Re: [Gimp-user] OT: Gimp name-picking (Was: Need help repairing image)

[Patrick Horgan <phorgan1 yahoo com>]

On 12/26/2011 12:32 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 20:57, Patrick Shanahan <ptilopteri gmail com> wrote:
> > I'm sure you are a terrific person, also, but the name in no worse in it's
> > stead than "Dotan".
> >
> > Or, for that matter, Patrick/paka
> Patrick -> Patricius -> patrician ->Honourable Man
Not quite right.  I don't believe that patrician has ever meant an
honorable man.  Patrician is from the Middle-English patricion,
derivative (via ancient French) of the plural of the latin patres which
was what the Romans called senators.  They were considered the fathers
of Rome, and the founding parents.  From this we got an association with
nobility, i.e. patrician can mean a person of breeding and culture or an
aristocrat.  It only sort of accidentally matches up with current
meanings of honorable or noble, since aristocrats/nobility/political
leaders now or in the past, are at times not very honorable or noble, eh?

> Dotan -> A biblical valley near my home
> Gimp - > A flat trimming of silk; A physically disabled person; A
> sexual fetishist who likes to be dominated and who dresses in a
> leather or rubber body suit with mask, zips, and chains
Webster's 11th Collegiate didn't get that last one, and I doubt most
would know it.  I assume it's quite recent.  You'd have to be into that
scene I suppose to hear it.  The gimp as a cripple is a fairly recent
meaning from the 20s, gimp meaning in particular a limp is from the 30s,
gimp as an ornamental flat braid or round cord goes back to the
seventeenth century, and gimp as a fishing line strengthened with wire
goes back to the nineteenth century.
> Names are more than a collection of sounds, they have meanings and
> derivatives. Furthermore, they evoke past experience. When I hear the
> sounds "pa trik" I think of a volunteer I once met who had a way with
> women and once broke a toilet. The name has funny and playful
> connotations for me. Likewise, when I hear the sound "gi mp" I am
> reminded of this:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN2-I31Imis
That may well be, and I'm sorry for you that that's so, (unless you like
it of course), and I also have all sorts of associations with the word
gimp, but GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, no?  That's what I
think of.

Patrick