Conference thebay::joyoflex

    How about all the Christian ones, like "IHS" and "INRI" and so on?

    - Jim

(a)  never heard of 'em, what do they mean?

(b)  IHS doesn't seem like it's an acronym to me, since
     I can't imagine how you pronounce it.  In fact, I'd say
     the fact that you type it in caps is strong evidence that
     it's an abbreviation, not an acronym.

There is an overnight delivery service called

	Guaranteed Overnight Delivery
	~          ~         ~

Since GOD was there in the beginning, it has to be the oldest.  I guess the 
only question is how could they guarantee overnight delivery if there wasn't 
day or night yet.

re: .2

Capitalizing them would imply to me that they are initialisms, not 
abbreviations.  But it seems to me that the common usage of the term acronyms 
includes initialisms.

Clay

>But it seems to me that the common usage of the term acronyms 
>includes initialisms.
    
    But this is JoyOfLex; we are not common.
    
              

    Hmm, turns out (according to the OED) that it wasn't
    an acronym, it was a pun.   The word 'cabal' was in
    use before the reign of Charles II; the initials
    of Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale,
    ministers who signed a Treaty of Alliance with France in 1672, 
    provided the opportunity for some historian to make a joke.

    Re .5
    
    You've saved me the trouble of quoting W9NCD to debunk the acronymic
    origin of cabal.  :-)
    
    Christian abbreviations (not acronyms, because they are not
    pronounceable):
    
    IHS  == the first three letters of the Greek form of Jesus' name, used
    	    in artwork and often misinterpreted as IN HOC SIGNO, Latin for
    	    "in this sign"			   ^  ^   ^
    
    INRI == IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM == Jesus of Nazareth, King of
            ^     ^         ^   ^            the Jews - this is what
    					     Pilate is recorded as having
    					     had inscribed as Jesus' crime
    					     when he crucified hum.  The
    					     initial letters are used on
    					     crucifixes because the full
    					     Latin would not be readable
    					     anyway.

    There's also IChThUS, meaning fish in Greek and being also the Greek
    initials of Iesous Chrestos Theou Uios Soter (Jesus Christ, Son of God,
    Saviour), which is also why the early christians used a fish as symbol.
    
    	And also (although not properly an anagram) the old Latin word
    cross puzzle:
    		S A T O R
    		A R E P O
    		T E N E T
    		O P E R A
    		R O T A S
    				Denis.

    >IHS  == the first three letters of the Greek form of Jesus' name, used
    >	    in artwork and often misinterpreted as IN HOC SIGNO, Latin for
    >	    "in this sign"			   ^  ^   ^
    
    The way I was taught it, the Emperor Constantine saw a vision of a
    cross in the sky, with the words "In Hoc Signo" beneath it.  This was
    right before a significant battle.  
    
    He won the battle, converted to Christianity, and then began the
    systematic destruction of all non-Christian practices -- or at least
    all of those that Christianity hadn't already absorbed (including the
    date for Christmas).
    

    Re .8: Andrew, the words Constantine allegedly saw in the sky were: "In
    Hoc Signo Vinces" i.e. "by that sign you'll win". After which he put
    the cross on the labarum (the emblem the legions of this time were
    using in lieu of a banner) of his legions. So looking for this in the
    IHS acronym is a truncation. I don't think it has been used in that
    meaning except by mistake.
    			Denis.

RE:   <<< Note 1059.8 by VMSMKT::KENAH "Escapes,Lies,Truth,Passion,Miracles" >>>

    Constantine's vision occured on December 25th. Was Christmas
    Day established by then, or was this the origin of the date?

    (Anybody remember the year? I think it was 625 AD, but I'm probably wrong.)

    - Jim

    The year could not have been +625, because Constantine died in +337.
    
    :-)
    
    Christmas was placed on December 25 to supplant two pagan festivals
    that occurred on that date, the Roman Saturnalia and the Parthian
    Festival of the Sun.  I don't know when that date was established,
    though.
    
    -dick

    Yes, cabal is from a Hebrew word and showed up in English in the early
    17th century in time to pick up a false etymology in the late 17th 
    century.  
    
    There's a rhyme that goes with the false etymology that I don't recall,
    except that one of these characters was "the hog" and  others were "the
    lion", "the ape" and "the dog".
    
    As I understand the definition of acronym, it is a word -- thus
    pronounceable -- made up of the initial letters or major parts of a
    compound term.  That is, a name made of the high points, a "nym" made 
    of "acros".  
    

    Re .8 to .12: Constantine's Milano edict (religious tolerance) is from
    313 CE, so the battle in question was in the immediately preceding
    years, but I don't remember exactely which. BTW, Constantine only
    granted toleration of ANY religion in that edict, although christianism
    was the main beneficiary as it was about the only forbidden religion,
    and he didn't convert to christianism himself except, maybe, on his
    death bed (337 CE as Dick pointed out, I would myself have said 335,
    but I don't really trust my memory on that), but I'm not sure the fact
    is established with certainty. During his time as emperor he remained
    pontifex maximus, the highest religious position in the Roman official
    religion, a position not very compatible with being christian. His
    mother Helena, on the other hand, became christian (she's a saint), and
    his successors were all christian, with the exception of Julian, who
    reverted to paganism.
    			Denis.

    <RATHOLE_ALERT>
    
    Increment each letter of VMS by one and you get...
    
    	WNT 	as in Windows NT
    
    Dave Cutler strikes again!
    
    <END_RATHOLE>

    Thanks to my wife's purchasing a guidebook to the Vatican Museums (we
    had to take a French version, they were all out of English), I can
    report that the Battle of Milvius Bridge took place on the above date.
    
    "The Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, biographer of Constantine, tells of
    (Vita Constantini I, 26 _et seq._) that on the afternoon of the day
    before the battle, the Cross appeared to the Emperor bearing the
    inscription �In hoc signo vinces�." ...
    
    Curiously, the painting commemmorating this event, by Jules Romain,
    renders the inscription in Greek  (and since this charset doesn't have
    an Omega, I'me using � for that):
    
    �EN TO YT�I NIKA�
    
    And who said travel wasn't broadening?  :-)                     Cheers, Dan

    Tom,
    
    It's probably a different rhyme from the one you are remembering,
    but in 1485, there was:
    
    	The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our Dog,
    	Ruleth all England under a Hog.
    
    (Catesby, Ratcliffe, Lovell, and Richard of the White Boar)
    
    							Ann B.

Hmmm - must declare an interest here ;

	Why "Lovell our *DOG*"  ? - just for the zoological rhyme?

	Who were these characters?

	I always liked poems with this sort of metre - what is it
	called?

	(i.e. da-DA, da-DA, da-DA-da, da-DA
	      DA-da, da-DA-da, DA-da, da-DA )


Chris. (woof woof)

    Probably just for the rhyme -- Richard's coat of arms features a White
    Boar, the shift from Boar to Hog was simple, and the Dog/Hog rhyme
    was obvious.
    
    					andrew

    Well, no, actually; Francis Lovell was (I believe) one of Richard's
    closest friends and suporters, so the "our dog" business was meant to
    be a put-down, implying fawning subservience on Lovell's part. 
    
    And of course, it didn't hurt the rhyme, either. ;-)
    
    (I've forgotten precisely who Catesby and Ratcliffe were; the
    OPG::RICHARD_THE_THIRD conference probably has more info. [Yes, there
    really is such a conference!]) 
    
    -b

    Sounds like it's time to re-read "The Daughter of Time."
    
    					andrew

    re. .11
    
    <SET MODE/RATHOLE>
    
>    Christmas was placed on December 25 to supplant two pagan festivals
>    that occurred on that date, the Roman Saturnalia and the Parthian
>    Festival of the Sun.  I don't know when that date was established,
>    though.
 
    Surely, as it is the first date when (in the Northern hemisphere) one
    can discern the day lengthening, it was established during the
    formation of the solar system :o)
    
    <SET MODE/NORATHOLE>
    
    Jon

    $ set mode/rathole/reopen
    
    > Surely, as it is the first date when (in the Northern hemisphere) one
    > can discern the day lengthening, it was established during the
    > formation of the solar system :o)
    
    Nope.  Not even close, actually.
    
    December was the tenth month of the old Roman calendar; the name, which
    is unchanged from the Latin, derives from `decem,' meaning 10.  And
    "December 25," as a recognized date, did not come into existence until
    sometime after the beginning of the Christian era - before then, the
    Roman system of dating referred to the day we think of as the 25th day
    of December as "ANTE DIEM VII KALENDAS IANVARIAS," meaning "the seventh
    day before the First of January."
    
    And besides, the solar system was a going concern *long* before anyone
    ever began to speak Latin.  :-)
    
    $ set mode/rathole/reclose

    Re the base note, it is very hard for me to believe that the Roman army
    did not have acronyms for various functions in its bureaucracy, given that
    it had a well-established command structure plus just about every other
    feature of our modern army. Maybe they even had code names for their
    campaigns--"Ocean Storm" for crossing the channel, maybe?

    Re .23: There is at least one well known Roman official acronym: SPQR
    for "Senatus PopulusQue Romanus", the Roman Senate and People. It was
    born on the legion ensigns, among other places.
    				Denis.

    re. .11 & .22
    
    <SET MODE/RATHOLE>
    
>    Christmas was placed on December 25 to supplant two pagan festivals
>    that occurred on that date, the Roman Saturnalia and the Parthian
>    Festival of the Sun.  I don't know when that date was established,
>    though.
 
 > Surely, as it is the first date when (in the Northern hemisphere) one
 > can discern the day lengthening, it was established during the
 > formation of the solar system :o)
    
  >  Nope.  Not even close, actually.
    
  >  December was the tenth month of the old Roman calendar; the name, which
  >  is unchanged from the Latin, derives from `decem,' meaning 10.  And
  >  "December 25," as a recognized date, did not come into existence until
  >  sometime after the beginning of the Christian era - before then, the
  >  Roman system of dating referred to the day we think of as the 25th day
  >  of December as "ANTE DIEM VII KALENDAS IANVARIAS," meaning "the seventh
  >  day before the First of January."
    
    Aha (and other such excalamtions of satisfaction!).
    
    But the date (i.e. when the day length increase is discernible) existed
    _before_ the Roman Calendar in some _other_ calendar.  It may not have
    had the name "December 25th" but it was nevertheless the same date was
    it not?  
    
    <SET MODE/NORATHOLE>
    
    Jon
    
    p.s. Anybody fancy getting into another rathole about whether we are
    discussing acronyms or initialisms?
    
    p.p.s Anybody fancy getting into another rathole about whether
    initialism is a real word? (it's not in my little Chambers 20th C)

    Even Dick Binder couldn't pronounce SPQR.
    

    Re .26: Why, I think it would come nice in Czeck or in Croatian...
    			Denis.

.24>    SPQR ... was born on the legion ensigns, among other places.

How is it possible for anything (an acronym or anything else) to be born in
more than one place?

    Usenet was born in two sites.

Re .29 re .24: Denis may have meant to write "borne" when he wrote "born".

    Re .6
    �    IHS  == the first three letters of the Greek form of Jesus' name
    
    Close, but not quite. The first three letter of the Gk form of Jesus'
    name are iota/eta/sigma, not iota/chi/sigma. IHS is the Romanized
    transcription (where H = chi) of the initials of the Gk words meaning
    Jesus Christ the Saviour.
    
    Re .7
    Another thing Denis may have known but couldn't be bothered to type
    (! nor could I): the letters of that word square make a cross formed
    from the letters of PATERNOSTER (Our father), crossing at the N, with
    two Os and two As left over (not as random a justification of those
    four left-overs as might at first seem: the cross `says' (twice)
    Our father, the beginning and end of all things (wording dimly
    remembered from the Easter midnight mass service).
    
    b

    Re .32
    
    IHS is *exactly* iota/eta/sigma (as I said), as close as Roman letters
    could reproduce.  The iota/eta/sigma abbreviation was in use before
    Christianity was translated into Latin; in fact, it does not show up in
    Latin usages until perhaps the end of the first millennium.  I did a
    fairish amount of study of these sorts of things once upon a time about
    25 years ago, and this is what I found then.

    No problem. My quibble was with the words `first three'. IHS aren't
    the first three letters of a name; they're the initial letters of two
    names and the initial letter of a noun.
    
    b

    I suppose, more precisely, the initial letter of a name (Jesus),
    an adjective which is usually interpreted as a noun and as part of that
    name (anointed [one]), and a noun (saviour).
    
    b

    Has this been mentioned yet?

    I was taught in my high school religion class that Yahweh, in its original
    language, is an acronym (pronceable even!) for "I am Who am." Anyone agree?

    - Jim

    The "I am who am" tag rings a bell; I can't say anything about the
    YHWH transliteration, as I know nothing about Aramaic/Hebrew/any of
    that stuff. I remember being taught something about Yahweh and Adonai,
    and something to do with them being the same word transcribed without
    vowels. It sounded fairly implausible at the time, and I don't imagine
    the mists of time have done much to enhance its plausibility -
    though maybe something in that area _is_ true, and the teacher just
    worded it implausibly. Anyone?
    
    b

    "I am who I am" is the name God gave to Moses when Moses asked "Who
    shall I sent the tablets?"  Mr. I-am-who-I-am was disguised as a
    burning bush at the time. 
    
    YHWH (or JHVH) is called the Tetragrammatron and is the name of God,
    not to be used, commonly pronounced (and spelled) Yahweh (by atheists,
    I assume).  There are no vowels in Hebrew and hence no vowels in the name.
    
    Whether there is any connection between the information in para 1 and
    that in para 2, I do not know.

    
    I thought it went like this: YHWH (or JHVH aka the tetragrammaton) is
    an English (or would that be ASCII/MCS/ISO-Latin1?) representation of
    the Hebrew letters in the name Yahweh or Jehovah, the name of God. The
    name is regarded by some as too holy to pronounce, so Adonai (meaning
    "Lord") is used instead.
    
    Suggested further reading: "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C.
    Clarke and "Eye In The Sky" by Philip K. Dick.
    
    JP

    Thanks for the memory-jog, John...  Awesome story.  The ending, vaguely
    but deeply etched into my memory, resonates still:
    
    "they looked up at the sky.
    
    ...very slowly, all the stars were going out."
    

"I am who I am" would be aleph aleph aleph.  Nobody knows how the Tetragrammaton
was pronounced.  It was pronounced only by the Kohen Gadol (high priest) on
Yom Kippur.

    Re .34
    
    > IHS aren't the first three letters of a name; they're the initial
    > letters of two names and the initial letter of a noun.
    
    This is where we differ, Bob.  The American Heritage Dictionary,
    Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and the Oxford English
    Dictionary all say that IHS is the Latin-letter equivalent of IHC
    (where C is sigma), which is the abbreviation of the name IHCOYC.
    OED says that it is actually abbreviated as IH(COY)C, rather than
    IHC(OYC), but the intent is clear.  The trigraph is not an acronym.
    
    -dick

     I have told that story numerous times when deliberately putting some
     computer into a veeery long loop.  Couldn't remember the author or
     title.

     Are you sure of that title?

             mikeP

    The bozo who taught me Greek got it wrong again (see oxymoron note).
    I guess I fell for it because I thought abbreviating Jesus to Jes
    was more suggestive of early Pickwickians than early Christians.
    
    b

    Re .45: And H in Greek is the uppercase eta. The uppercase chi is X.
    			Denis.

    Indeed. But medieval monks had a nugatory understanding of ISO Latin-1.
    
    b

    Not to mention ISO 8859-7, which is ISO Latin-Greek.
    
    							Ann B.

    Speaking of acronyms, though, I thought that there was a recent finding
    of additional construction details about the pyramids--something like
    builders notes or pay records or surveying marks. Wouldn't it seem
    reasonable to find acronyms among this kind of stuff? Although I'm not
    sure what an acronym would look like if you're talking about
    hieroglyphics in the first place...
    
    Doug.

    Heiroglyphic symbols are letters.  Presumably acronyms would work the
    usual way.  It doesn't necessarily follow that they would have
    acronyms, however.

    
    
    >Heiroglyphic symbols are letters.  
    
    Can this be so? I always thought that letters were part of an alphabet
    (i.e., a fixed-size collection of glyphs, which individually or in
    combination map to sounds), and that hieroglyphics are "ideographs" or
    "pictograms" that map to words or ideas. And that the number of such
    glyphs is open-ended (e.g., I've heard the claim that a "reasonable"
    implementation of Chinese  requires "at least" 50,000 glyphs).
    
    JP

    And yet...  This isn't the first time that this has been implied, in my
    memory.  What of the Rosetta Stone?  I don't recall how the legendary
    decoding was done by whoever it was, but if memory serves the three
    languages used were Ancient greek, Demotic, & Hieroglyphic.  Though one
    of the language fragments (forget which was on the bottom) was
    truncated by a crack in the stone, I thought that they looked roughly
    on a par in terms of # of symbols.  Which would, would it not, indicate
    that the hieroglyphics were not word-level, but phoneme-?  And doesn't
    that mesh with the Phoenician alphabet, a later innovation in the same
    near region, that was (by definition "Phoenetic"? (?)  
    
    And the second instance of this implication is those tacky jewelry
    companies who advertise in places like the New Yorker, who will gladly
    sell you a sterling or gold "Cachet" consisting of "Your Initials, in
    Hieroglyphs."  I always thought they were tacky because I'd always
    surmised that Hieroglyphs were ideographic.  Learn something new every
    day, I guess...???  :-)                                                 Dan

    Re .50, .51, .52: I seem to remember that hieroglyphs are symbols, but
    that there is a phonetic (syllabic) system that uses the same glyphs.
    This allowed the Egyptians to write foreign names (such as Ptolemaios
    or Kliopatraps on the Rosetta stone). The demotic script was a
    simplification of the hieratic that was used (if I understood
    correctly) mostly in phonetic mode.
    		Denis.
    
    P.S.: Phonetic does not comes from Phoenicians, but from phonos
    (sound).

    
    >P.S.: Phonetic does not comes from Phoenicians, but from phonos
    >(sound).
    
    I think Dan knew that. He just got Tyred of seeing several notes in a
    row without a pun...
    
    JP
    

    True, John, I wasn't _seriously_ implying that there was any linkage
    between Phoenicians & "phoneme," 'twas just an idle jape... after which
    I forgot to include a :-) in close (enough) proximity.  
    
    And as for those who claim I cannot live long without a pun...  Why are
    you Sidon with those who dislike 'em?  I'll be sure to give _you_ Acres
    of leeway when next we meet... 
    
                                    (not)
    
    PS -- How come nobody pointed out that the proffered cachets I
    mentioned in .52 were also available not only as pendants, but as
    tie-tacks?  This would have adequately explained any perceptions of
    tackiness, but NOOOOOooooo... :-)
    
                                                    (it's hopeless, I guess...)

    
    Is .-1 what they mean by purple prose?
    
    JP

    re Egyptian writing.
    
    The system was multi-layered:
    
    First, there was an "alphabetic" component, with a small number
    (twenty-four?) of symbols representing consonants (much like
    present-day Arabic and Hebrew).  This is what is used in the 
    trinkets cited.
    
    Then there was a large ideographic component, with a large number
    of symbols for words.  Some of these also had a phonetic meaning,
    with one, two or three consonants.
    
    Then there was a small set of markers for things like grammatical
    categories (dual, feminine...) and semantic categories (place-name,
    god, king...).
    
    When a scribe wrote a word in hieroglyphs, he would write the 
    phonetic part in either the alphabet or the multi-consonant set
    and then suffix the appropriate markers.  If there were a ideograph,
    it would be added.  An English example would be:
    
    	MWTRSYKL <motorcycle symbol> <machine marker>
    
    When the "mn" sumbol was used rather than the "m" and the "n", or
    when to use the markers were things learned in scribe school.
    
    While the system could have been simplified down to the alphabetic
    component, that would have undermined the position of scribes.  One
    guess at the origin of the alphabet is a renegade scribe (or scribal
    student).  Our letter "F" still has the two horns of the "slug" / "f"
    symbol; our letter "M" still has the wiggles of the "water" / "m"
    symbol, and so on for others.
    
    Royal names were written alphabetically and enclosed in a symbolic
    rope.  It was this that allowed the decipherment of the Rosetta stone:
    "Kleopatra" and "Ptolemy" shared letters in the appropriate positions.
    
    All of this is easily available in any library.
    
    		-John Bishop

    Ah, John, but not in such a fun way!  I knew (as someone else foretold)
    that the answer would be lurking hereabouts.  
    
    Viva the Bishop of JOYOFLEX!
    

>                          -< Trinkets are not a hoax >-

>    First, there was an "alphabetic" component, with a small number
>    (twenty-four?) of symbols representing consonants (much like
>    present-day Arabic and Hebrew).  This is what is used in the 
>    trinkets cited.

What if your initials are vowels?  Are the trinkets a hoax then?

    Gerald, you should know the answer--it's just like Hebrew or
    Arabic: use a "nearby" semi-vowel or pharyngeal.
    
    	A--hamza (glottal stop)
    	E--hha' or ha (voiceless paryngeal fricative or plain "h")
    	I--yaw
    	O--ayin (voiced paryngeal fricative)
    	U--wav
    
    I'm using the Arabic names, as a) I don't know the Hebrew and b)
    can't remember or draw all the Hieroglyphic symbols. "Y" is the
    one that looks like a feather, and I think the convention is 
    two in a row ("yy") is read as "i".  "O" is the one that looks 
    like a chick.
    
    By the way, the direction can vary, but the animals and people
    always look to the beginning of the line, so you don't get confused.
    
    I learned this from Budge's book, which included some grammar and
    sample texts.  It's somewhere in my house, possibly in a moving box...
    
    		-John Bishop

    It's on the tip of my tongue but won't come out...
    
    (invocation of the BoJ (BishopOfJoyoflex) goes here)
    
    :-)
    

    Jean-Fran�ois Champollion

    (only kidding, Tom -- Thx!!  Now I'll be able to sleep)
    
    Well I guess if anyone around here's entitled to borrow the Mitre, it's
    you... :-)