In Plato’s dialogue \u2018Cratylus,\u2019 Socrates and his friends Cratylus and Hermogenes discuss the issue of how phenomena are named. At the heart of the discussion lies the question of whether names have a natural relationship with the things they signify; or is this a random exercise, determined by custom, and are these names therefore mutable? So could the name \u2018table\u2019 simply be adjusted to \u2018elbat\u2019 by government decree?<\/p>\n
Many years ago I listened to the legendary publisher John Calder (of Calder and Boyars) at an afternoon session in Dublin\u2019s Abbey Theatre. By that time he had published approximately fifteen Nobel Prize winning authors, including Samuel Beckett<\/a><\/span>. He mused on how fifteen years had passed since the first of Beckett\u2019s publications and his rise to becoming \u2018a household name,\u2019 after winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. Ideas are not grasped overnight, they take time, John Calder observed.<\/p>\n Socrates, Cratylus and Hermogenes might well stand a better chance of grasping the nature of the current pandemic than many contemporaries, as many of the main terms in use are of Greek origin.<\/p>\n Epidemic<\/em><\/strong>: from Greek \u1f10\u03c0\u03af epi \u2018upon or above\u2019 and \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 demos \u2018people.\u2019<\/p>\n Pandemic<\/em><\/strong>: from Greek \u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd, pan, \u2018all\u2019 and \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, demos, \u2018people.\u2019<\/p>\n Equally important terms derive from Latin:<\/p>\n Virus<\/em><\/strong>: from Latin \u2018poison, slime, venom.\u2019<\/p>\n Vaccine<\/em><\/strong>: from the Lain \u2018vacca,\u2019 meaning cow, a named conferred by Louis Pasteur in honour of Edward Jenner who pioneered the concept by using cowpox to inoculate<\/em><\/strong> (mid-15c., \u2018implant a bud into a plant,\u2019 from Latin inoculatus<\/em>, past participle of inoculare<\/em> \u2018graft in, implant a bud or eye of one plant into another,\u2019) against smallpox.<\/p>\n Exponential<\/em><\/strong>: from Latin exponere<\/em> \u2018put forth.\u2019<\/p>\n At another point in their discussion the philosophers look up at the sky. They point to various planets and speak their names. Then one says: \u2018There are things up there which do not have a name.\u2019<\/p>\n And another adds: \u2018There are things down here which do not have a name.\u2019 This brings to mind a disturbing thought, which is that if all things in the universe are related, and some things do not have a name, can the system of naming be relied upon?<\/p>\n Take the proposition that someone, anyone, may carry the virus but show no symptoms. That, I believe, is a novel idea. One which did not have a specific name, in common parlance anyway.<\/p>\n At least one eminent virologist has dismissed the claim outright that a \u2018healthy-sick\u2019 individual can pass on the virus as a \u2018crowning of stupidity,\u2019 when he explained \u2018Why Everyone Was Wrong\u2019<\/span><\/a> in their initial assessment of Covid-19. No doubt other experts hold differing views, but we are clearly in new linguistic territory when \u2018asymptomatics\u2019 are suffering from (or is that experiencing?) a disease.<\/p>\n A few days ago I observed a group of teenagers, aged around twelve or thirteen, pushing, shoving, hugging, flirting, shouting, laughing, jumping, dancing, and even kissing around the Triangle in Ranelagh in Dublin.<\/p>\n I doubt any of them are as yet familiar with the Classical etymology of important medical terms, or the nomenclature around \u2018the virus\u2019 now in circulation. If they knew what the Covid-19 restrictions are at all, they were blatantly flouting them with the enthusiasm of a Republican at a White House garden party.<\/p>\n