jdq
@jdq
hollygramazio
@hollygramazio asked:

If you could no longer be called Jack but could only change one phoneme of Jack to get your new name, what would you pick? eg Mack, Juck, Jam etc

nb I looked up "Juck" to make sure I wasn't inadvertently using some little-known slang and I wasn't: it's a word but it means, magnificently, "to make the natural noise of a partridge settling down for the night"

Holly this is a great question. Let me see. Jam is obviously a strong contender. Mack is good, sounds like a sort of vaguely sleazy gangster in Newcastle in 1904. Jab sounds like the name of a goblin henchman and I think that'd be an alright life until you Met the Wizard. I'm realising I'm tied to the central vowel sound, which might something that happens when you have a one syllable name?

Whenever I learn facts like that, about the partridge, I'm reminded that there's a whole world of specialist vocabulary for the senses that is invisible to me. I'm not someone who believes the old "if you don't know the name for the thing, you can't experience it" chestnut, but I do like the feeling of the very edges of other sense experiences--moving, light, like jellyfish in the water; listening to the sound of birds settling down in the night out of the window and knowing exactly how to describe it.


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