Uncle Garabed's Notebook (Oct. 22, 2011)

N’est-ce pas?

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
… Blaise Pascal

A Toast

To the Little Gentleman in Velvet: A favorite Jacobite toast in the reign of Queen Anne. The reference is to the mole that raised the hill against which the horse of William III stumbled while riding in the park of Hampton Court. By this accident the king broke his collarbone, a severe illness ensued, and he died early in 1702.

From the Word Lab

Most Armenians use the word bedkaran to denote a water closet or privy. That word, however, does not seem to be found in most standard dictionaries. The word that does appear is ardaknots, which one doesn’t hear often. Dikranagerdtsis, of course, have to be different. They use the word hargavor, which isn’t bad, as it denotes necessity, but also commode.

What’s in a Name?

Halifax (formerly called Horton): Saxon in origin, from the city of Halifax, in Yorkshire, England, so-called from Halig, holy, and faex, hair, i.e. “holy hair.” The tradition is that a certain clerk of Horton, having been jilted, murdered his quondam sweetheart and cut off her head, which he hung on a tree. The head was looked on with reverence, and came to be regarded as a holy relic. In time it rotted away, leaving little filaments spread out between the bark and body of the tree, like fine threads, and regarded as the fax or hair of the holy relic.

Agahmalian revisited. The following appeared in a previous column: Very likely a variant spelling of Aghamalian, which is Turkish in derivation. Identified as a descriptive term, agha is defined as lord, master, gentleman; mal is defined as property, possession, wealth, goods. Therefore, lord and master of property, wealth.

Cesar Chekijian has this to add: The British terms “Land Baron” and “landlord,” I would think, are the terms that Aghamalian/Aghmalian must come from. They worked on a percentage basis. Usually, 50 percent of the crop would go to the aghmal.

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CK Garabed

Weekly Columnist

C.K. Garabed (a.k.a. Charles Kasbarian) has been active in the Armenian Church and Armenian community organizations all his life. As a writer and editor, he has been a keen observer of, and outspoken commentator on, political and social matters affecting Armenian Americans. He has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Reporter and the AGBU Literary Quarterly, “ARARAT.” For the last 30 years, Garabed has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly. He produces a weekly column called “Uncle Garabed's Notebook,” in which he presents an assortment of tales, anecdotes, poems, riddles, and trivia; for the past 10 years, each column has contained a deconstruction of an Armenian surname. He believes his greatest accomplishment in life, and his contribution to the Armenian nation, has been the espousing of Aghavni, and the begetting of Antranig and Lucine.