Subject: (urth) eponyms as saints

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 19:09:01 +0000

Jerry Friedman quoted and wrote:

>> Seems to me that real-world eponyms are not devices to tell time, but
>> by-products of time and culture.  If the word is still in use, then the
>> eponym remains: our busts of the eponyms would include de Sade,
>> Quisling,
>> Bowdler, et ali.  If in a hundred years we no longer used the words
>> sadism,
>> quisling, and  bowdlerize, then those busts would be removed, the
>> eponyms
>> forgotten along with their "words."  (Note the memorial/funereal tinct
>> here.)
>
>This is interesting, but my guess is that the eponyms are saints, like
>the eponyms of San Francisco, Marylebone, people named James, etc.

That's funny, because I don't normally think of the people of the
Commonwealth having saints (granted that they are all named after Catholic
saints, but I have never seen this as a literal sign of the saints being
resurrected, as James Jordan did in his early interview with Wolfe, but
rather as a clever trick to get big history and alien-ness in one coherent,
convenient package), so I used non-saint eponyms.

But of course you are right, they =do= have saints (well one: "St. Amand"),
so the busts become perhaps a sequence of saints and commoners.  From high
to low, altitude-wise at least.

Still, another point I wanted to transmit was that while Nessus is
"eternal," the quarters of the city are definitely not: they have a rather
brief lifespan, in fact, and then they are abandoned to ruin as the city
moves North. So the busts, despite their seeming antiquity, are not all
that old, really, and were placed there by recent architects for recent
tastes.  (I mean, it isn't like they are as alien in culture/distant in
time as Etruscan busts in medieval Italy.)  With this, I would guess that
the eponyms are known rather than unknown; and since Severian's time seems
to be at a low-tide for churches, I suspect the eponyms to be more like
guillotine, gerrymander, and shyster than St. Agia (although that would've
made a neat moment!).

=mantis=

--

---

From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 22:38:00 +0000

> convenient package), so I used non-saint eponyms.

You mean there's a Saint Baldanders and a Saint Foila?

But for Pete's sake and heavens to Betsy, if all the people of the
Commonwealth are named after Catholic saints, isn't it obvious who
the eponyms are?

> to low, altitude-wise at least.

I don't remember St. Amand.  From UotNS?

There's Holy Katharine (sp?), though, and it seems to me that at one
point Severian mentions Barbara as the patron of soldiers.

> guillotine, gerrymander, and shyster than St. Agia (although that

St. Agia of the Knife?  Sorry, wrong series.

But we don't put up statues of Lynch, Boycott, or E. Clerihew Bentley. 
Though a monument to the unknown eponym of "jerry-built" might be
nice.  (Okay, that's the last time I'll mention that, I promise.)

Jerry Friedman is not named after the first abbot of Mayo.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards®
http://movies.yahoo.com/

--

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 23:18:34 +0000

>You mean there's a Saint Baldanders and a Saint Foila?

Now you're just wise-cracking, or you are the new guard to come on duty in
interrogating.  I've been through that thread simply too many times.
Baldanders is a bad guy, as signified by his fiction-derived name.

>Commonwealth are named after Catholic saints, isn't it obvious who

No, forgive me, it is not.  I have never heard of saints categorized as
eponyms for giving their names to countless individuals--as opposed to
giving their name "to a tribe, nation, process, product, etc."  (Name for a
city, which you gave before, seemed close to tribe/nation, athough greatly
diluted.)  If it is clear to you then that is enough.

>St. Agia of the Knife?  Sorry, wrong series.

=Saint Austregildis=, du-uh!

>But we don't put up statues of Lynch, Boycott, or E. Clerihew Bentley.

Hugos, Edgars, Nebulas, and Oscars are halfway there.  Maybe "Sons of
Liberty" and "Knights of Columbus" and stuff like that.  Elks Lodge.
Freemasonry.  Still, I would agree that we don't put up statues of the
eponyms!  It seems like a practice from the ancient world.

=mantis=

--

---

From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 21:46:58 +0000

> Baldanders is a bad guy, as signified by his fiction-derived name.

I must've been absent that day.  But now that you've mentioned it and
I've spent a little time at a saint site, I'll look in the archives
if I want more information.

> No, forgive me, it is not.

I'll forgive you if you'll forgive me.  Or should I forgive you first,
since I actually said something obnoxious?  Which is to say--sorry
about that "isn't it obvious"?

> I have never heard of saints categorized as

"Etc." can cover a lot of ground, though you're right that "eponym"
normally doesn't extend to the person someone is named after.  On the
other hand, if there's a canonical list of names (which seems suggested
though not proven by Wolfe's use of saints' names, including the
apparently well-known pairs Agilus-Agia and Severian-Severa), all of
which are names of admired people of the past (not suggested anywhere
that I know of), and if you didn't want to call those admired people
saints, what would you call them?
...

> eponyms!  It seems like a practice from the ancient world.

(Just Hugos, Edgars, Oscars, and the K. of C.)

Jerry Friedman

--