enhance character development and provide additional context.
The book under review examines the case of compiling a regional dictionary of modern nicknames. The dictionary contains more than 2,000 unofficial appellations from respondents of different social ...background, age, and socio-cultural groups, collected over the years by the author-compiler (Maria Bobrova) and her team on the territory of the Perm region. The book opens with a preface and a three-part introduction in which the author substantiates the principles of material selection, collection, and presentation, specifies the timeframe and the geographical scope of the dictionary. Apart from the practical aspects regarding the macrostructure of the book, it also touches upon some important theoretical problems related to terminology and classification of the material. The latter is a primary and undisputed advantage of the dictionary, showcased in previous publications and conference contributions. It is quite certain that this material will be of interest to a wide circle of researchers in the field of humanities besides onomatologists. Some critical remarks made in the review do not diminish the importance and relevance of the work, and therefore the prospects of Maria Bobrova’s research are obvious.
Charlemagne as David revisited Boshoff, Lynton A.
In die skriflig : tydskrif van die Gereformeerde Teologiese Vereniging,
08/2023, Letnik:
57, Številka:
1
Journal Article
In order to portray the "Greek" merchant by elucidating the confidential aspects of his affairs (basically related to money and merchandise), starting the investigation from the virtues and emotions ...previously resulted, while exploiting, as storage media for any such information, the Greek documentary sources (the accounting books and acts and the commercial correspondence within the remaining archival fonds), as well as data from medieval juridical literature (mostly drawn up in Latin), this paper analyzes the dimensions of the secretiveness that pervades the practical and scriptural usages specific to the old medieval mercantile humanity in the Euro-Balkan region (XVth - mid-XIX? century). Generously illustrated with inedited fragments from documents (also including fifteen photoreproductions), the study aims at unifying the coordinates - communication, scriptural act, archivology - that clarify the extent to which the commercial archives testify to the secretive obsessions and compulsions of the merchants, especially the "Greek" ones, and of those who have inspired their customs. The Greek documents within the fonds of Aromanian trading houses and companies attest encoding reflexes for messages, contexts and names belonging to the entrepreneurs involved in the Euro-Balkan trade. The analysis of such communication methods has been structured on an array of mercantile risks that impose precautionary measures: economic and political espionage, Arcana Artis, great businesses, money, travelling, characterizations and recommendations, loan, trials, the "economy of secrets". Cryptic writings, forged words and the use of pseudonyms and nicknames - beyond being major palaeographic hindrances - represent scriptural practices that conceal commercial realia (prohibited goods, forbidden currencies, hidden fees and profits, loans, favors, etc.). The regulatory instruments of medieval bookkeeping disclose the theoretical vision of the epoch (the one that has generated the historiographic concept of the "economy of secrets") regarding the range of merchants' mystical consuetudes - starting from protecting the correspondence, keeping secret records, concealing the archives -, in the interest of debating mainly the excessive prudence displayed towards the juridical requesting of these private archives. A certain discretion reveals itself as one of the defining features of the bookkeepers; in the spirit of the professional secrecy, so sacredly guarded by the medieval guilds (Arcana Artis) and even more so by the merchants' branch, this discretion occults the methodology of the accounting books and, consequently, the very "art" of counting and justifying the flow of money. In conclusion, after outlining these levels of mercantile secretiveness, by means of stepping, then, further into the family secretiveness (the trade house and firm correspond to the founding social entity), the research leads will be possible to be followed in order to disclose the personal categories of informations that prove to be sensitive inside the "Greek" merchants network and to create echoes in their social norms and emotions: blood ties, affinities or dissolutions, psychomental medical history.
It is the aim of the study to reveal the distinctive clipping process that takes place in the word formation of nicknames in Mbojo which is one of the major ethnic groups in Bima and its ...surroundings. Moreover, this study employed qualitative method. The objects of this current study were Mbojo nicknames used by people who live in Dompu Regency, West Nusa Tenggara. The nicknames were collected from the family cards (KK), in 2 community units (RW). The data were supported by an informant who is a native of Dompu regency was requested to validate and check whether the collected nicknames data were truly the local people. In analyzing the data, the researcher classified the collected data using the categorization of clipping process. The result of the study showed that the clipping process found in Mbojo nicknames took place in the beginning of the names (fore-clipping); in the end of the names (back-clipping); in the beginning and end of the names (ambi-clipping); in the middle and end of the names (median-clipping and back-clipping); and in the beginning, middle, and end of the names (fore-clipping, median-clipping, and back-clipping). It is implicated that among these clipping process, ambi-clipping is the most frequently found type in Mbojo nicknames.
PDF
