Shandy-Lack revisited

[Mark A. Mandel]

George Thompson wrote:

         >>>
You folks doubtless remember the discussion a year or so ago of the
Shandy-Lack Theory of Onomastic Determinism, a hypothesis that a person's
life is determined by his or her name, first proposed by Walter Shandy in
the 18th century novel Tristram Shandy, and confirmed by the research of
David Lack, a British ornithologist, who observed a striking number of
ornithologists (other than himself) whose name was the name of a bird or of
a part of a bird.
        <<<

Gee, and here I was thinking it was an explanation for why I feel so down at
the moment: an insufficiency of an appropriate fizzy drink.

OED Online:

shandy, n: Short for SHANDYGAFF. Also, a mixture of beer and fizzy lemonade.

shandygaff, n: A drink composed of a mixture of beer and ginger-beer.


Mark A. Mandel, Research Administrator
Biomedical Information Extraction, Linguistic Data Consortium
University of Pennsylvania
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]