Nick on Quora

I am not herewith contradicting Dimitris Almyrantis’ answer. For Dimitris Almyrantis is awesome and stuff. I think I’m saying the same as him.

I don’t think much would have been different, except that there’d be Greek names instead of English and Spanish; the naming principles, I suspect, would have been the same.

Byzantine town-naming procedure was usually to name places for emperors and the like; there are a lot of Justinianopoles and Irenopoles and Leontocomes and Theodosias. Cf. Mary-land, James-town, Philip-innes, Georg-ia.

A lot of places were left with their indigenous names, just as the New World was in our timeline. Mexico would likely have remained Mexico, although it would have likelier been transliterated as Metzikon or Mesikon [meʃiko].

In Modern Greece, there is an inordinate number of St X and St Y towns, often as jerryrigged replacements for local Slavonic or Aromanian or Arvanite placenames. The Spanish didn’t stint on such town names; I don’t know that the Byzantines ever did that, but it’s possible that would have happened in the New World. No San Francisco, for example: he’s not an Orthodox saint. But as Russian America (Alaska) shows, you’d get places like New Archangel[sk] = Sitka, St Paul, St Dionysius = Fort Stikine.

There are also a profusion of New X and New Y places, founded by refugees. I think New Smyrna would have been perfectly feasible in the Americas, for instance. (After all, there’s not only a New Smyrna in our timeline in Athens; there’s a New Smyrna Beach, Florida—an ill thought out colony of Greek settlers.)

I don’t have OP’s command of detail (https://www.quora.com/If-the-Byz… ). From Theme (Byzantine district), I am guessing Notiōn (“of the south”) or Notiakōn for Australia, by analogy with Anatolic Theme.

Melbourne in the 80s, when I was in high school:

• Very Suburban. High density living did not happen: the Great Australian Dream was a large suburban home with a garden, and only the indigent lived in apartment blocks. Seeing apartments spring up everywhere remains a shock to me.
• Renting happened, but was something to get away from; the notion of renting long-term is still alien to many Australians, which is why they are so disillusioned about housing affordability.
• There was nothing, nothing going on in the CBD past 6 o’clock. Nothing. Noone lived in the CBD. At all. Minimal presence of restaurants. Very little in the way of cultural stuff. (I’m not counting the Arts Centre.) Tumbleweeds.
• In fact, Chapel St South Yarra was the only strip where there was some partying all night.
• People did go in to the CBD to shop, particularly at department stores like Myer. Local shopping malls already existed, but they did not have the exclusive hold on shoppers that they do now.
• Swanston St was still open to traffic, and not a mall. Bourke St Mall was already a mall, and was even more blah back then.
• Southbank was wasted, as warehouses. Just like Docklands should have been. (Snobbery towards Docklands is also a very Melbourne thing.)
• The inner suburbs were not yet gentrified, and were still gritty working class places.
• Nowhere near the foodie culture Melbourne has now, and certainly none of the food snobbery. Places like Mietta’s (1974–1995), the restaurant of Mietta O’Donnell, were still pioneers of good food, not what you’d routinely expect. And the fusion and innovation that Melbourne hipsters now expect as a default just didn’t exist.
• No coffee culture outside of Lygon St (Little Italy). I had my first latte in ’90. And for a long time, they couldn’t work out how to prevent the glass from overheating: they’d serve it with a napkin holder.
• Much bigger pub culture. Especially around universities. In the ’80s, still featuring the 6 o’clock swill: people getting blind drunk because pubs would shut as 6. Again: no boutique beers back then.
• Not that I experienced it at all, but the snobbish Anglican establishment of Melbourne was likely more prominent. You really have to dig to notice it now. And Real Housewives of Melbourne is not the place to find it.

Identity, and indeed ethnicity, are not about blood or DNA or ancestry. Yes, skin colour, as a “visible minority”, is different, particularly in the States; but that’s not the scenario your question puts forward. And even in that case, identity is not about blood. It’s about what your society makes of what you look like.

Ethnicity is a cultural construct. Particularly when people around you can’t tell, just by looking at you, which I assume is the case with you. (Disclosure: as you can tell from the topics, one of OP’s ethnicities is Greek, and I’ve had exchanges on that with him before.)

If you prioritise one ethnic background over another, noone has the right to stop you, go ahead: that’s how you identify. To take a smaller-scale example, I identify with my mother’s region of origin rather than my father’s: I’ve spent four years living in Crete, a month visiting Cyprus; I use Cretan dialect words, with only a very faint Cypriot accent; I’m not going to identify with something I’ve barely experienced.

The catch with identity is that identity involves a community, not just an individual; and the community you identify with may not identify with you. Diasporans routinely get a rude shock when they go back to the home country, and the people in the home country say “Huh? Nah, You American.” I’ve seen that here on Quora from Iranians, Italians, and Greeks; it was visibly default behaviour in Armenia.

A2A, but Lance LaSalle’s answer says it all; thanks, Lance.

Executive summary: nah. In a recent answer, I was reduced to begging readers to upvote the other answer first. I’d link, but that would mean even more people upvoting my answer instead of the other one.

(Just Vote #1: Amy Dakin. That’s all I’m sayin’.)

I’ll add one metric *I* use for A2A, which also gets surfaced (at least some of the time) in the UI for answers: how many questions the poster has already answered on the topic. That can establish either that they know what they’re talking about, or that they’re at least persistent.

User has mentioned in comment to question the magazine El Popola Ĉinio (“From the People’s China”), and I remember its impeccable glossiness and low-key propaganda.

Argh! I did read about this at a bookstore the other day, in a collection of essays about the posterity of Mao’s Little Red Book. But no, I didn’t buy the book.

The way the book put it, the Communist Party in the ’50s was sympathetic to the aims of Esperanto, and saw it as a suitable, non-colonialist vehicle for getting their message out. I think the book subtly hinted that they were a bit naive about the propaganda efficacy of Esperanto. But in the ’50s and ‘60s, I suspect it was not that absurd a vehicle: most English-language vehicles would likely have been closed.

(Who was that American journalist who’d interviewed Mao in the ’30s, and Mao did an interview with to help prepare for Nixon’s visit? Not all English-language vehicles were closed; but the audience was certainly not as reflexively sceptical.)

I’m going with the Birds of the Netherworld. stixoi.info: Του κάτω κόσμου τα πουλιά

It’s got a lot of what makes Modern Greek culture so rich:

• Cryptic, magical dread. The lyricist based it on a nightmare he had; but the song was released in 1974, during the death-throes of the Greek dictatorship—so people assumed what they would about it.
• A firmly entrenched notion of the Netherworld, continuing from pagan times, as opposed to Christian Heaven and Hell
• Casual mentions of antiquity and the landscape; not as obeisance, but simply as inheritance
• And the dark sorrows of the land, that the tourists miss, beneath those gleaming beaches
• And all against the stern modal 9/4 thud of the verse, and lament of the chorus.

You can have your Dylans; I’ve always thought the Greek art-bouzouki scene did a far greater job of true poetry in its lyrics, even when it wasn’t subording actual Nobel prize winners like Odysseas Elytis. The fact that Greece continues to keep singers, songwriters, and lyricists separate really helps there.

The translations at http://stixoi.info are horrid. Here’s mine.

Time, envenomed, lingers
in the alleys of the Netherworld to find you.
And out of work for thirteen centuries, he seeks
your ark—and to drink your blood.

Flagellators and the Clashing Rocks await you.
A maiden keeps watch amidst the gold.
The Cyclades are hanging from her ears.
And her bed is the Killer’s den.

Hidden are the secret words in the seashell.
Hidden is the magic of the sea in the North Wind.
One day the oil lamp will go out in the house,
and then you will find neither door nor lock.

The birds and peacocks of the Netherworld
are making you a dress of light and night.
Men gnash and grind their teeth:
They leap, they run, and seize you half-way.

Quoran that’s influenced my views the most, you say?

Jae Alexis Lee.

She may well think I’m stalking her by now, with all the shout outs I’ve been giving her, but there’s a reason for it.

It’s a bad business to rank people, but:

• You asked about influencing views, not deepening views, or learning more about the world. That rules out my top 5 Quorans.
• I appreciate people who challenge my views on the world. They know who they are, because I keep thanking them for it.
• The social/political domain I think I’ve learned the most about since alighting here is transgender issues. I’m not quite sure how that happened; I think it started with me liking Elliott Mason’s English grammar posts, and then getting everyone he ever upvoted on my feed.
• Jae both talks about transgender issues, and challenges my views on the world as a card carrying SJW (or is that Social Justice Cleric?), and she talks about both with passion and lucidity.
• Jae has also taught me how not to hate comment blockers. Well, how not to hate comment blockers who have a reason for comment blocking I can appreciate, anyway.

Runner up—although again, ranking people is a foul thing to do.

Sam Morningstar. (Clarissa, you’re not surprised, are you?)

Similar reasons, maybe less on the left in identity politics, but again, clear and lucid, both within and beyond his home topic of Native American issues.

I miss Sam.

Oh, and Michael Cobb’s answer mentioned Dan Holliday so I wouldn’t have to.

Not a surprise: Greek βό(ι)δι vo(i)ði is used to refer primarily to someone unmannered or dull.

Per the Triantafyllidis dictionary:

2. (μτφ.) μειωτικός ή υβριστικός χαρακτηρισμός για άνθρωπο: α. αργόστροφο· βλάκας: Είναι ~, δεν καταλαβαίνει τίποτα. ΦΡ σαν το ~ στο παχνί*. β. άξεστο, αγροίκο, αναίσθητο· ζώο: Mε πάτησε κι ούτε συγγνώμη δεν είπε, το ~. γ. παχύσαρκο: Έγινε (σαν) ~ από το πάχος.

(metaphor) a contemptuous or insulting description of a person who is (a) slow, stupid: “He’s an ox, he understands nothing; like an ox at the trough”; (b) uncouth, insensitive: “He stepped on me and didn’t even apologise; what an ox”; (c) obese: “he so obese, he’s like an ox”.

Khateeb! Dostam!

Already answered here: Nick Nicholas’ answer to How did your parents decide on your name?

I’m OP, and the question isn’t mine. The question in details is my third cousin’s, Manny Sfendourakis’. Let me explain his question, and then go to the more general answer.

The Nicene Creed refers to the Christian Church as “one holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”. Catholic back then meant just Universal. Of course, you call the Church Universal only when people start disputing that it is Universal: the phrase was added in the First Council of Constantinople, in 381, as part of the pushback against Arianism. Its association with the Catholic Church is much later.

Church cantors in Greek Orthodox churches in Australia have been reciting the Creed in English for some years now. As you can well imagine, Catholic sticks in their craw. In Greek, there’s not much they can do about it: Εἰς μίαν, ἁγίαν, καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν Ἐκκλησίαν.

They could have done something about it in the 17th century, when the Roman Catholics were called katólikos (from Italian catolico). But it’s more important now that Greeks use ancient-looking words, even if that does mean that Greeks end up calling the Catholics the Universal Church. So kaθolikós it is, for both meanings.

In Australia, though, some cantors have decided they can do something about it. When they read the Creed out in English, they call it One Holy Cathólic and Apostólic Church. And they defend this as the true pronunciation.

Manny has a third cousin who’s a linguist, so he thought he’d ask…

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Both Latin and Greek have adjectives ending in –icus / –ikos. Adjectives ending in –ikos in Greek came into English via Latin; so the accent of katholikós in Greek is irrelevant. Besides, the accent of katholikós is on a syllable that isnʼt even there in English: catholic[os].

So what matters is what the accent is in Latin. And the accent in Latin is on the antepenult (third last syllable): geográphicus, mathemáticus, comédicus. The accent in words English took from Latin, during the great influx of the Renaissance, followed suit: geográphic, mathemátics, comédic.

So… cathólic, right?

No.

The Renaissance was not the only time that Latin adjectives ending in –icus came into English. A few such adjectives came into English rather earlier, in Middle English. And when they did, they came via French.

Now, Middle French was not the Pepe le Pew language it is now. Not as many nasals, not as many silent vowels, not as many, I dunno, French things about it.

But it did already have one Pepe le Pew characteristic. All its words were already accented on the final syllable.

C’est magnifíque, non?

Alors, on étude la rhetorIque, et l’arismetIque, et on n’est pas un heretIque, que serait une chose lunatIque, comme si on boit du arsenIque. Mais non, on est un bon catholIque.

And like all French words in Middle English, those French words were originally accented Pepe le Pew style, on their final syllable, with a secondary (weaker) accent on the antepenult.

Rhètoríke, àrsmetíke, hèretíke, lùnatíke, àrseníke, càtholíke.

But English didn’t particularly like sounding all Pepe le Pew. So eventually, the secondary accent became the primary accent:

Rhétorick, ársmetick, héretick, lúnatick, ársenick, cátholick.

Arsmetick? Oh yeah. Once the Renaissance happened, they realised they were missing a -th- in the word. So aríthmetic. But the word was still accented the un-French way, rather than being updated to be accented like Latin.

So, if a word ending in -ic is accented on the antepenult, then it came in during Middle English, via French. If it is accented on the penult, it came in during Early Modern English, straight from Latin.

In fact, you can have the one word split up two ways. Arithmetic is accented like it came from French. An arithmétic mean, on the other hand, is accented like it came straight from Latin. The adjectival meaning of arithmétic is a more recent coinage. And of course, it is subject to analogy with other adjectives, such as geométric or logaríthmic mean.

So, if England in the Renaissance was full of people that “one holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” stuck in their craw, it could have happened that the old un-French accent would have been retained (fittingly) for the Roman Catholic church, and the new Latin accent Cathólic would be fit to the more learnèd meaning of Universal.

But that didn’t happen. Because, well, because random, and because precedent. The only people I know of that say Cathólic are Greek cantors. It hasn’t happened, and there isn’t the precedent for it now, and there’s not enough Greek cantors in the English-speaking world to establish precedent.