Calling all ancient...
 

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[Closed] Calling all ancient Romans, Oxford dons, and anyone else who knows latin

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 IHN
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If a dog's nickname in modern English was Furball, what would I call that dog were to be playing fetch in the Colisseum in olden days Roman times?


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:07 am
 Drac
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pila furrure

 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:08 am
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Dogmatix


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:11 am
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Yeah, that's what I got from google translate, I wondered if there was a more colloquial phrase.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:11 am
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Dogmatix

I'm after Roman, not Gaul.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:12 am
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Seizer


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:13 am
 Drac
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Posted : 24/08/2018 11:13 am
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Spartacus


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:14 am
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I'll be honest, this has gone as well as I imagined it would 🙂


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:17 am
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I doubt they had pet dogs. Working dogs of various sorts for the rich folk sure but i imagine any naming would be dealt with by the slaves who handled the dogs so you'd not care.

That or you're fighting the dog in the colosseum so you'd call it something like "die bitey thing die" in whichever heathen language you spoke.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:22 am
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I doubt they had pet dogs.

The keeping of pet dogs in the Roman Empire is well documented with loads of tombs and gravestones of beloved family pets etc.

Got a whole lecture about it form the tour guide in the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii whilst looking at the famous Cave Canem mosaic.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:35 am
 Drac
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Romans were possibly the first to use them as pets, they’ve been domesticated for thousands of years.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:39 am
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Pili pila has a certain alliterative ring.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:44 am
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they’ve been domesticated for thousands of years.

Very true but domesticated and pet isn't the same thing - working animals are domesticated but they're not pets (farm animals, hunting dogs etc.)

The keeping of pet dogs in the Roman Empire is well documented

Romans were possibly the first to use them as pets

But I'll stand corrected any how.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:44 am
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Pili pila has a certain alliterative ring.

Salutaria!


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 11:54 am
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https://www.unrv.com/culture/names-for-roman-dogs.php


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 12:02 pm
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pili pala ?  well my mum has a poodle called Sali Mali so why not


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 12:03 pm
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I'll just grab my Colloquial Latin for beginners book and see what they recommend.....


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 12:03 pm
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Podex.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 12:21 pm
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Incontinentia Buttocks


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 12:26 pm
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Villipila might work, being shaggy ball, it has the merit that it could be shortened to villi which would be pronounced Willy.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 2:07 pm
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Really?

Fido surely... which is actually from the Latin Fidus (loyal)

standards are slipping


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 3:29 pm
 Nico
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The Romans didn't have nicknames for dogs.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 3:35 pm
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You would have a few choices, really.

You could call the dog "Pila capilli" which can be translated as "ball of fur", and has a bit of a ring to it.

Alternatively, you could say "Globus capillus", which is closer to the actual idea of "fur ball", but doesn't roll as well off the tongue.

Of course, saying something like "Capilli pila" as if it was one word would sound kind of fun. Pronunciation would go something like: Cap-EE-lee-PEE-la.

What's this for? A tattoo or something?


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 3:54 pm
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What’s this for? A tattoo or something?

Not quite. Our poor (very) old mongrel, Nelson, more commonly referred to as Furball, will be making his final trip to the vets in a week or so 🙁

However, I need a name for a new contracting LtdCo, so I'm going to name it after him as a kind of legacy. My previous company name came from a random Latin word generator, so I thought I'd kind of combine the two. So, Pilipila Ltd is a go 🙂


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:00 pm
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Pilipila... Excellent! I don't know what your company is or does, but I'd be a customer. 🙂


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:10 pm
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Hey, if  you need any boring corporate IT guff done, give me a call.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:12 pm
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No need for a knowledge of Latin,you already know the word for fur ball.....scrotum.Good luck with that.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:21 pm
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How could I be so stupid, I could have gone with Test Ease Ltd 🙂


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:25 pm
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How could I be so stupid, I could have gone with Test Ease Ltd

Well, if you're going to randomly pluralise it, why are we even bothering?

Now write it out 100 times!


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:31 pm
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The only thing i remember from my latin classes (1976 to 1978) aside from a little bit of declension is a silly phrase we made up "Est traho homine" which loosely translates as "it's a drag, man"


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:36 pm
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Est traho homine

That's just something about pulling a man.

Puer sordidum!


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:41 pm
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Do we get the ban hammer teaching people to swear in Latin? If not, I'll tell you my favourite.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 4:57 pm
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Do we get the ban hammer teaching people to swear in Latin?

vir prudens non contra ventum mingit


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 8:51 pm
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That isn’t a direct answer to my question, @martinhutch. 😉


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 8:59 pm
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Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 9:11 pm
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I must confess that I did not what what banana is in Latin until this very moment. It doesn’t tend to appear in early medieval literature very much.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 9:51 pm
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It's at times like this I wish I had learned Latin. It really does sound wonderful.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 9:57 pm
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It's glorious, Slowoldman. I studied it from eight, up to A Level. The main thing for me was that it taught me two things;

1 - How to pick up languages. Knowing Latin helped me become fluent in French, and able to pick up/understand/muddle through in others.

2 - How to learn. I was taught Latin by some marvellously inspirational teachers, but also in very old fashioned methods. Those methods were around structure, repetition, practice. Simple things that really said learning.

Obviously I don't use Latin much in everyday life, bar linguistically, but I always use at least one Latin, or ancient Greek*, quotation in every presentation, interview, etc I give in my work.

*Ancient Greek from thirteen, only for a couple of years, however, as I stopped after doing it at GCSE a year early. Along with Latin and French. (B, A, A in order, in case you were wondering. Before A* existed!)


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 10:15 pm
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Ah Latin and Greek. I have some knowledge of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Roman based on Greek mythology) due to being an amateur oboist having had a stab at Britten's wonderful evocations of some of them. I've only ever read them in English though.

Oh and another Ovid myth is that of Hermaphroditus as described in Fountain of Salmacis by Genesis on their album Nursery Cryme. Good old prog rock eh?


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 10:35 pm
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Charterhouse types...!

Have a look at Ovid's Ars Amatoria as well. Oh, and Juvenal's Satires, of course.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 10:40 pm
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I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin, never had the Latin for the judging, I just never had sufficient of it to get through the rigorous judging exams.


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 10:45 pm
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Lachne

https://www.unrv.com/culture/names-for-roman-dogs.php


 
Posted : 24/08/2018 10:45 pm

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