Names? What's in a name? I <3 names!
M.I.A. refutes the circulating rumors that her newly-born son was named "Ickett".
"I didn't release the baby name because I didn't think it was news," she continues. "But I will be back with something newsworthy soon. Till then, go pick on Apple, Satchel, and Moon Unit."
And then the
best part of the article comes at the end, where there's a poll to choose what you think is the most bizarre celebrity baby name. Holy
shit, some of those names are
atrocious!
Banjo - Unless you're
a brown honey bear in bright yellow shorts who pals around with a red-crested breegull, you can't pull off this name. Period.
Bronx Mowgli - I demand to see this kid do a crossover of
The Jungle Book with
Rumble in the Bronx (which was actually filmed in Vancouver, lulz).
Jermajesty - I was initially pronouncing this "JER-ma-jes-ty", but then realized that if you pronounced it "jer-MAJ-es-ty", it ended up being a pun. I can't decide which version is worse. And you can't even get a really good nickname out of that! "Jerma"? Or "Jesty"? Well, I guess you could have "Jes" as a nickname, but good lord.
Moon Unit - ...I...just...
what? How on any planet is this considered a good name for anything besides a sci-fi gadget?!
Moxie Crimefighter - Hmm, I wonder what career path the parents have in mind for this kid!
Pilot Inspektor - Geez! Why don't you just call the kid "Inspektor Gadget" and be done with it?!
***
In
this post on
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ysabetwordsmith's LJ, I mentioned that, out of the languages I used to learn or am learning, the hardest one for me was - of all things - Cebuano/Binisaya, the native tongue of my parents. At the time I made the comment, I couldn't articulate exactly why it was hard for me, though I suspected that it had to do with pronunciation and the radically different grammar from English. Well, I flipped through
A Handbook of Cebuano (got it for Christmas from
dantaron recently, and hoo boy, is that second issue ever a
bitch.
First off, Cebuano's a Verb-Subject-Object language, so that right there is going to trip me up. Then we've got two different possessive pronoun forms, depending on whether the pronoun is placed before or after the object it's modifying (
akong pamilya vs.
pamilya ko, and there's also an additional pronoun form (among others) that are used when the pronoun is the direct or indirect object of a sentence. Demonstrative pronouns, too, have two forms, depending on whether they're the subject of the sentence or not. And to express words like "myself" or "yourself", you use
sa akong kaugalingon (first-person) or
sa imong kaugalingon (second-person), etc., replacing the modifying pronoun as needed.
Then there's the "genitive" form, which is used to indicate possessor. Not only are the phrases longer than their English equivalents, but the preposition used changes depending on whether the possessor is a proper name (or functions as one), if there are more than one possessors with a proper name, or [insert other cases here].
ang inahan ni Paula - Paula's mother
(possessor is a proper name; ni is used)
ang kwarta nila ni Jim ug Jill - Jim and Jill's money
(possessor is multiple proper names; nila ni is used)
ang mga stop sa mga balay - the roofs of the houses
(possessor does not fall under previous two categories; sa is used)
Oh, and verbs are a joy, too! It turns out that the affixes for conjugating verbs for the past and present tenses
are exactly alike. Which means that you usually have to add an adverb of time to make it clear about the sentence's timeframe. In addition, the affixes are different depending on whether the action described is of a short duration or a longer duration. And there's no such thing as a "conditional", either - to express something like that, you'd have to use the future tense.
Also, there's no equivalent of the verb "to be" in Cebuano sentences:
Taga Pilipinas sila.
"from Philippines them" - They are from the Philippines.
Unsay imong ngalan?
"what your name" - What is your name?
On the bright side, if I ever need help on figuring out what the hell sounds natural, I can just ask my parents to speak to me exclusively in Cebuano. Not right now, though - I'm currently spazflailing over Japanese.
***
The goal of the Arkteia is to help people understand the aspects of Artemis that protect, nurture, and liberate. With Her help at the Arkteia, participants can hopefully learn a bit more about their wild nature, embrace their inner child and keep it a little closer to the surface, and release some pent up tension through expressive motion. At the end of the day, participants should go home feeling freer, wilder, and filled with childish joy.
-Thista Minai, Dancing in Moonlight: Understanding Artemis Through Celebration, p.34
Arkteia is a modern-day festival based on the ancient festival of Brauronia. Brauronia actually included a rite that was called
arkteia in which little girls acted like bears, expressing wildness in a socially acceptable way so as to be "tamed" for marriage later. The modern-day Arkteia focuses more on temporarily shedding grown-up responsibilities to let one's inner child run free for a bit, "taming" it so that one can return to one's normal life without all the suppressed hyperactivity.
How am I observing Arkteia? By sitting down with an old teddy bear from my younger days that I still have and playing video games for the first time in forever. Yeah, it's not exactly, uh, "wild", but it
is getting back in touch with my inner kid for a little bit.
-Reileen
I'm fluent in Javascript as well as Klingon![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
