
Why we don't use Galileo's last name - rms
http://www.slate.com/id/2225718/
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davidw
If 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>

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mnemonicsloth
How do the locals feel about the middle finger phenomenon?

<http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/finger.html>

I confess perplexion.

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davidw
That's down in Tuscany. Here in Padova, at the main cathedral (Sant'Antonio),
they have the tongue of the saint on display.

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astine
I've been to Padua; I seem to recall a lot more than just a tongue.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, there are some other bits and pieces, but the tongue is pretty
distinctive.

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kevindication
One 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&...](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=)

~~~
davidw
It's not that difficult:

Gal ee lay ee

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kevindication
I 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
Ah, 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.

~~~
jacquesm
Try Szeczin (town in Poland)

Polish has some of the best tongue breakers in the world, there is the word
for toothbrush that I won't even try to spell because I'll mess it up.

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sp332
Toothbrush is szczoteczka, according to Google. You might break some teeth
trying to pronounce it!

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paulbaumgart
It's a lot scarier looking than it is... 'sz' and 'cz' are both phonemes,
somewhat similar in sound to the English 'sh'. Still not _easy_ to pronounce,
sure.

~~~
sp332
Is it onomatopoetic? The sound of brushing one's teeth?

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anatoly
No, it comes from a common Slavic root of unclear origin chet- or shet- with
meanings, in various languages, of "comb", "picket fence", "bristle", "fir
needles", etc.

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jeroen
Interesting 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.

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anatoly
This 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
I 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.

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Quiark
When 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
Americans 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_Na...](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namensrecht#Beh.C3.B6rdliche_Namens.C3.A4nderung))
if you want to change your name.

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sophacles
Funny 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
I 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.

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kingsley_20
This 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.

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bitwize
So it's similar to why people often omit Elvis's surname. Hm.

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dimarco
Well, 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".

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anatoly
I think it can be both; see
<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".

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cyunker
I assume the reasons are similar for Dante.

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Ardit20
So, why do we use Newton's last name then?

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mhd
Because 'Figaro' sounds a bit silly.

~~~
WilliamLP
Magnifico.

