Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 October 21

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October 21

Russian Translation for Ship Names, Please?

Hello. I'm trying to come up with a list of plausible Russian names for ships. Some names which match the naming convention I'm going with are:

Resilient/Resilience
Opportunity
Curiosity
Fury/Rage/Anger, etc.
Fortune/Luck/Lucky, etc.
Quick/Fast/Lightning, etc.
Undauntable/Fearless/Brave/Courage, etc.
Peerless/Unique/Elite
Golden

If someone could translate those words with the words that could conceivably be used as a ship name, I would be very grateful. The convention is emotions, virtues, ideas, things like that. If you can think of any other names that would fit I'd love to hear them. Presently I'm using Mir, Nadezhda, and Muzkh, but I need many more names for the story I'm writing. Please help! :) --Demonesque 03:59, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Resilient =Stojkij, Opportunity =Vozmozhnost, Curiosity =Ljubopitnij, Fury = Yarost or Beshenstvo, Fortune = Sostojanye, Fearless =Besstrashnye, elite = Elita, golden = Zolotoj. It all depends on how you transcibe the words, I suppose. -- the GREAT Gavini 06:46, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a native Russian speaker, but I can't figure out what you mean by Muzkh. I've never heard of any such word, and can find no results for it in English or in Russian (where it would be музх). One word for "courage" is мужество, which would be translated muzhestvo—could that be what you're thinking of? ("Husband" is муж, muzh, but I've never heard of a ship named Husband.) Tesseran 08:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that was my mistake. Btw, Gavini, are you sure "elita" is an adjective? It sounds more like a noun... 惑乱 分からん 14:23, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Either way, it shouldn't make any difference. Ships can be called nouns or adjectives. And is someone really going to be annoyed just because of one of the ships' names? Hopefully not. -- the GREAT Gavini 07:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you kindly for your help! A lot of those sound very nice for ship names. And yeah, it was supposed to be "Courage," but I was informed by the user above me that it might not have been accurate. Thank you again. :) --Demonesque 02:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Actuary

What is the verb associated with being an actuary? What I mean is, what is the exact word for what they do? Is it underwriting? --Shanedidona 13:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Calculating relevant statistics, I would assume... AnonMoos 14:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a complex field, so no one word would be able to cover it. Calculate and manage risk is about as summed up as you can get for it, but that doesn't cover all facets of the actuary field. Some do more calculating, some more managing, some just advising, sometimes you don't manage it, you just accept it, etc. - Taxman ^Talk 15:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Risk assessment? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 15:46, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Actuarial science.--69.171.125.20 16:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

"Risk assessment" and "actuarial science" are not verbs. --Ptcamn 08:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, we're picky today, are we? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 14:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Definitely not underwriting. Underwriting is the act of assuming financial responsibility for something. Actuaries assess risks - which is very useful to underwriters, to be sure - but they don't necessarily underwrite the activity. dpotter 23:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Coffee Etymology

There's a coffee roasting term that I'm curious about: full city roast. It refers to a style of coffee roasting that is not a light roast and not a dark roast, but somewhere in between. My question is, what is the origin of this term? "Full city" seems like a strange way to refer to coffee, and I'd like to know the history and meaning of this. thanks, BettyLou

My impression is as follows, but we'll have to hope someone else knows the details. The term is recent and American in origin, as in West Coast Starbucks et al. Coffee Revival. Roasters like Peet's, while importing a good deal of quality coffee enthusiasm from Italy, came up with a distinctly American practice of roasting beans way darker than what any Italian would consider decent (roughly "medium"). Ironically, the term for oily and even darker than Full City Roast is often "Italian" vel sim. See Coffee roasting, Sweet Maria's Pictorial Guide to the Coffee Roasting Process. My guess is that "Full City Roast" is meant to refer to the superior urbanity of Seattle coffee practices? As in, "real city espresso-bar dark coffee, not rural gas station swill." Wareh 02:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The term "full city roast" means "city roast taken to its final stage". It is all explained in this article. As for the origins of the term "city roast", I can only speculate, but as Wareh points out, the America's contemporary gourmet coffee culture (where this term is used) really began with Peet's Coffee and Tea. Peet's was the inspiration for Starbucks. Peet's is based, and until a few years ago, was found only in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, if the term "city roast" originated with Peet's, it would not have been referring to the superior urbanity of Seattle, which has a smaller metropolitan area. On the other hand, in the Bay Area the City of San Francisco is commonly known as "the City," so it might be a reference to San Francisco. Marco polo 01:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Those are some new insights I can share with my coworkers. BettyLou

'...ity' or '...ism'

Is there any significance in the fact that 'Christianity' ends in 'ity', while virtually every other religion or belief system seems to end in 'ism', eg., Communism, Judaism, Humanism, etc?

Probably because the people who used the words in English thought they were right. -ism, as you say, suggests a belief system or a school of thought, whereas -ity suggests an inherent feature of something such as banality, mobility, granularity. An -ism sounds something more transitory, something you can adopt or drop at will and an -ity sounds more permanent or fundamental. The word christianism does exist (although not in firefox's spell check) but it is rare and is often used contemptuously about other sects of Christendom. MeltBanana 23:00, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "Christianity" was an old word formed internally within Latin long before the English language borrowed the Greek "ism" suffix, so that it's really partly a historical accident. According to the OED "Christianity" is attested in English from ca. 1300 A.D., Christianism from ca. 1576 A.D. (but never caught on). AnonMoos 01:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

And the earliest attested use of any -ism in the English language, for Judaism, is also 16th century.  --Lambiam^Talk 05:47, 22 October 2006 (UTC)