Year: 2019

Lost Alphabet Letters

Lost Alphabet Letters

by Justin Durand

In the modern Western world we use the Roman alphabet with 26 letters. Usually. The Swedes actually have 29 letters. What’s surprising to some folks is that we might have had more letters ourselves. Who thinks about what might have been? Except when you see an extract from an olde manuscript and spot a letter or two you’ve seen before but don’t know to pronounce.

Here’s a list of the lost letters. I particularly grieve losing eth and thorn. 

“You know the alphabet. It’s one of the first things you’re taught in school. But did you know that they’re not teaching you all of the alphabet? There are quite a few letters we tossed aside as our language grew, and you probably never even knew they existed.“

Funny side story here. My grandfather, just to be a bit ornery sometimes, kept up the idea that Swanstrom is spelled Swanström. (“Fine. As Americans we’ll change the v to a w but we’re keeping the ö.“) Didn’t bother him a bit when people laughed uncertainly but didn’t change it. After all, how could anyone change it when there is no key for it on American typewriters? The point, I think, was not to insist on it but to say it just often enough so that everyone knows you haven’t abandoned your rights.

When I got to college, I took Swedish 101. One of the first things we learned was that the Swedish alphabet has three extra letters — å, ä, and ö. They are really, truly separate letters, not just ordinary letters tarted up the way Germans do. That ö is an /øː/ not an “o with two dots” or an “o umlaut“.

I promptly swapped out the o in Swanstrom for an ö, joining my mother and grandfather in the family tradition of fancy spelling.

Now here’s the point of this little story. I have many friends who do numerology. I dabble in it myself. Modern numerology–and it is very modern, no earlier than the 1920s, I don’t think–operates by reducing each letter of the alphabet to a numeric value, then adds the numeric value of all the letters in a word or name to come up with a number. And that number has a meaning.

As a quick example, let’s do cat. C (3rd letter)=3, A (1st letter)=1, T (20th letter, 2+0)=2. So cat would be 3+1+20=24, and 2+4=6. Then, the number 6 has a particular meaning in numerology. “The number 6 is the number of domestic happiness, harmony and stability“. That’s one interpretation, anyway.

So, if the Swedes have extra letters then ö is the 29th letter, different from o the 15th letter. Swanstrom spelled Swanström will end up with a different number. My numerology chums are dubious. They’re uncomfortable. They won’t come out and say it, but they seem to be operating in a world where the American way is the right way and everyone else is wrong or misguided. I’m not getting a coherent analysis from any of them. The best argument I’ve heard so far is that I’m an American, so I can’t have Swedish letters in my name. “Those two dots over the o are just decorative.“

But, luck of the draw. The ö is the 29th letter of the Swedish alphabet, so 2+9=11. In the reductionist methodology of numerology, this means is that changing my o to an ö, doesn’t change the final outcome.

Why and how that works is one of the mysteries of math. I didn’t get far enough to understand it, but it does give me a reason to think about those other letters and how they might change the numerology of a name, and those 12 letters we’ve lost and what impact they might have had on modern numerology. If only we knew the order in which they would have appeared in our alphabet.

Fighting Snails

Fighting Snails

by Justin Durand

If you’ve ever wondered why so many medieval manuscripts have drawings of knights fighting snails. 

I won’t give it away. And the comments are as good as the video. Here’s a sample:

  • “The answer is simple, in medieval times giant snails were a real menace but thankfully the brave Knights of Europe wiped them all out for us.“
  • “Knights were the athletes superstars of the time. Monks were the academics. Maybe the nerds were mocking the jocks?“
  • “There is an explenation: The knights were french“
Think About Culture Changes

Think About Culture Changes

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Let’s take some time to think about how culture changes over time. Justin King talks a bit here toward the beginning about White American Southerners who tried to save their culture by moving to Brazil. It didn’t work. They assimilated.

And that’s exactly what happens to people in the European diaspora. Our ancestors might have been European but we are something else.

I’m choosing to link to this particular example because it sets assimilation in a political context rather than a purely esoteric woo-woo land where we might get lost in the glitter.

CE and BCE

CE and BCE

by Justin Durand

I use CE and BCE rather than AD and BC. Surprisingly, that causes some people pain. They seem to have the idea it’s somehow an assault on Christianity. I don’t have time to argue. I roll my eyes and move on. I first encountered CE and BCE as an undergraduate in the 1970s. I didn’t need anyone to unpack it for me. It made intuitive sense.

We know the AD/BC calendar is wrong about the birth of Jesus, but even if it were right we’ve moved out of our parochial past where it seemed like the whole world is Christian. Then, looking at the calendar and calendar reforms many years later, it turned out the AD/BC calendar isn’t all that old anyway.

I knew if I waited long enough, there would be something easy to cite for the whole history and shape of the modern CE/BCE dating system. Not just “it’s too late to re-date all of history, so let’s just suck it up”. And here it is.

“In recent years, a persistent criticism has been leveled against the use of the BCE/CE system (Before the Common or Current Era/Common or Current Era) , rather than BC/AD (Before Christ/Anno Domini or ‘Year of Our Lord’), in dating historical events. This designation, it is claimed, is nothing more than an attempt to ‘remove Christ from the calendar’ in keeping with the ‘subversive’ effects of political correctness. The use of BCE/CE, opponents claim, is offensive to Christians who recognize time as dated up to, and away from, the birth of Jesus. Further, it is claimed that BCE/CE makes no sense because it refers to exactly the same event as BC/AD. Those who oppose the use of the ‘common era’ designation also seem to feel that the use of BC/AD is actually stipulated by the Bible or in some way carries biblical authority.

“There is no biblical authority for BC/AD; it was created over 500 years after the events described in the Christian New Testament and was not accepted usage until after another 500 years had passed. The use of BCE/CE certainly has become more common in recent years but it is not a new invention of the ‘politically correct’ nor is it even all that new; the use of ‘common era’ in place of A.D. first appears in German in the 17th century CE and in English in the 18th. The use of this designation in dating has nothing to do with ‘removing Christ from the calendar’ and everything to do with accuracy when dealing with historical events.“

Read more:

Genealogy Requires Actual Research Skills

Genealogy Requires Actual Research Skills

by Justin Durand

I like this article by James Tanner. Actually, I like most articles by James Tanner, but this one in particular.

In a nutshell, “I am not denigrating genealogy in any way, I just think that the subject of doing genealogical research needs to be upgraded from a pastime to a serious pursuit on the same level as any other academic study such as engineering, linguistics, or medieval studies.“

Maybe I’m just feeling a little virtuous here.

“The fact is that doing research of any kind is a technical, learned activity. Some people have innate talents that assist them in being “good” researchers but the only way someone learns how to do research is by doing it. Some schooling, including advanced university degrees in just about any subject, will help but competency in research is a bundle of skills that are learned over time. You may see a child prodigy who can play the piano at age three or four, but you will not see a child prodigy who can manage a major research project like those commonly encountered in searching historical documents for your ancestors.“

This has been an unacknowledged problem on some of the collaborative websites where I’ve been working the last 10 years. I keep running into a general attitude, “My opinion is just as good as yours”. (No. No, it’s not. You took history in high school, and now you’ve read some pseudo-history. I have 40+ years of actual research in primary sources, a bachelor’s degree in the stuff, and a significant amount of graduate work, albeit with a J.D. rather than an M.A. in History.)

I’m tired of arguing with idiots. When the mood passes, I’ll be back doing real research.