So right now I’m reading Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, in which the
definition of knowledge is discussed, and the edition I’m reading from
is a diaglot with English on one page and Greek on the other. The Greek
is a different dialect than I’m used to, but I can still make out a
good bit, and when I encounter an interesting word or phrase in
English, I’ll look over at the Greek out of curiosity to see what it is
translating.
I’m finding that the translation (by Harold North Fowler) is not as literal as I would have hoped. Oh, well.
But I ran across a funny.
At one point Theaetetus (a young man) is talking to Socrates (the famous philosopher) about one of his compansions, and he says:
It may seem easy just now, Socrates, as you put it; but you
are probably asking the kind of thing that came up among us lately when
your namesake, Socrates here, and I were talking together [147c].
"’Namesake’ . . . ?" I thought. "That’s an interesting word." So I
looked over in Greek for the phrase corresponding to "your namsake" and
saw that it was tO, sO, homOnumO, [little o is omicron, big O is omega, and comma is an iota subscript].
tO, is the dative form of the definite article (i.e., "the"), which Greek likes to throw into noun
phrases a lot more than English does, so this phrase is
literalistically "the your nameake."
sO, is apparently the dative form of the pronoun "you" in Plato’s
dialect (Attic Greek). From Koine Greek I’m used to the dative "you"
being soi.
homOnumO, is the word equivalent to "namesake." It’s also a dative form. I kind of wrinkled my nose for a second while I analyzed its meaning, then suddenly it hit me like a flash: Of course, that’s the Greek word for "namesake"! It makes perfect sense! There’s even an English equivalent!
That equivalent is the word "homonym," from roots meaning "same" (homon) "name" (onoma).
Now, I’m a fan of literal translations, but not literalistic ones. Despite the humor value, it would be wrong to translate what Theaetetus said as "the your homonym." "Your namesake" will do just fine. ;-P
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOMONYMS–WHICH AIN’T THE SAME AS HOMOPHONES AND HOMOGRAPHS!
