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Message-ID: <38C6D7D2.1ECA1C6C@erols.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 17:44:34 -0500
From: Ernest Moncada <emonc@erols.com>
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Subject: Beautiful language
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I do indeed find it interesting that several on the list have
encountered the  name "Cellardoor," and are able to regard it as
beautiful (undoubtedly, the liquids at work) without any reference to
its hinged and pedestrian signification.
 
This makes me wonder if perhaps the "name" may not have been an
adaptation of some closely sounding name, Celadon for example (a shade
of green and perhaps for that reason the name of a rustic in Thompson's
"Seasons" (Summer). I went to grade school with a girl whose name was
Celadon. There is a keladw in Homer, used with onomatopoeic intent
referring to rushing water and blustering wind..which really has nothing
to do with anything. And at least we need not trouble ourselves about
"cellardoors" in an "Attic" dialect. There are a couple of male Celadons
mentioned by Ovid (Met. V. 144; Met. XII, 250, this last one, a
Lapithae, getting his face smashed in very graphically and thus,
somewhat, detracting from whatever pleasure the name might give. To help
sustain the classical note, might it be a pun on "cela d'or," Cf.
golden-bright Aphrodite. Spanish could do lttle with it, since "celador"
refers to a security guard, usually in a public building. And is
"Cellardoor" a man's name or a woman's name (or does it open to both?)

I recall reading that "Magdalen" was someone's favorite name, and it
might have been mine too, but for the fact that years ago, in
pre-cocaine Colombia, I lost a friend to an alligator, or an over-sized
caiman, in the Magdalena river. 

Yet, happily, one is often able to enjoy a euphonious word or name
despite an unpleasant referent. Here, I am specifically thinking of
Joyce who considered the word "cuspidor" the most beautiful word in
English (or was this more Joycean irony?).  EJM
.