Advent 16

Volume 16 (Mushr to Ozon): Names (in Linguistics)

Linguistics, the scientific study of language and its structure. This has been an overlooked element in my sprawling education. Yes there were bits and pieces in my primary education (more, I suspect, than is currently fashionable) and studying Latin at secondary school certainly helped (funny how we've come back to the classics for a third consecutive day!) but there was little of it an English degree. It does impinge upon the study and practice of law because meaning is at the heart of good drafting - and believe me, good drafting is a disappearing art. One of the great challenges with the advent of AI is going to be seeing whether it promotes clarity or rehashes obfuscation. If legal AI programs could take as their first source the delivered opinions of the very great Lord Denning (the greatest jurist of the last century) then we might just be in for a new age of enlightenment. As an undergraduate I used to eschew library time and instead wander down the Strand to sit at the back of the Master of the Rolls court to watch this titan in action. I have a signed first edition of his The Discipline of Law. 

Names. The intriguing and diverting article in my Britannica suggests ten categories of name in what it concedes is a 'rough classification': 1. Personal names (who is the real David Roberts?); 2. Quasi-personal names; 3. Names for things not definitely personified; 4. Place names; 5. Names of tribes; 6. Names of institutions and corporations; 7. Titles (The Overgraduate); 8. Brand names; 9. Names of events in history; 10. Names of abstractions not personified.

I could have hours of fun with this! But you don't want to know about my personal predilections.