LIVING IN THE PAST: Interesting blog post on the origins of Roman names.

"Hi. I'm Stick. These are my friends Pretty-Boy, Piggy, Chickpea, Buzzard, Baldy, Big-Lips, Warty, Lefty, Curly, Gimpy, Hairy, Fatty, Squinty, Animal, Red, Stutters, and Dumb-Ass."

So who are these guys? The cast of the Roman production of West Side Story? Actors who failed in their audition for the Seven Dwarfs?

No. They're aristicrats from Rome's best families, and they're dressed in the red-striped toga of the Senatorial class.

The speaker is Scipio. His friends are Pulcher, Verres, Cicero, Buteo, Calvus, Labeo, Verrucosus, Scaevola, Cincinnatus, Crassipes, Caesar, Crassus, Strabo, Bestia, Rufus, Balbus, and Brutus. You see these names all through Roman history.

(And interesting, isn't it, that Caesar's last words can be translated as "You too, dumb-ass?")

As it happens, my nickname in middle school w as "Brutus." It's interesting how something like that can rise up twenty years later to make me feel like shit.

Originally written on January 16, 2007.