From: djheydt@kithrup.com
In article <1hgutqmra3ic1$.smijpa0m5g7z.dlg@40tude.net>,
Brian M. Scott wrote:
>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.
In the cave of Polyphemos, on the other hand, he names himself
Ouden, "Nobody." And when Polyphemos cries out, "I am wounded,
and Nobody has wounded me,"* then his neighbors say "If nobody
has wounded you, then it is the work of the gods, and we dare not
interfere."
_____
*Recollected from memory, not having the text in front of me.
_____
Still, "Ouden" is at least shorter than "Unbekannte." If you can
get away with using Homeric Greek. :)
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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