(This is) What’s in a Name: Aptronyms and Demonyms

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Words ending with the suffix “nym” (= name) are manifold in English...the type most people are familiar with and have recourse to are synonyms and antonyms, the stuff of thesauruses. Then there’s the ubiquitous and sometime annoying beast that is the acronym, the not-who-it-seems pseudonym and the metonym where a thing or objects stands in symbolically for something else that it represents❶. There’s also the eponym, from which we get the adjective  “eponymous”,  where something—a place, a movement, a behavioural trait, a trend and so on—is named after a particular person❷. Alexander the Great had a particular obsession with naming cities he conquered after himself, but many examples are legion – we have Machiavellian, Reaganomics, Marxism, Odyssey (from Odysseus), Caesarian, Quixotism, Gerrymander, and so on infinitum.

Two other “nyms” of interest are demonyms and aptronyms. A demonym (from demos “people”  or “tribe”) identifies a group (inhabitants, residents and natives) in relation to a particular place . Demonyms for inhabitants of particular countries are for the main directly formed from the territorial name (eg, British from Britain) but a few interestingly vary from the norm. Residents of Lesotho are Basotho and the people of Vanuatu are known as Ni-Vanuatu.

Most demonyms are self-evident and flow from the city name itself (eg, Venetian) but others are less straightforward and more imaginative. The demonym for Buenos Aires is Porteño (which is also the name for the (male) residents of Valparaiso (females = Porteña). Those residing in Warsaw are Varsovians, Manchester (Mancunians), Gothenburg (Gothenburgers – what else?), São Paulo (Paulistanos), Rio de Janeiro (Cariocas), Mexico City (Capitalinos), Moscow (Muscovites), Guangzhou (Cantonese – from the city’s former name), Oxford (Oxonians), Cambridge (Cantabrigians), Glasgow (Glaswegians), Liverpool (Liverpudlians). Newcastle residents are Novocastrians, Tasmanians are Taswegians (informal) and those from Naples are called Neapolitans.

Aptronyms❸, AKA “aptonyms” or “euonyms”, come into play to describe where a personal name is aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner’s vocation or situation...or as psychoanalyst (and Michael Fassbinder impersonator) Carl Jung put it, “a grotesque coincidence between a man’s name and his peculiarities”.  The phenomena has given rise to a hypothesis—nominative determinism—which suggests a casual relationship, ie, people are attracted to occupations and callings which suit their name. 

Ringing a Bell!

A cornucopia of aptronyms                                                              

Real life throws up a bountiful and seemingly inexhaustible supply of examples of aptronyms❹, many of which are jocular in nature. Among other aptronymic personages there has been William Wordsworth the poet; Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone; Margaret Court the tennis player; a meteorologist and TV weather presenter called Sara Blizzard; an undertaker named Robert Coffin; a neurologist with the name Dr Russell Brain; a poker player named Chris Moneymaker; the men’s world record holder for the 100m sprint in athletics is Usain Bolt; the list could go on.

The antithesis of an aptronym or aptonym is an inaptonym, meaning the name born by a person is an inappropriate one, eg, someone beset by misfortune is called Mr Lucky. A real life example is a Catholic Filipino clergyman with the name Cardinal Sin. 

Footnote: the English in particular have embraced the inventive spirit when it comes to demonyms, especially specialising in quirky, abstruse ones...Slough folk are known as Paludians or Sluffs, Shrewsbury has its Salopians, Blackpool residents, following Liverpool’s lead naturally are called Blackpudlians, but it also has the informal name of “Sand Grown’uns” (‘Top 8 UK demonyms’,  (raconteur.net)).

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❶ the crown is a metonym for the monarchy, the Kremlin for the government in Russia, Silicone Valley for the American hi-tech industry, etc.

 ❷ or sometimes after a fictional character

❸ coined by Franklin P Addams to describe names that were especially apt

❹ adding a measure of plausibility to the normative determinism argument

Taronga Zoo: From Entertaining Elephants to Educational Seals

334 words 

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 When I was a kid, a day out at Sydney’s harbourside Taronga(𝕒) Zoo meant, among other things, a ride on one of the zoo’s star attractions, it’s fleet of African and Asian elephants. In fact right up until 1976 you could still do that. Prior to the Seventies, Taronga in keeping with the zoological zeitgeist of the era was fundamentally about entertainment, exposing the droves of punters who made the trek to the zoo on Mosman’s Bradley’s Head to a taste of exotic and hitherto unseen fauna. In addition to the elephant rides, kids were entertained by monkey circuses, miniature trains and merry-go-rounds.

Riding the elephant

The thinking all over the world about the purpose of public zoos started to shift from the late 1960s. The zoos’ focus gradually switched to scientific research, conservation and education. So, zoo displays and performances like the seal theatre at Taronga began lacing its shows with conservation messages and raising public (and especially juvenile) awareness of maritime issues facing sea creatures, while at the same entertaining audiences with feats of great aquatic dexterity by the zoo’s resident sea mammals.

“Seals for the Wild”

Another of the surviving early Taronga buildings 

Elephants were such a key feature of the early zoo. “Jessie” the elephant, the zoo’s top draw card and her “housemate”—brought across the harbour by moonlight ferry from the zoo’s original location in Moore Park for Taronga’s 1916 opening(𝕓)—had their own dedicated pavilion, the “Elephant Temple”, a structure still extant at the zoo though no longer the home of Taronga’s beloved pachyderm residents. 

The elephants’ bath in the Temple: a highlight for  visitors in the early days

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(𝕒) meaning “sea-view” in the Aboriginal language 

(𝕓) transporting the zoo’s “denizens of the wild” to their new home was a tricky logistics exercise, carried out for safety in the wee hours of the night when humans were off the streets. Those few city dwellers who did observe the spectacle of the animals crossing remarked on how Jessie (and the giraffes) made a wondrous silhouette set against the night sky

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