The Huns of Central Asia favored trousers, usually of goatskin. They also wore tunics made from pieced-together rat skins.
You Name It
My mother’s name was Constance. My friend Liz named her daughter Honor. My friend Gina named her daughter Grace. My friend Helena’s middle name is Comfort. I know people named Faith and Hope, and those of us who grew up in the seventies remember Sonny and Cher’s daughter, Chastity. I think these are pretty names. I don’t particularly associate them with religious meaning (OK, well, maybe Chastity is a little much). But the other day, when I was supposed to be working on an assignment, I came upon a book written in 1897 called Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. The author, Charles W.E. Bardsley, combed the parish registers and death records from 16th and 17th century England and found some, shall we say, eccentric naming practices, chiefly among the Puritans.I suppose it’s not all that surprising that people named their kids “Repentance,” “Humiliation,” “Epiphany,” and “Abstinence.” I mean, these are the Puritans. They thought nothing of throwing someone in the stockades for a whole day for the crime of nodding off in church–during a seven-hour sermon.
But it starts to get interesting when Bardsley moves to some of the more eccentric Biblical names. I hope I got the spellings right. Ready?
Barjonah Dove
Tryphena Monger
Mahaliel Payne
Azarias Phesant
Pelatiah Barnard
Aminadab Henley
Shadrack Pride
Gamaliel Chase
Onesiphorus Albin
Eli-lama-Sabachthani Pressnail
Mahershalalhashbaz Christmas
Mahershalalhashbaz Bradford
But wait! There’s more! A Puritannical craze for totally whacked-out names occurred during a fifteen year period ( 1585 to 1600) in certain parishes. People baptized children with names based on scriptural phrases, pious ejaculations, or godly admonitions. Here’s my semi-horrified sampling:
Tribulation Wholesome
Zeal-of-the-land Busy
Safe-on-Highe Hopkinson
Muche-merceye Hellye
Sin-Denie Helly
Sorry-for-Sin Coupard
Praise-God Barebone
Search-the-Scriptures Moreton
The sibling duo that wins the prize would have to be brothers by the names of: “If-Christ-Had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone” and “Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save Barebone.” It does make you wonder how the parents called their kids in to dinner.
But the “what were they thinking?” prize really has to go to the parents of–are you ready?–
Fly-fornication Richardson.
That poor kid. I wonder if they had roll-call in the Puritan equivalent of middle school.
Amazing Turnaround
John Newton, who in 1772 wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, was a former slave ship captain.
What Not to Wear in Ancient Greece: Clothes
In ancient Greece, both men and women wore a chiton, or tunic, of wool or linen, pinned together at the shoulders. Greeks considered it a mark of fine breeding to be able to drape your chiton artfully. Men wore it to the knee, women to the ankle. Women sometimes wore an outer robe, or peplos, belted at the waist.
A Spartan trollop
Athenians were scandalized when they encountered girls from the neighboring (and rival) city-state, Sparta, who left the sides of their chitons unsewn, exposing a good part of the thigh when they walked. And the Athenians were further shocked that Spartan girls dropped their peplos altogether and entered athletic contests naked, alongside boys. An outraged Athenian writer named Euripides sputtered, “Wish as you might, a Spartan girl never could be virtuous. They gad abroad with young men with naked thighs, and with clothes discarded, they race with ‘em, wrestle with ‘em. Intolerable!”
At the Olympic games, the athletes—all male of course—competed naked. Not only were women forbidden to compete, they couldn’t even watch. Any woman caught in the audience could be hurled to her death from the Typaeum Rock.
Only one case is known of a woman who defied the rule. The mother of one of the athletes disguised herself as a male trainer to watch her son. When he won his contest, she leapt up to cheer, forgetting her disguise, and her cloak slipped off her shoulders, revealing her to be a woman. She was spared death because her son had won a victory wreath.
images: Spartan girl By Judith Swaddling (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en), via Wikimedia Commons Matthias Kabel,own work, 2006-01-28. Greek vase with pentathlon athletes 490 BC via Wikimedia Commons
source: Heinz Schobel, The Ancient Olympic Games
Oh, Honey Honey
The word “honeymoon” probably originated from an old northern European custom in which newlyweds drank mead, made with fermented honey, every day for a month.
Wedgie!
Strongman Eugen Sandow (1867-1925) by Benjamin J. Falk
The leotard made its debut back in 1828. A man who rode bareback on horses performed his act in his underwear because his costume hadn’t come back from the cleaners. Other performers realized the advantages of performing in a tight-fitting uniform, and adopted the costume. Then in 1859 a man named Jules Leotard amazed crowds with his trapeze performances while wearing a snug-fitting bodysuit. The name “leotard” became associated with him, and that’s what it was called from then on.
Karoly Ferenczy, Acrobats (1913)
As the century progressed, competitive swimmers, runners, and circus performers began wearing even skimpier attire: legless drawers, similar to today’s male briefs—but usually with tights. Unfortunately for the athlete, these briefs were cut the same way in the front and the back, so they rose uncomfortably over the backside.
Source: “The Englishman’s Swimwear” by Richard Rutt. Costume, v 24: 69 – 84, 1990
Holy Crap
The Aztec word for gold is teocuitlatl, which means “excrement of the gods.”
Bach to the Future?
In 1717, Johann Sebastian Bach was sent to jail for a month by a duke who was annoyed with him. While there, he wrote 46 pieces of music.
Crunched for Time
Most people over forty are familiar with a creepy movie that came out in 1968 called 2001: A Space Odyssey, about how a very intelligent robot decides to stop taking instructions from humans and basically takes over the world.
Variations of this scenario—robots taking over—are a fairly common fear for some people. If you’re one of those people, I’m sorry to say, the future may have just arrived.
I just heard about a new invention by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau that powers a clock with flies. In other words, a robot uses organic matter (the fly) as an energy source. I don’t think I can show a picture of it without their permission, but you can see a picture of it here. Here’s how it works.
There’s a strip of sticky flypaper on rollers. When a fly gets stuck on the paper, it moves down and passes over a blade, which scrapes the fly off. The fly falls into the microbial fuel cell, and this generates the electricity to turn a small motor that powers the rollers and the clock.
If you are a paranoid sort, you might wonder if it is too much of a stretch to think that robots might develop a taste for organic matter as an energy source. Why stop at flies, you might ask? Will your pet cat be next? Or you?
Candyland
The word candy comes from the Arabic word qandi, for crystallized sugar. Medieval-era Arabs also invented caramel, kurat al milh, meaning “ball of sweet salt.”