Why we don't use Galileo's last name | Hacker News Reader

Why we don't use Galileo's last name

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117 pointsrms42 comments

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

How do the locals feel about the middle finger phenomenon?

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

I confess perplexion.

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

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

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

Wow, Never knew. Wonder why they removed the finger. Is it supposed to contain a part of his soul?

But hey, in that museum we also have his telescope. And in Santa Croce there's his entire body, minus the middle finger I guess.

That's ordinary in Italy. Many Catholic saints have there appendages and organs distributed and on display throughout the world. Most of the parts are in Italy. As another poster mentioned, in the cathedral they have the tongue of a saint on display. (Actually,I've been to Padua, they have a lot more than just a tongue.) Galileo is a bit odd as he's a secular scientist not a holy figure, but it's not that odd.

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&...

It's not that difficult:

Gal ee lay ee

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.

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.

Some hypothesize it isn't taste, but the way our minds treat language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimality_Theory

I'd pronounce it Gal lee lay

> I'd pronounce it Gal lee lay

Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Fresh chocolate is like a tender charming cayote.

It's Szczecin, and it's not entirely impossible to pronounce, but it does require practice. The inital szcz is pronounced about the same way as sh ch in fresh cheese.

> It's Szczecin

Aaargh! I had a sinking feeling I had it wrong, should have checked the map. It's a border town between Poland and Germany, I've crossed that border quite a few times and I still can't remember the spelling... Polish is hard for foreigners!

For non-Polish Slavic speakers Polish is not difficult to pronounce, just funny. It's very soft sounding and even normal words often have forms that would be diminutive in other Slavic language. So everything sounds like a baby talk.

I think it's because the final two vowel sounds, 'e' and 'i', are created using the same basic mouth/tongue positions, and thus, to differentiate the two sounds, you exert more force in controlling your muscles. On the other hand, with 'e' and 'o', the mouth positions are so different, that you can be a lot more loose with the vowel sounding and still get the final vowel combination to come out right. I hope that makes sense.

If it were spelled "Galilay" it would be nearly the right sound, but wouldn't be so strange to English speakers. (Having sung a lot in Italian, I'm very used to the "ei" dipthong, but it just doesn't occur like that in English with that spelling.)

As an American who spent a few months in Italy, I can attest unless you spend a lot of time with the language, Italian phonemes are weird. Italian is incredibly easy to pronounce, but feels strange to an American used to different (and more varied) vowel sets.

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.

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.

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.

You can also add Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Russian to the list..

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.

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...) if you want to change your name.

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. :)

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.

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.

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

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".

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".

I assume the reasons are similar for Dante.

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

Because 'Figaro' sounds a bit silly.

Magnifico.

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