6 ms·
Why we don't use Galileo's last name
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- davidw 17y agoIf anyone makes it here to Padova, I'd be happy to take you on a 'Galileo tour'. He spent what he called 'the best years of his life' here. Also, for fun, current distribution of 'Galilei' in Italy: http://gens.labo.net/it/cognomi/genera.html?cognome=galilei http://gens.labo.net/it/cognomi/genera.html?cognome=galilei
- mnemonicsloth 17y agoHow do the locals feel about the middle finger phenomenon? http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/finger.html http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/finger.html I confess perplexion.
- davidw 17y agoThat's down in Tuscany. Here in Padova, at the main cathedral (Sant'Antonio), they have the tongue of the saint on display.
- spoiledtechie 17y agoWow, Never knew. Wonder why they removed the finger. Is it supposed to contain a part of his soul?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- petdog 17y agoBut hey, in that museum we also have his telescope. And in Santa Croce there's his entire body, minus the middle finger I guess.
- astine 17y agoThat's ordinary in Italy. Many Catholic saints have there appendages and organs distributed and on display throughout the world. Most of the parts are in Italy. As another poster mentioned, in the cathedral they have the tongue of a saint on display. (Actually,I've been to Padua, they have a lot more than just a tongue.) Galileo is a bit odd as he's a secular scientist not a holy figure, but it's not that odd.
- mhd 17y agoBecause 'Figaro' sounds a bit silly.
- WilliamLP 17y agoMagnifico.
- jeroen 17y agoInteresting background, but I'd say the fact that Galileo is a rare name helped a lot. If history had produced 10 other well-known people named Galileo then we probably would have started calling him by either his last name or his first and his last name. It also depends on context: "Steve" in a "current Apple" context is obvious, but not in a "historic Apple" or "MS vs Apple" context.
- kevindication 17y agoOne data point: To my American English tongue, I find a slight word aversion to Galilei due to the final vowel construction. Galileo presents no aversion to me. For more on word aversions, check out these many Language Log posts: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=qTV&q=site%3Alanguagelog.ldc.upenn.edu+word+aversion&aq=f&oq=&aqi= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&...
- davidw 17y agoIt's not that difficult: Gal ee lay ee
- kevindication 17y agoI didn't say it was difficult. I said that, for whatever phonetic reason, I don't like to pronounce it, and I can't exactly articulate why. That's the root of the research on word aversions.
- davidw 17y agoAh, I see... weird, but I guess it's a matter of taste. There are a few words in Italian that really are tricky. Not many, but I took a while to get this one right: ammortizzatore it really twists your mouth around if you're saying it right.
- sophacles 17y agoFunny I call all scientists who did important work by thier first name. I don't know why I do this, but I frequently refer to Dick (feynman) or Enrico, or Bertrand. Actually, if I were to hazard a guess, I would say it is to confuse a certain type of person, namely those that have very rigid thinking (a little lateral stretch is good for you once in a while). Perhaps I should make an exception for Galilleo and start calling him Galillei. :)
- kragen 17y agoI do it to ward off hero-worship. If you're calling him Enrico (or "ol' Enrico", like my grandpa did), you're less likely to think of him as some superhuman who thought thoughts you could never think yourself.
- dimarco 17y agoWell, I'm embarrassed. I've always been told that my last name means "From Marco", not "Son of Marco". Doesn't help that my first name is "Mark".
- anatoly 17y agoI think it can be both; see http://genealogy.about.com/cs/surname/a/italian_surname.htm http://genealogy.about.com/cs/surname/a/italian_surname.htm. Take heart in the fact that Joan of Arc's last name, which was probably Darc, was reinterpteted as d'Arc and transmogrified in English into "of Arc".
- kingsley_20 17y agoThis is still pretty common in India, especially the south. My "last name" for instance, was just my father's first (and only) name. Particularly for people of my generation, who had to grow a last name because the West required one. That, or some people use their caste(Shetty, Singh, Patel etc) or village name.
- bitwize 17y agoSo it's similar to why people often omit Elvis's surname. Hm.
- cyunker 17y agoI assume the reasons are similar for Dante.
- anatoly 17y agoThis is a good example of monolingual ignorance. Who is this "we" that don't use Galileo's last name? From reading the article, you could only draw the conclusion that it's everybody. The word "English" is nowhere to be found; all the reasons enumerated in the article have nothing to do with English and everything to do with the Italian conventions of the time as well as the particular customs of Galileo's family. I speak three languages fluently; in two of them, including my native language, the man's called Galilei. He also appears to be normally called Galilei in French (the spelling's a bit different, but it isn't his first name), German, Dutch, Norwegian, a bunch of other European languages I checked randomly. Poles call him Galileusz for some reason. On the other hand, in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (spelled Galileu), English, and perhaps other languages he's known by his first name. All this takes precisely two minutes to discover by clicking on the Wikipedia articles in various languages, and seems to be completely unknown to the author of the article. At best, he explains why Italians have been calling him Galileo; but "we" are not all Italians, surely? To explain why he's Galileo in English, you need to at least be aware that he's Galilei in most other European languages, and build some kind of argument to explain the discrepancy. And merely nodding at the usage in the Italian will not necessarily do. Seems to me that looking at how his name was transmitted in the scientific tracts of his time, mostly written in Latin, would help trace and distinguish the two traditions, if someone was really interested in understanding why "we" call the man Galileo.
- astine 17y agoI don't see why the author should have to explain that. Unless there is a reason not to, English speaker tend to be faithful foreign conventions when adopting non-English words and names. If the Italian's call him one way, the English speakers can pronounce it, and there is no confusion caused by the matter, then the Italian convention will become the English convention. Why other languages don't do the same thing is really matter best left to articles written in those languages. I think that it's telling that no matter what language he is refered to in, it's still only one word. I only ever seen Galileo refered to by his full name in textbooks and in books by him.
- dimitar 17y agoYou can also add Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Russian to the list..
- Quiark 17y agoWhen you think about it, when governments made laws that required all children to have standardized names in order to be able to tax them and register them for military service, it was one of the first privacy invasions. For us it seems natural to have a first and a second name following some rules, but for them, the new law took away their freedom to be called what they wanted when they wanted. And we are facing similar situations today - with internet regulation and so on. Of course, this is quite an abstract idea - people of that time surely had more serious problems than this.
- eru 17y agoAmericans still have it easy. (And Britons slightly less so.) In Germany you have to prove to the government that your case satisfies one of the official reasons (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namensrecht#Beh.C3.B6rdliche_Namens.C3.A4nderung http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namensrecht#Beh.C3.B6rdliche_Na...) if you want to change your name.
- Ardit20 17y agoSo, why do we use Newton's last name then?