Jansy: ‘Orthodox’ etymologies are somewhat Oxymoronic. We hardly need to invoke Levy-Strauss to be convinced that all etymologies are ultimately dubious! We can only trace origins back, with any degree of credibility, to early, mangled, surviving written sources, which represents a mere blink in human-language history. Our languages being predominantly spoken affairs (very few of the 6,000 extant tongues have a ‘literature’) we have to guess from plausible phonetic rules, how spoken words might have changed during the unrecorded millenia. Reconstructions, such as PIE (Proto Indo European), are made by comparing word forms in extant Indo-European family members (which include VN’s three: Russian/English/French), and back-tracking to plausible, common roots. (Tracing grammatical changes is even more problematical. Likewise semantic drifts, even with common flora/fauna.) Without knowing how syllables are regularly dropped and added, how consonants mutate and vowels shift, the amateur etymologist is unlikely to spot that WHEEL and CYCLE are essentially the SAME word. As are YORK and EVERTON! Minor spelling variants (Habana/Havana) are relatively trivial if you think ‘sounds’ not ‘letters.’
You really have to look beyond the superficial relationships given by modern alphabetic transliterations. There’s never enough letters to cope (whence the huge IPA character set)! Old English Cyng, German Ko:nig/Kaiser, Polish Krol, Latin Caesar, and derived personal names, are all clearly related (boringly orthodox!) Less obvious are links with Rex/ Rajah and Tsar/Shah. Whence VN shouting Check and Checkmate! The Shah is Dead. The Solus Rex is on the MAT (geddit?) BTW: essential humor for all Chess lovers:
http://www.correspondencechess.com/campbell/glosscom.htm
En Passant: First used by Napoleon in a game he was losing. When his opponent objected, play was continued across from the guillotine. Napoleon won.
Delving into the preliterate PIE, there’s PLENTY of room for scholarly dissension on the original, original root. Here’s two PIE versions for ‘Once there was a King!’
1. To rḗḱs éh1est.
2. Pótis gʰe ʔest.
Note: what we now call a King must have had many preliterate names and functions, constantly being exchanged and mangled with conquest and language-mixing. In addition to the familiar Rex we have, Pótis pointing plausibly to Potentate, Emperor and Power, via Latin posse (who really knows?)
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 04/08/2010 22:25, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
A.Sklyarenko: A short addendum to my "leporine" article in Zembla: Not everybody whose name is Krolik ("rabbit") belongs to the leporine family... Dr Krolik's brother in Ada, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik, a doctor of philosophy, born in Turkey, isn't a rabbit, but rather a black panther... It seems that he, not Van, was Ada's first lover...Ada must be thinking of him when she complains, after their violent love-making, that Van hurt her "like a tiger Turk" (2.8).
David Krol: Krol also means king on Polish. It is kral in Czech (I am an American currently living in Prague...). It is also my understanding that Krol comes from all those words like Caesar, Kaiser, Tsar, Karl, Charles, Carol, etc.
JM: Is there a relation bt. this Karapars Krolik (panther, tiger Turk) and the burning barn sentence when Van was "pushing against her like that soldier behind in the queue.// First time I hear about him. I thought old Mr Nymphobottomus had been my only predecessor//.Last spring. Trip to town. French theater matinée."? I missed this point altogether.
When I first read Alexey's post, I was reminded of Blake's Tyger (in particular: "Did he smile his work to see?//Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"), in which the predator stands for "evil" in contrast to the innocent sacrificial "lamb". Might the poor rabbits, suffering under the spell of a serpent (as it was explained by Appel's note in connection to Humbert Humbert's serpent-like powers of seduction) be in any way related to wooly defenceless lambs?
After David Krol's additional information on Krol, Karl, Charles, Kaiser and the Polish word for king ( with the "restoration theme" and various King Charlesses) I started to wonder if, in a clumsily devious way, the leporines would indicate the theme of fallen kings or czars... (And yet, the links which he offers for Krol, Karl and Kaiser don't seem to be etymologically orthodox, or are they? Names are problematic ( Levy-Strauss stated that their etymologies cannot be established) but otherwise they are a rich source of displacements and puns. As Nabokov once acknowledged in Ada: "tropes are the dreams of language." (and here he sides with Lacan!)