From: b.scott@csuohio.edu   
      
   On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:35:35 -0400, Michelle Bottorff   
    wrote in   
    in   
   rec.arts.sf.composition:   
      
   > i was thinking about my spy guy, who won't tell the   
   > heroine his name* and I figured that she would pretty   
   > much have to come up with some kind of nickname for him,   
   > or my readers will go nuts, right?  One doesn't need a   
   > name to think about a person, but writing or talking   
   > about them without some kind of handle is waaayyyy more   
   > awkward.   
      
   > Since she's French, the first thing that occured to me   
   > for her to use was L'Inconnu,  but he isn't French, he's   
   > German.. (Burgundian, whatever, same part of the world --   
   > different history.) So that gets me Der Unbekannte, or   
   > something of the sort?   
      
   She would be far more likely to use her language than his,   
   even if she knew his.   
      
   > As a formal name I have very little problem with   
   > Unbekannte, but I'm having troubles imagining it as a   
   > form of intimate address.   
      
   > Although I can imagine her shortening it to Unbe, which   
   > apparently means "Not-"   
      
   No, the negative prefix is just , as in English,   
   modifying the adjective  'well-known, famous'.   
    is actually another adjective, nominalized in   
    'the unknown one (masc.)'.  Note that it   
   inflects: without the article it’s  'stranger,   
   unknown'.   is 'an unknown person, a John   
   Doe'.   
      
   A similar construction, from the base adjective    
   'anonymous', is  'the anonymous one (masc.),   
   the nameless one (masc.)'.  This has the possible virtue of   
   being virtually identical to the French .   
      
   > and then calling him that to his face when she's annoyed.   
      
   I don’t think that the idea really works, even using    
   rather than the awkward an meaningless ; it just   
   doesn’t feel like a natural short form.   
      
   > Or.... how about Keiner as something to call him when   
   > peeved?  Apparently it means 'nobody'.   
      
   No, it’s simply an inflected form of the negative indefinite   
   pronoun  'no', as in  'no person' vs.   
    'a person'.  One can use it independently, as   
   in  'No one understands me'.  A nobody   
   is , where  'nobody' is another   
   indefinite pronoun, etymologically something like 'not ever   
   a person'.  Curiously enough, in Zürich a man was recorded   
   in 1402 as  (Latin  'nobody') and in 1414   
   with byname , and the surname still exists today   
   (though in some cases from another source).  If she speaks   
   his language, I suppose that it’s conceivable that she might   
   call him <(Herr) Niemand> when sufficiently annoyed.   
      
   A classical version of this is Ὄυτις (Outis) 'Nobody', the   
   alias used by Odysseus when he fought the Cyclops   
   Polyphēmos.   
      
   [...]   
      
   > When she isn't mad at him, she would probably come up   
   > with some not particularly derogatory classical reference   
   > to call him by, and I'm just not coming up with a good   
   > "guy in disguse" classical reference.   
      
   The ones that immediately come to mind are philandering   
   gods, which doesn’t help much.  Odysseus returns to Ithaca   
   in the guise of a wandering beggar, but I don’t recall that   
   he ever gives himself a name in that guise, though he does,   
   I think, claim to be Cretan.   
      
   Brian   
   --   
   It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their   
   holes to root for sandtatties.  The waves whispered   
   rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,   
   haggisss.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)