Classical and Biblical Names

This essay will introduce or stress several words formed off classical or biblical names, words which are still useful terms in English today. Some of these words are brought in from other places on my site, but it is good to have them together at the same place. Let's begin with classical terms.

Licinius Lucullus was a Roman famous for his wealth, and he bequeathed his name to us in English in two senses: to describe a kind of black marble (Lucullean marble) or a kind of good life or festive occasion (Lucullian banquets; Lucullian delights). The Unabridged simply has lucullan/lucullian (lower case; who decides these things??), and so I will go with the simpler: lucullan. Emphasized by the word lucullan is the extravagance or profusion of the wealth in contrast to the word epicurean, which stresses the enjoyment of the occasion or tastiness of the repast.

The philosophical schools gave us their names, which all became associated with one or more words in English. A cynic is inclined to find fault; a skeptic doesn't believe; an academic (the skeptics of antiquity) merely does things for the exercise, i.e., he "suspends judgment;" a stoic endures things with imperturbability. A stentorian voice is a loud one; it was named after the guy who called the assembly together in the Iliad. To be boeotian is to be a "stupid clown" or "thick-head." Boeotia was a rural region of ancient Greece, a certain distance from Attica, and anyone who lived there must have been a rustic sort (the Latin equivalent of boeotian).

When you fought someone and lost a good deal of your men/equipment, but were technically the winner, you experienced a pyrrhic victory, named after the 3rd century BCE general from Epirus. But the earliest form of this word in English referred to an ancient Greek war dance simulating the movments of combat and performed in full armor. Why would armies have done this? I await a reply. Then, you could hound the enemy and delay its advance, and you would be called a cunctator (delayer). This was a special name given to Q. Fabius Maximus, a third century BCE Roman general who kept the terrible Hannibal at arms length by his cunctatory strategy. But he also bequeathed one other word to our language, also meaning the same thing as cunctator, so that a fabian move is a delaying move. The Fabian Society was founded in England in 1884 and consisted of Socialists who advocated a "Fabian" policy in contrast to immediate attempts at revolutionary action. One can have Fabian principles, a Fabian declaration, etc. Then, there is thrasonical, which means "boasting" or "bragging," and thus resembling Thraso, a man given to vainglorious action in Terence's Eunuchus. An aristarch, named after one of the first literary critics of Homer, is a captious and unfair critic, even though I don't think I have heard the word too often. A poetic line that is amatory is anacreontic; if it is especially erotic or even lesbian it is now called a sapphic verse. Since the OED is frequently out of date, it only defines "Sapphic" as a meter used by Sappho or named after her.

Then we can muse for a moment on the Muses, and we realize that terpsichorean has to do with dancing or, as the OED says, "saltatory" (i.e., jumping) movement; euterpean has to do with music (a "Euterpean society" of a town) and melpomenish is named after the muse of tragedy, Melpomene, and thus signifies something "of a tragic demeanor." "Why so melpomenish, Julia?" Clio is the muse of history, and "cliometrics" was a term invented in 1960 to denote a technique for interpretation of economic history, based on statistical analysis of large-scale numberical data from population censuses, parish registers, etc. Clio is also the name of the 84th minor asteriod (I guess they were running out of words) or a genus of pteropods in the Artics. The other names of the Muses, for those of you who just have to have all the data, are Erato (I guess we have "erotic" or "love poetry" named after this one); Calliope, which came into English first of all as an instrument (she was the muse of eloquence and heroic poetry), Polyhymnia, which yields "no results" in the OED, Urania, which we can see in one of the names of the planets, and Thalia (comedies), which has bequeathed to us the word "thalian," to mean "comic.

Some Biblical Vocabulary

We know that something iscariotic is wickedly treacherous; the word derives from Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus to his death. But we also have ananias, which the OED capitalizes, and which means "a liar." Thus, it is a noun. It is taken from Acts 5, where Ananias and his wife Sapphira lie to the elders of the early Church and are struck dead as a result. Why shouldn't a liar be a "sapphira?" Or, since, as the Scriptures say, she fell down at the Apostles' feet dead, why isn't she synonymous with someone who is "drop-dead" gorgeous? Weak humor, but I hope you chuckled. A jeroboam is a very large bottle for wine, while a jorum is considerably smaller. A pharoah not only refers to a person in ancient Egypt but, because the OT sees the Pharoah as an oppressor, the word became associated with that noun.

I didn't know that the word nabalitic was a word until recently. Named after the churlish fellow Nabal who refused to give hospitality to David's men (I Sam. 25:3), it means a miserly or disagreeable person. The word came into English as early as 1586; a 1604 quotation puts it with another biblical word: "The greedy Nabals & hold-fast Labans of the world." So, nabalism is miserliness; nabalitic is miserly or churlish, and a nabalite is a foolish person. The OED has no entry for the biblical name Laban, as used in the 1604 quotation. The only "Laban" listed there is named after the Hungarian-born choreographer, Rudolph Laban (1879-1958). Labanotation is the system of dance originated by Mr. Laban.

Conclusion

I think we ought to put our heads together to come up with some positive references to women in these names. I already suggested one way we could do so for sapphira, but the negative connotations of eve and jezebel, for example, should not be the last word on the subject. A more neutral use of a female name dervies from our system of Western logic, which has a mnemonic system to help remember the various kinds of syllogisms that can be made, and the first one is called barbara. So, nothing good of those names so far. Why not start with deborah or judith or something like that to suggest a woman who is strong, who delivers people, who can take matters into her own hands?

This essay was meant to encourage us on the venture of making the classical languages live and flourish for us. May they do so for you.

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