Rock-paper-scissors redux

[Benjamin Barrett]

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I ran into the French name "Count
Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau" tonight and looked it up. This as well as
Reaux Sham Beaux are given as alternatives for "rock, scissors, paper"
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochambeau. At
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/RPG_Lexica:PQR, the name "roshambo" is
said to be derived from this count, though the reason is unknown.

If you go to the "rock, scissors, paper" entry at Wikipedia and click
the French version of the article,
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-feuille-ciseaux comes up, not
Rochambeau. Additionally, the disambiguation page for Rochambeau
(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochambeau) does not give
pierre-feuille-ciseaux, so I think the NYT article may be mistaken.

Benjamin Barrett
a cyberbreath for language life
livinglanguages.wordpress.com

Wilson Gray wrote:
> According to today's NYT A14:5,
>
> "... '[R]oshambo' [is] the French name for the game."
>
> Who knew? I wonder what game "kurambo" is the French name for.
>

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