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Re: Pale Fire 'book of names' is Pnin
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Oxford University Press indeed published a book entitled "Russian surnames" by the Oxford professor Boris Unbegaun - alas not before 1972. Unbegaun's existence was known to VN, cf. his revised EO edition, III, p. 468 n. Whether Unbegaun was working on his surname material during the writing of PF, whether Unbegaun had published relevant articles, or whether VN knew of Unbegaun's interest in these matters at all I do not know. Research into surnames is a legitimate pursuit, although there may be a whiff of pedantry and pedestrianism connected with it. I fail to understand what the fuss is about in this surname discussion. That VN ascribed a surname book to Kinbote is in all likelihood pure fictional fluff.
Manfred Voss
-----Original Message-----
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 8:48 pm
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Pale Fire 'book of names' is Pnin
Matt: I love your idiom of us being "on different pages." Let's re-open our Hymn Books and start singing together at page one!
Whether CK's putative book is about "surnames," "given/first [Christian!] names," or "place names" -- or just all encompassing "names" -- doesn't really affect the gist of the argument for or against its "existence." That "sur" in "surname" (meaning "super" or "superimposed") is but a cutural device, not found in every language-community. "Surnames" therefore form a subset of all the PROPER (personal, occupational & place) names, with much overlapping (take tho
se birthplace guys Da Vinci and Fibonacci! Not to mention occupationals such as Jesus [the] Christ; and all those Smiths and Fletchers)
We surely must agree that there are indeed scholarly books (from Oxford Univ. especially*) on "names" of all kinds. Onomasiology and its sub-branch Toponymy are thriving "industries," far larger than Nabokovology. They hold international conferences & publish in all the major languages and freely translate to and from these languages. In many ways, being factual/historical/technical references, they are the SIMPLEST to translate, a SNIP for Adam Thirlwell. To explain the origins of English place names to a French reader (or vice versa!!) you simply translate the English explanation, adding perhaps a pronunciation guide e.g.,
Chester: walled town near Liverpool. Site of a Roman camp [etc etc]. From Latin _castrum_ (fort or camp)
A common suffix -chester or -caster found in Roman cities: Manchester, Lancaster ...
Chester (tchestair): ville muree pres de Liverpool. Origine: Camp Romain [etc etc]. Du Latin _castrum_ (camp militaire)
Suffixe populaire -chester ou -caster trouvee dans les cites Romains: Manchester, Lancaster ...
If my French were better, I could translate the entry on DALE just as easily. A really proficient translator would undoubtedly GLOSS the directly-translated English text to help the non-expert French reader. OF COURSE, one would explain that "Udall" is pronounced "Yew Dall" and that the "Yew tree plus Dall=Dale" may be the origin of the place nam
e. You've no idea how contemptuous modern linguists are of amateur, dogmatic etymologists with their naïve leaps of faith. (MacWhorter calls etymologies "Just-so Stories" -- back to Kipling). BTW most English readers would not know TUN, so I suspect Baring-Gould has explained it earlier in his book.
Axiom: anything SAYABLE in natural language X is SAYABLE in natural language Y.
Why, I womder, is it difficult or TEDIOUS to explain IN ANY LANGUAGE that the AngloSaxon _cric_ has developed diverse pronunciations and spelling over 1500 years? This is the whole GRIST of the etymological MILL.
In spite of evidence to the contrary, you still maintain that books such as CK's putative "book of surnames" (translated into English by OUP) is so instrinsically implausible that we must dismiss JS's claim as false, moving the reference into a different level of "reality."
I am NOT disagreeing with your conclusion: the ref. to CK's Book & its Oxford translation is just a typical VN tease. It's your inference-method that I claim is faulty. Only a big deal to us doryphoric logicians. Seeking an analogy: if JS told us Hazel was gored to death by a Unicorn, we would place that assertion at a different "reality" level from other reports of accidental novelistic deaths (such as H's drowning, or Lolita's mum's timely demise!) No doubt the death by Unicorn would trgger many LitCrit theories involving dreams/hallucinations, CK's fiddling with the records, &/or a sure sign of JS's incest (the singular thust of Siegfied's horn, t
ra-la), and so on.
But in the Pale Fire as presented, with tortuous threads go leor, but all essentially within the known Laws of Physics, no unicorns, dei-ex-machina, or 4-sided triangles, we have this vexing, passing ref to a book by CK. We always sit up when books occur _within_ books -- a recurring VN theme exploited with great relish. Elsewhere, with lesser writers, we groan when confronted with the novel (poem) about a novelist (poet) writing a novel (poem) ad nauseam. With VN the narrator is ever-present, up front, yet strangely distant and mocking -- the kind of magician who pretends to reveal how the trick is achieved but then fools us by repeating it under impossible conditions. Always something new to ponder.
skb
* The Oxford NAMES Companion -- OUP, 2002
A detailed and unrivalled study of British surnames, first names, and place-names, from leading experts in their field
--------
On 23/07/2008 20:17, "Matthew Roth" <MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:
Stan: I think we're not on the same page here. There is no "Book of Names" in Pale Fire. After Kinbote confirms the meaning of kinbote (king's destroyer) Shade says that CK is the author of "a remarkable book on surnames," of which there is an English translation. The clear (at least to me) implication here is that CK's book is a scholarly (Oxford UP!) work that examines the etymologies and origins of family names. VN probably had something like Baring-Gould's "Family Names and Their Story" in mind, since that is where he himself gleaned20the names and/or backstories for names like Lavender, Bretwit(z), Fyler, Campbell/Beauchamp, Lukin, and Shalksbore/Shakespeare. I have that book in front of me, so I can furnish another example or two:
Crick (A.S. cric), a creek; not usual as a suffix but found as Creech, Evercreech, Cricklade.
Now, since the whole connection between Crick and creek is based on the sound of the word, how would one translate that into another language and still have it make sense? I suppose you could leave "creek" there, then give the translation? Tedious! Or how about this one:
Dale (O.N. dalr), Swaledale, Nithsdale, Borowdale. But Dalton does not signify the tun in the dale, but the tun divided in two by a brook. In one of the Robin Hood ballads we have: "By the faith of my body," then said the young man, / "My name is Allen a Dale." Dale is often "dall"; Tindall stands for Tyne-dale. Udall is the yew-dale. Sometimes Dale is corrupted into "dow" or "daw," as Lindow or Lindaw.
All kinds of problems arise here. What do you do with tun? What about the dale, small d? And if yew is "tas" in your language, will it make sense that it comes from Udall?
The whole project seems sufficiently unlikely to me. So much so that it makes for a good joke that we may miss if we too blithely throw up our hands and say anything is possible.
Best,
Matt
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Manfred Voss
-----Original Message-----
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 8:48 pm
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Pale Fire 'book of names' is Pnin
Matt: I love your idiom of us being "on different pages." Let's re-open our Hymn Books and start singing together at page one!
Whether CK's putative book is about "surnames," "given/first [Christian!] names," or "place names" -- or just all encompassing "names" -- doesn't really affect the gist of the argument for or against its "existence." That "sur" in "surname" (meaning "super" or "superimposed") is but a cutural device, not found in every language-community. "Surnames" therefore form a subset of all the PROPER (personal, occupational & place) names, with much overlapping (take tho
se birthplace guys Da Vinci and Fibonacci! Not to mention occupationals such as Jesus [the] Christ; and all those Smiths and Fletchers)
We surely must agree that there are indeed scholarly books (from Oxford Univ. especially*) on "names" of all kinds. Onomasiology and its sub-branch Toponymy are thriving "industries," far larger than Nabokovology. They hold international conferences & publish in all the major languages and freely translate to and from these languages. In many ways, being factual/historical/technical references, they are the SIMPLEST to translate, a SNIP for Adam Thirlwell. To explain the origins of English place names to a French reader (or vice versa!!) you simply translate the English explanation, adding perhaps a pronunciation guide e.g.,
Chester: walled town near Liverpool. Site of a Roman camp [etc etc]. From Latin _castrum_ (fort or camp)
A common suffix -chester or -caster found in Roman cities: Manchester, Lancaster ...
Chester (tchestair): ville muree pres de Liverpool. Origine: Camp Romain [etc etc]. Du Latin _castrum_ (camp militaire)
Suffixe populaire -chester ou -caster trouvee dans les cites Romains: Manchester, Lancaster ...
If my French were better, I could translate the entry on DALE just as easily. A really proficient translator would undoubtedly GLOSS the directly-translated English text to help the non-expert French reader. OF COURSE, one would explain that "Udall" is pronounced "Yew Dall" and that the "Yew tree plus Dall=Dale" may be the origin of the place nam
e. You've no idea how contemptuous modern linguists are of amateur, dogmatic etymologists with their naïve leaps of faith. (MacWhorter calls etymologies "Just-so Stories" -- back to Kipling). BTW most English readers would not know TUN, so I suspect Baring-Gould has explained it earlier in his book.
Axiom: anything SAYABLE in natural language X is SAYABLE in natural language Y.
Why, I womder, is it difficult or TEDIOUS to explain IN ANY LANGUAGE that the AngloSaxon _cric_ has developed diverse pronunciations and spelling over 1500 years? This is the whole GRIST of the etymological MILL.
In spite of evidence to the contrary, you still maintain that books such as CK's putative "book of surnames" (translated into English by OUP) is so instrinsically implausible that we must dismiss JS's claim as false, moving the reference into a different level of "reality."
I am NOT disagreeing with your conclusion: the ref. to CK's Book & its Oxford translation is just a typical VN tease. It's your inference-method that I claim is faulty. Only a big deal to us doryphoric logicians. Seeking an analogy: if JS told us Hazel was gored to death by a Unicorn, we would place that assertion at a different "reality" level from other reports of accidental novelistic deaths (such as H's drowning, or Lolita's mum's timely demise!) No doubt the death by Unicorn would trgger many LitCrit theories involving dreams/hallucinations, CK's fiddling with the records, &/or a sure sign of JS's incest (the singular thust of Siegfied's horn, t
ra-la), and so on.
But in the Pale Fire as presented, with tortuous threads go leor, but all essentially within the known Laws of Physics, no unicorns, dei-ex-machina, or 4-sided triangles, we have this vexing, passing ref to a book by CK. We always sit up when books occur _within_ books -- a recurring VN theme exploited with great relish. Elsewhere, with lesser writers, we groan when confronted with the novel (poem) about a novelist (poet) writing a novel (poem) ad nauseam. With VN the narrator is ever-present, up front, yet strangely distant and mocking -- the kind of magician who pretends to reveal how the trick is achieved but then fools us by repeating it under impossible conditions. Always something new to ponder.
skb
* The Oxford NAMES Companion -- OUP, 2002
A detailed and unrivalled study of British surnames, first names, and place-names, from leading experts in their field
--------
On 23/07/2008 20:17, "Matthew Roth" <MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:
Stan: I think we're not on the same page here. There is no "Book of Names" in Pale Fire. After Kinbote confirms the meaning of kinbote (king's destroyer) Shade says that CK is the author of "a remarkable book on surnames," of which there is an English translation. The clear (at least to me) implication here is that CK's book is a scholarly (Oxford UP!) work that examines the etymologies and origins of family names. VN probably had something like Baring-Gould's "Family Names and Their Story" in mind, since that is where he himself gleaned20the names and/or backstories for names like Lavender, Bretwit(z), Fyler, Campbell/Beauchamp, Lukin, and Shalksbore/Shakespeare. I have that book in front of me, so I can furnish another example or two:
Crick (A.S. cric), a creek; not usual as a suffix but found as Creech, Evercreech, Cricklade.
Now, since the whole connection between Crick and creek is based on the sound of the word, how would one translate that into another language and still have it make sense? I suppose you could leave "creek" there, then give the translation? Tedious! Or how about this one:
Dale (O.N. dalr), Swaledale, Nithsdale, Borowdale. But Dalton does not signify the tun in the dale, but the tun divided in two by a brook. In one of the Robin Hood ballads we have: "By the faith of my body," then said the young man, / "My name is Allen a Dale." Dale is often "dall"; Tindall stands for Tyne-dale. Udall is the yew-dale. Sometimes Dale is corrupted into "dow" or "daw," as Lindow or Lindaw.
All kinds of problems arise here. What do you do with tun? What about the dale, small d? And if yew is "tas" in your language, will it make sense that it comes from Udall?
The whole project seems sufficiently unlikely to me. So much so that it makes for a good joke that we may miss if we too blithely throw up our hands and say anything is possible.
Best,
Matt
Search the archive
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla
View Nabokv-L Pol
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Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/