Even as a young child, I wondered if words created the same images for all people, and if those images were based on anything real, or just randomly associated.
Watching Harry Potter movies the other night (we’ve read all the books until the spines are worn and limp), I noted to Delta that some of J.K. Rowling’s made-up words actually look sort of like other words — words that create a specific picture. Diagon Alley, the mythical shopping place for wizardly books and school supplies, brings to mind something not quite on the straight and narrow — diagonally, to be precise. Even the characters’ names seem to fit, with Snape sounding like “snake” (fitting, for the headmaster of Slytherin) and the evil Malfoy family: Draco, looking and sounding like a little blond dracula; Lucius, with a name reminiscent of Lucifer; even the last name itself, beginning with “mal,” a prefix meaning bad.
Reading about reactions to the Iraq Study Group report prompted a slideshow of mental images as well… somehow, someone with the last name Talabani doesn’t elicit any feelings of trust. Neither does Al-Maliki (which sounds like Malachai, the name of the most evil character in Children of the Corn).
In Freakonomics
Dickens did this, too (e.g., Ebenezer Scrooge).
Calling Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “Prime minister al-Maliki” is kind of like calling Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti “President al-Tikriti.” I know, most of the English press does this, but it must appear slightly silly to Iraqis.
Is Maliki a geographic region, or a tribe? Of course, calling him Prime Minister Kamal (camel) would be equally illustrative, although with somewhat different imagery.
Granted, the western world appears silly to many in our usage of names; to Asians, we have first names last and last names first. In South America, we must seem disrespectful to our mothers, as there is no standard for keeping the mother’s family name incorporated as they do.
I don’t know whether al-Maliki designates a tribe or city or both.
I think the word “Kamal” is translated from arabic as “perfection,” not as “camel.”
…but “camel” is the picture that comes to mind, since I have zero working knowledge of the arabic language.
Close. Gamal is camel in Arabic.
I think we need to start a new naming system. We should be named after our shoe size, or something.
Don’t know about that, AT. I’d rather not be known as “9 wide.”
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