Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Snow Was: Smoking. Was: Clarke Award Finalists 2001
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2025 16:58:56 -0400
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Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On 26/06/2025 20:32, William Hyde wrote:
>> Paul S Person wrote:
>>> On Thu, 26 Jun 2025 09:16:17 +0100, Robert Carnegie
>>> <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 24/06/2025 07:16, Titus G wrote:
>>>>> On 20/06/25 14:38, Titus G wrote:
>>>>>> On 20/06/25 09:27, William Hyde wrote:
>>>>>>> Titus G wrote:
>>>>> snip
>>>>>>>> Vengeance was the fifth of his Quirke series. Copyright 2012. As 
>>>>>>>> well as
>>>>>>>> constant cigarette references, specific English brand names were 
>>>>>>>> used.
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Just in case I did not previously recommend Banville's "Snow", 
>>>>>>> let me do
>>>>>>> so now.  It is a mystery, but not involving Quirke.
>>>>>
>>>>> In Chapter 1, Senior Service cigarettes are smoked and later on the
>>>>> Priest smoked Churchmans cigarettes which will be English or Irish
>>>>> brands. In Chapter 3, the body is sent to pathologist Quirke, an in 
>>>>> joke
>>>>> as there is no further reference.
>>>>> I really enjoy his prose. Thank you for the recommendation.
>>>>
>>>> By the way, Churchman was a real cigarette
>>>> brand which doesn't appear to have religious
>>>> meaning, Wikipedia says that William Churchman's
>>>> pipe tobacco shop was opened in 1790.
>>>
>>> Are you sure his name did not come from an ancestor being ... a Church
>>> man? Just like "Smith" or "Miller" (among others).
>>
>> Usually the name came from people who worked for the church but were 
>> not ordained, sextons, vergers, and so on.  At the time the name arose 
>> clerics were Catholic, and thus did not acknowledge their children.
> 
> Without direct knowledge, I was about to suggest
> that it has a meaning that is nothing to do with
> any of that but was originally spelled differently
> anyway.

Coincidences do happen.  Some names have no connection with their 
apparent meaning.  A name that circa 1200 sounded like "churchman", 
might have come to be pronounced that way in time.  Dorothy or Erilar 
could perhaps have given us a name for this process.

Names which were originally foreign get corrupted, and the tendency is 
for the corruption to move it to a recognizable word. "Churchman" in 
some cases could  conceivably come from some German or Flemish word 
ending in "mann" and starting with a "k" sound.

The great to the nth ancestor of my first Presbyterian minister came 
from Bohemia to Scotland circa 1620, for obvious reasons.  There being 
no chance of anyone, ever, getting the family name right, they went by 
"Slavik" forever more.  In this case, he was indeed Slavic, but he might 
well have been named "Churchman".  Or McIntyre, I suppose.

Other names have a meaning, but one which is not obvious to us today.

A person named "Bond" is not descended from a trader in or issuer of 
debt securities, but often from one of England's monarch's serfs.  These 
were freed long after most other serfs were, and were often named "bond" 
as people who had been in bondage.


   Such as, arbitrarily, someone who sells
> oranges.  I don't know how you'd get "Churchman"
> from that, but I'm confident that it's feasible.
> In fact let me try: oranges are Spanish, therefore
> Roman Catholic, so let's suppose that they were
> called, hmm, church-apples in England - that'll do.
> Even though I just made it up.
> 
> To defend my original argument farther than is polite,
> I asserted that the cigarette brand doesn't have
> religious meaning.  Although, in your book, evidently
> it does.

That's the way to bet it.  But I wouldn't say it is one hundred percent.


William Hyde