Re[2]: American English translation of character names

From: Alexander Savenkov (savenkov@xmlhack.ru)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 14:03:24 EST

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    Hello,

    2003-12-18T18:38:28Z Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com> wrote:

    > At 16:21 +0100 2003-12-18, Philippe Verdy wrote:
    >>John Cowan wrote:
    >>> The most mysterious term is "caron" for the hacek accent: this word
    >>> seems to exist only in ISO standards, and nobody has any idea where it
    >>> came from.
    >>
    >>I think it may have occured in some typographic terminology, because
    >>the intial glyph looked more like a crochet hook than to a reversed
    >>circumflex, i.e. caron was not angular in handwritten form, as it is
    >>now in typesetted fonts, but looked like a rounded and oblique check
    >>mark (a slight variation of the accute accent with a small rounded
    >>hook on its bottom end, but still much more distinctful from the
    >>lower half-circle form used by breve).

    > This doesn't make any sense to me, but in any case it does not
    > explain the origin of the word "caron". The most plausible suggestion
    > I've ever come up with is folk-etymological: It's a CARet that sits
    > ON the vowel. :-(

    The first time I saw the word caron it reminded me of the Russian word
    «êîðîíà» (korona, cf. crown, coronet, or Corona beer). The accent
    obviously looks like a small crown, hence may be the name. I guess we
    could find the mysterious word in one of the languages using haceks.

    Native speakers are needed.

    -- 
      Alexander Savenkov                            http://www.xmlhack.ru/
      savenkov@xmlhack.ru             http://www.xmlhack.ru/authors/croll/
    


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