Linguistic curiosity -- names ending in -man
Joel S. Berson
Berson at ATT.NET
Mon Jul 9 18:00:09 UTC 2012
"A last rule of thumb: When a name ends in 'man,' the bearer is
Jewish, a superhero or both."
A quotation from Larry Tye's "Superman: The High-Flying History of
America's Most Enduring Hero" (Random House, 2012), as quoted by
James Parker in The New York Times [Sunday] Book Review, July 8, 18/4.
(An insightful and witty review, by the way, which ends "Mighty,
solitary, wearing his underpants on the outside as if in an endless
anxiety dream, he flies on.")
Joel
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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