Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 April 4

= April 4 =

Christian name : "Spruille" ?
Hello learned people ! I am going to translate the article Spruille Braden into french for WP fr, and I wonder what the hereabouts of that unusual first name are : WP doesn't say anything about it, & the only Spruille it shows seems to be S. Braden. Moreover, it has for us Europeans a touch of feminity (which actually is not at all becoming with the character of Mr Braden) ...Thank you beforehand for your answers, t. y. Arapaima (talk) 17:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Spruille seems to be a rather rare surname in the U.S.&emsp;There was recently a thread on this page that meandered off its original topic and onto the topic of using surnames as first names in English. In Mr. Braden's case, I suspect some ancestor of his had the last name Spruille (perhaps it was his mother's maiden name or the maiden name of one of his grandmothers) and he was given it as a first name in honor of the Spruille line in his ancestry. Angr (talk) 17:28, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Just as a side matter, since the OP mentioned translation, it is not common to translate or change a name when translating an article from one language to another. An article about James Baker, for example, would never be translated into French as "Jacques Boulanger" or into Italian as "Giacomo Panettiere" even though the names are linguistic cognates of each other.  Names should be written in their original spelling unless the person's name has historically been translated, other than historical figures like Copernicus, or some royals (c.f. Francis I in English vs. François I in French), this is uncommon among most articles, and is the exception rather than the rule.  -- Jayron  32  18:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but the OP did only say he was going to translate the article into French; he didn't imply he was trying to translate the name itself into French. Angr (talk) 15:19, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Since the topic has come up, anyone have any idea how to pronounce Spruille Braden? — kwami (talk) 07:21, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Nope. I hear /spruˈɪl ˈbreɪdn̩/ in my head, but I have no idea if that's correct. I can't find it in any of my dictionaries. Angr (talk) 15:19, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Iambic, really? /ˈspru əl/ seems more likely to me. (We're comparing instinct here, nothing more.) —Tamfang (talk) 18:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Another tangent: The OP asked for the "hereabouts" of the name. This is not an expression that I recognize. Is this used regularly in some variety of English? --Trovatore (talk) 19:17, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The OP is French, see User:Arapaima. Roger (talk) 19:32, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Is it related to some expression in French? I'm not even sure what French for hereabouts would be.  Presque ici or some such? --Trovatore (talk) 19:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The name is pronounced, like "fool maiden". I edited the article so that it follows the pattern of Gough Whitlam, where the IPA and phonetic respelling are displayed prominently at the very beginning of the article. L ANTZY T ALK 06:44, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

to be blown up = shell shock ?
Hello, again ! The question supra about being blown away makes me thing I have that problem bugging me for some time now : in Hemingway's short story "Now I Lay Me" (at the beginning, 8° line in the Penguin Edition) the young american Nick, laying on a straw couch in a farm some miles from the front line in north Italy in 1918, can't sleep nights : "I had been that way for a long time, ever since I had been blown up at night and felt it go out of me and go off and then come back.". "It" is his soul. Can one infer that he has had shell shock ? Thanks a lot beforehand for your answers, t. y. Arapaima (talk) 17:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * He was apparently involved in an explosion, certainly. However, a diagnosis of "shell shock" or PTSD is going a bit farther than I think we dare do here. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  17:43, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Shell-shock involves more than just insomnia. So unless you can infer more profoundly destabilizing problems, I'd say no. — kwami (talk) 21:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot to both, t.y. Arapaima (talk) 07:16, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Priced to Own
What does "priced to own" mean? Black Carrot (talk) 22:46, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Can you give an example? Where did you see it? RudolfRed (talk) 23:18, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Haven't seen that expression for a couple of decades, but I recall it as advertising language meaning "This product is so cheap you will have no trouble ending up possessing one." HiLo48 (talk) 23:24, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I believe they are trying to convey that the price is low enough to purchase the item, versus renting/leasing it.  The usual phrase for this is "priced to sell". StuRat (talk) 23:35, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Or "rent to own". Bielle (talk) 23:48, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * That means something different. It's a rental, but a very small portion of each installment also goes towards the purchase.  This is the most expensive way to buy anything. StuRat (talk) 03:29, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I believe that in the scene in Dogma where Bartleby rants about Mooby, he mentions "priced-to-own video cassettes". Also, it seems to be fairly common on the interwebs. Just curious what it actually meant. Black Carrot (talk) 03:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
 * In that case it almost certainly means videos sold direct to customers, rather than the more expensive ones sold to video rental stores for renting out. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:06, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I personally, unless it arises specifically in contrast to renting, read it as somewhere in between "motivated seller" and "handyman special", i.e. priced with an eye to a quick sale, for whatever reason. At one company I worked, every so often someone would come in with a vanload of new tools/metal-working equipment and "we were at a trade show, our boss says unload all this rather than ship it back". That stuff was priced-to-own... Franamax (talk) 21:33, 5 April 2012 (UTC)