Ever specified a last name for any of the kids?
I think it’s high time they had one.
Gene.
Artur.
Irene.
And Bjorn, who didn’t get to come.
Ever specified a last name for any of the kids?
I think it’s high time they had one.
Gene.
Artur.
Irene.
And Bjorn, who didn’t get to come.
Gene Wheeler (a very nice man who worked at our local service station)
Artur Kominek (I just like the sound, I hope it’s not an offensive word…)
Irene Martinez
Bjorn Swenson
Well, you asked… 😉
Bjorn Sprakling.
Gene Autry
Artur Godfrey
Irene Adler
Hmmm… somebody’s not giving this question the proper degree of serious attention. Either that or they are trying to mindwarp the younger readership 😉
Ahem… “Thorgil Sprakling (also called Torkel, Torgils or Sprakalägg) was a Dane whose grandsons became kings of Denmark and England. In Knýtlinga saga he is also called “the fast”. Florence of Worcester named his father as ‘Ursius’ (i.e. urso, Latin for bear, björn in Scandinavian languages) and Saxo Grammaticus tells the story that this Ursius/Björn was the son of a bear and a fair Swedish maiden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorgil_Sprakling
I know this because a GGM was Octavia Spradling, the modern derivative.
Heh,especially on Irene.
Gene Tallis
Artur Magnussen
Irene Cho-White
Bjorn Breakfield
Bjorn / Björn / Bjørn Heyerdahl? — Which reminds me to read Thor Heyerdahl’s book, Kon-Tiki, which my mother had loved.
Or Bjorn Thorssen, by similar logic.
Or Bjorn Danelaw or Danischer or similar. — Thinking here of the Danish connection to Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman times, Beowulf, the Danelaw, and Danes generally. — But also because it references one of Andre Norton’s space traders, I think from the Solar Queen, with the given name Dane. A genre nod.
Gene Francis Crick — Sorry, pun involved there. Or was it Watson and Crick who discovered DNA? — Bit too obvious to suggest Roddenberry or Coon. Heh. — Gene Kelley? Note -ey as a reference to DeForest Kelley. Gene DeForest? DeForête? (Silly spell-checker tried to make that “Defrost.” LOL.) Can’t see the DeForête passe les DuBois? 😉
Gene Shaw. (After George Bernard Shaw.) Gene DeWalt. (Walt Whitman, Walt Disney. Wally and the Beaver?)
Artur Marconi. Artur Theremin. Artur Spedale (that’s an Italian family name). Artur Toscani. (In reference to Tuscany and the ancient Etruscans.)
Artur Nikolaev. Artur Timofeev. — Hmm, I need a supply of Russian surnames from which to pick.
Artur Przwalski. — That could puzzle the atevi linguists!
Artur Hsing. (I’m not sure if Hsing is used as a last name; it’s part of a given name, I know.)
Well, I see my naming hat is creative about last names, but lately not about first names. Hun. Interesting.
I fear I may have already given Bjorn the name Andresson.
But Gene Wheeler—fits, and honors an old friend.
Artur…mmm. French or French colony. But he’s freckled with shocking red hair, who knows? In space nobody can figure your ancestry…
Irene—still not sure.
the red hair came from Danish raiders, right? I expect there were plenty of those in Brittany/Normandy.
Also Note: That Chinese -hs- is probably transliterated differently nowadays, but a friend from junior high had the given name, Yung-Hsing, which was Americanized into an oddly traditional name out of English history, York. At least they didn’t try to change his family name to Lancaster…. (And if, on the unlikely chance he might be a fan and run across that, I’m only teasing. He was a good friend back then — a 6th grade boy with a Chinese-English dictionary, because he didn’t speak English yet, who’d immigrated from Taiwan, R.O.C., He learned Enlgish very fast, the first two years.)
One might look for the most common human family name and give that to Irene. You might want to gift one of them with Kaiser, Cesar (an accent over the e), or even Sallet, since like is for Sallets….
Since when did 5PM start qualifying as late?
After the change to daylight savings time? When your appointment was at 1PM?
* * *
The triple stars, or dingbats, to break passages in a book: are they ellipses, asterisms, or…?
* * *
I am watching Worricker: Turks & Caicos. Someone used the word “bedefinitely”. “Be-” seemed to be used as an intensifier; bedefinitely not to allow an object (“I moan;” “I bemoan my fate.”) Interesting. I’d not thought of be- as so useful. Since one can just write, should one bewrite a book? At some time was that a hard rule in English? Or German?
I’ve never heard “bedefinitely,” and suspect it’s a bedeviling befuddlement. 😉 But “be-” as a prefix has multiple, rather fuzzy uses, an old, old Germanic grammatical thing, along with “a-/on-” before verbs and the old “ge-/y-/i-” that (IIRC) merged into “a-/on-” around the Middle English / Modern English period.
* * *
That tripe-star section break is called an asterism, IIRC. I know it’s not an ellipsis, i.e. “…” — There’s no real hard and fast rule on how that section break appears, but it’s an old convention.
Note: I’m probably oddball, in that when one has an ellipsis, then a phrase, then an ellipsis, then a period, it loos unbaalanced, and I somehow want an extra period at the start, to balance it.
I also wish the US English standard would put the punctuation outside a quotation, programmer-style, unless it is literally part of the quote.
And…I’m one of those who adds, rather than omits, a comma as the last item in a comma-separated list. { Apples, Oranges, Bananas, Strawberries, and Peaches. }
Hooray for proper punctuation!!!!
I got into arguments with officers in the Navy over the way they’d punctuate their sentences. If I found a grievous error, usually a misspelled word, I’d just correct it without bringing it to their attention. (Technically, you’re supposed to get it re-approved if there are any changes to be made, but hey, I was the Chief Radioman, nobody argues with me, right?).
My old English grammar books still show that comma before the last item in that comma-separated list….I do it to this day. I don’t care WHAT the Chicago Book of Style says….they’re wrong.
The Chicago Manual of Style says to put a comma before conjunctions, no ifs, ands, buts, etc. (§5.50 ff.) I’ve followed the rule that you don’t put a comma before etc. but now I’ll have to at least consider Chicago’s position.
It’s not that the Chicago Manual is bad, it’s just misunderstood. It’s a manual for university level textbooks, not fiction or any other kind of writing.
The Oxford comma can cause confusion in rare cases, as it can prevent it in rare cases. Wikipedia has a good discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
I’m not begging for a fight in my novel, but otherwise, as I learned in programming, proper nesting rules take precedence in punctuating quotes. Unless punctuation is appropriately part of the quotation, but is part of how I choose to punctuate my sentence, I’m putting outside the quote. There are times it can change the meaning of the quotation!
Natural language punctuation isn’t computer language punctuation. Commas fill a number of roles in natural language. In computer syntax, we tend to do wacky things like put something in parenthesis with parentheses, use commas only as list delimiters–it’s inhuman. 😉
And, below, which planet? Jupiter? (Guessing.)
I’m not one to be a slave to “style”. Call it a personal idiosyncracy.
I believe it is in “Jupiter”. I’ll have to wait for my local radio station, also streaming on allclassical.org, to play “Planets” again.
What I take from your “Serial comma” article is: Everybody’s got a “style manual”, so there is no style manual. Besides which the goal isn’t “being in style”, but communication. Put me on Mark Twain’s side. 😉
That’s a good series, and there’s one to come! 🙂 Does Johnny ever speak with an exclamation point?
In “Page 8” I learned a familiar tune in Holst’s “Planets” is actually an old hymn, “I pledge to thee, my country”.
Other way round Paul. In 1921 Gustav Holst set a patriotic poem by Cecil Spring Rice to a theme from his Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity from the Planets suite. He was apparently hopelessly overworked when he was asked to do a musical setting for the poem and was relieved that the bit of Jupiter fit with only minor tweaking. He didn’t actually have to write anything new. “I Vow to Thee My Country” became a major hoary old chestnut at occasions like school assemblies, Remembrance Day ceremonies and Diana, Princess of Wales’ wedding, but in the cosmic (or even hymn) scale of things, its not all that old.
I love The Planets, but think the lyrics are pretty schmaltzy.
Further to the great punctuation debate, Lynn Truss’ “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” deals with the whole situation very well.
Thanks. I knew contemporaneous Rafe Vaughn-Williams was also a mighty collector of folksongs and tunes, e.g. sticking the tune “Lovely Joan” in the middle of Greensleeves 😉 , as were others. Many composers are inveterate tune thieves, sometimes of even their own! 🙂 I suppose another example is Sibelius’ “Finlandia” giving rise to the hymn “This is my song”.
OMG!!! It’s November! Past time for a change!
One of the most interesting woman I’d ever known was Irene Fullerton. She was a postmistress in the 1950s New Mexico, in the teeny town west of Grants on Route 66. Mt. Taylor loomed over the area. She survived breast cancer and apparently did have early radiation treatments as well as a mastectomy in the early 1950s. Mom said she had scars from the procedure the radiation was so high. I had been told her family had built the Hubbell Trading Post, but I’m not sure if it’s true. Her family was a pioneering one with I think one grandfather a territorial governor. What I remember most was a surrogate grandmother who would bake her own doughnuts, who had a troop of dogs,a mynah bird with a questionable vocabulary and who would drag 2 year old me about the hills around the Continental Divide looking at old puebolan ruins. She told me once of going on a Fred Harvey tour to the Hopi Mesas to see the Snake Dance done — I think they stopped doing those for the public back in the 20s. She passed in 2002 at 106, still having a few cigarettes a day and a shot of whiskey before bed every night.
I vote for Irene Fullerton. She would have thought it great fun.
What about a charity auction for last names? That could also get awkward. A friend of mine named a character after me in her latest novel. Considering her target audience is teenaged girls, this could real awkward real fast.
Mmm. I hesitate to name AFTER a person because the next-ofs might not like it. But we can take bits and pieces.
I promise to not object. 😉 🙂 Besides, Octavia’s name was derivative, not the same.
Well as regards Irene, I know her daughter and son-in-law died several years back. There was one granddaughter, and a great-granddaughter whom I met about 20 years ago, but no idea where she is now. I don’t know of any other close family. Course as with just about any name there’s likely bunches out there. Sure shocked me how many mes there are on Facebook let alone Google.
“NYC Doctor Who Had Ebola Leaves Hospital”
That’s an episode of “Doctor Who” I’ve never seen!
“Doctor, Cured of Ebola, Released With Cheers, Hugs”
If Artur is of French derivation why not use an obscure French name Like Blampied from Jersey or Gagné from Québec or Emmanuel from the Caribbean?
Gibout, Bilot also from the Channel Islands.
Any good ones from The Big Easy area? Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Still thinking.
Artur Rubenstein, as long as some of us are thinking along musical lines. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I think it was the last Person of Interest that had one villain named Walter (a very popular name on TV, suddenly) and another named Elias. Oddly PoI is on CBS not ABC, which is owned by Disney, as in Walter Elias Disney.
My favorite “Walter” is the old grump in Jeff Dunham’s group of puppets for his ventriloquist act….!
Too many good suggestions. I am going to line up likely names and use the dart method. Well, drop pennies onto a sheet of paper. Where they land…
I’d bet that after umpty-hundred years on the ship and the station, surnames and ethnicity are only loosely connected. Name them however seems to fit each one.
Surnames Christian and Adams cover about all the Bounty descendants.
They started with a lot fewer, to begin with, though. We saw in the first parts of Foreigner that they had a mix of surnames, and we don’t know much about how things have changed since.