Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Erkihúrra! - Erkúrra - Eureka! Archhurrah!


The famous interjection Eureka, used to celebrate a discovery and attributed to Archimedes literally means "I have found it" and is the 1st person singular perfect indicative active of the verb heuriskō "I find".  Because the same sequence of the consonants (RK) are found in both EUREKA and the first part of Archimedes' name 'Archi-' derived from 'archos' (master, the first) and identical to the English arch- in archbishop, and Icelandic erki- in  erkihertogi, it is possible create an original, eccentric variant to the greek exclamation: erkihúrra! or the contracted form "erkúrra" (also possible in English: archhurray!), which sound as a weird pronounciantion of the Greek word without being unacceptably unsimilar in sound.  Erki- functions as an augmentative prefix, while at the same time it can, in this particular compound, be regarded as a reference to Archimedes.  Certainly, the addition of  erki- to an exclamation like húrra! is quite unconventional, but there's no rule that explicitely forbids this. The reason this kind of exclamations haven't been constructed yet is because we have a special case here.  It's because foreign exclamations aren't targeted by conventional neologists, not because the construction is morphologicly inappropriate.  It's a matter of getting used to it. I like the boldness of these kind of constructions, its eccentricity and, above all, its UNinternational character, despite its being constructed with two loan-words.  This result is much purer than the adaptation evreka or a the literal translation "Ég hefi fundið það!", which is too long for an exclamation.

On the Icelandic version of the name Archimedes:
Archimedean: Erkimeðs- (This Greek personal name means 'master of thought' and is derived from the Greek element archos (master) combined with medomai (to think, to be mindful of). The first element is identical with Icelandic prefix erki-, the second medes can be adapted to -með, like in the Arabism Múhameð. The reason this is wasn't done is because there has never been real uniformity in the icelandification of Greek and Latin names. In the Íslenska alfræðiorðabókin, the Greek personal name Euclides and is adjectival derivation Euclidean were entered as Evklíð and Evkliðskur respectively, no -es or -esar here, while Euripides, an other name ending in -es preceded by the consonant 'd', became the semiadapted, halficelandic Evrípídes, instead of Evripíð. The Icelandic Evklíð is similar to the French Euclide and both are examples of good adaptations. So my proposition for the name Archimedes and its derivative Archimedean are Erkimeð and Erkimeðskur/Erkimeskur respectively, instead of the far too unicelandic Arkimedesar- or Arkimedískur.
Erkimeðsstuðull (Archimedean constant, the number Pi)
Erkimeðskuðungur (Archimedean spiral)
Erkimeðsvirðing (Archimedean valuation)
Erkimeðsraðsvið (Archimedean ordered field)
Saffron is the spice from a stigma (Icelandic fræni), the edible part of the stigma of the saffron crocus and as far as I know the only spice that comes from the stigma of a flower. Instead my háfrónsk solution frænisgull, based upon saffron's reputation as "gold of the spices", why not using "sælgæti" as a construction model: sælfræni. It is a phonosemantic match like ratsjá with its international equivalent radar, and it can be used as a term designating a substance.

compounds with sælfræni:

sælfræningur, sælfrænisblóm: crocus
sælfrænisgrýti: crocoite (a mineral PbCrO4)
sælfrænisstefna sælfræning: Saffronization: (a term to designate Hindo nationalism)
Sælfræna Borgar: Saffron Burrows, a British actress. Sælfræni is turned into a weak feminine noun to use it as a personal name and the surname Burrows is the genitive of Burrow, which is identical to Icelandic Borg in the old meaning of 'Fortified place'.
Sælfrænis-Valdalur: Saffron Walden, a town in Essex, England, named after the spice saffron (Walden comes from wealh (britons, Icelandic Val-) + denu (valley, translated as dalur)
Sælfrænisborg: Saffron City, a fictional city in the Pokémon series
Sælfrænisleturkerfi: Saffron Type System, a font rendering technology used in Adobe Flash
Sælfrænisklaustur: Saffron Monastery, on Mt. Izla in southeastern Turkey
Sælfrænisbylting: Saffron Revolution, the 2007 Burmese anti-government protests
Sælfræniskrókaróðan: Saffron swastica (a 2001 book by Koenraad Elst) about Hindu fascism