Language Log

« previous post |

Things are happening very fast with this "experimental" internet search tool.  I realize that it is a new technology, so naturally there are bugs and kinks that have to be worked out, and I don't want to be too harsh with it.  Moreover, at a certain level, it is already serving a yeomanly purpose.

For instance, I asked Google, "should ich be capitalized in the middle of a sentence".  AI Overview (henceforth AIO) promptly stepped in and provided the following straightforward response:

No, ich should not be capitalized in the middle of a sentence in German. In German, the first-person singular pronoun ich (I) is only capitalized when it is the first word in a sentence.

In English, the singular “I” is always capitalized when used as a first-person personal pronoun. This includes all contractions of “I”, such as “I'm” and “I'll”.

Other things to capitalize in the middle of a sentence include…. [details omitted here]

I checked AIO's reply against the following conventional resource:

Here's another way that German differs from English: You don't capitalize the personal pronoun ich (I), unless it is the first word in the sentence.

From: 

"German Capitalization Rules" | FluentU Language Learning (Dec 14, 2023)

Fair enough.  AIO quickly and serviceably answered my somewhat arcane question about German punctuation.

Nonetheless, AIO sometimes gets in the way.  For example, it is now firmly fixed at the top of a large proportion of the searches that I do.  Sometimes I specifically want to ask Wiktionary a question (e.g., part of speech; definition; etymology; etc.), but AIO will cannibalize Wiktionary and explicitly quote / summarize / paraphrase the latter, usually giving only the gist of Wiktionary's co-opted reply.  Some recent searches that yielded such AIO results:  "cathartic", "agonistes", and "inalienable".

Here's how Google, i.e., AIO, swiftly responded to the latter query:

According to Wiktionary, you can look up inalienable, inaliénable, or inalienability in the free dictionary.

Inalienable means something is impossible to take away or transfer, or that it is incapable of being surrendered. For example, you might describe someone's right to something as inalienable if it cannot be changed or taken away.

Here are some synonyms for inalienable: inviolable, absolute, unassailable, and inherent.

The word inalienable comes from the prefix "in-" and the word "alienable". The word "alienable" comes from the Latin verb aliēnāre, which means "to transfer by sale". The earliest known use of the word "inalienable" was in 1647 by historian and political writer James Howell.

The Declaration of Independence used the word "unalienable" to describe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Not bad, randomly informative, but — in light of my specific query directed to Wiktionary — the first paragraph is tantamount to obtuseness.

Incidentally, as AIO was preparing its response, instead of the frantic whirling and twirling of previous days, now it just informs me politely that it is "generating", which I thought was neat, especially considering the fact that it is all done in a fraction of a second.

Now I really wanted to put AIO's quality and trustworthiness to the test.  I decided to give it something hard and substantial to gnaw on.

In my romp through the northwest, I stumbled upon the tiny town of Starbuck, Washington (46°31′7″N 118°7′36W).  Wouldn't you know it, the snaky, sneaky Snake River runs nearby!

"Ah hah!", I thought, "perhaps I know something that AIO doesn't!"

I was in Seattle around the time when Starbucks was founded (March 30, 1971 at Pike Place Market.  Consequently, I knew quite a bit about the legend and lore of this little company that would one day become a global commercial giant.  For example, I was familiar with the original logo, which some squeamish folks were scandalized by:

The Washington town, by the way, was named after railroad official W. H. Starbuck.

Here's what is claimed about the firm's name in Starbucks Archive:

In 1971, our founders got together with artist Terry Heckler to define their new brand. They wanted the company’s name to suggest a sense of adventure, a connection to the Northwest and a link to the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders. Co-founder Gordon Bowker, a writer, initially proposed calling the company “Pequod,” after the ship in Herman Melville‘s classic novel “Moby-Dick.” But Terry objected – would a cup of “Pee-kwod” appeal to anyone?

The brainstorming continued. While researching names of mining camps on Mt. Rainier, one of the best known landmarks near Seattle, Terry came across “Starbo,” which eventually led the team back to where they’d started. In “Moby-Dick,” the name of the first mate on the Pequod was, you guessed it, Starbuck. A brand was born.

Under "Starbo", here's what The Etymology Nerd has to say about the origin of the name:

On the Starbucks website, it says that the name of their company was inspired by Starbuck, the First Mate of the Pequod in Moby Dick. This was meant to evoke "the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders", but apparently there's more to the story. According to Starbucks co-founder Gordon Bowker, the idea came to him when he and some others were brainstorming potential brand names starting with st- (because an advertising executive thought those were more powerful) and somebody pulled out a mining map of the Cascade range. They pointed out a town named Starbo, and that reminded Bowker of the literary reference. The name worked perfectly for another reason, too: Starbuck Island is a coral atoll in the Pacific known for its shipwrecks, and the company's logo is a siren, which lures sailors toward shipwrecks.

For more information on the Starbucks name, see this Independent article (they almost called it Cargo House, which would have been a horrible mistake).

Wanting to go one step further, I asked Google > AIO what the origin of the Starbuck surname was, and the following response popped up instantaneously:

The surname Starbuck is of Old English origin and means "from the river where stakes were got". The name originated in the Middle Ages when people were often named after their place of residence or occupation.

The Starbuck family was prominent in the history of whaling in the United States from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The family was based in Nantucket, Massachusetts and some members became well-known for discovering islands in the Pacific Ocean.

…

In "Digging History" (3/22/14), a genealogical research website, there is an elaborate treatment of the surname Starbuck,

The surname  Starbuck is believed to have Scandinavian origins.  Norsemen (Vikings) came down to Scotland and Iceland between 800 and 1100 A.D. to plunder and terrorize.  After a time these Vikings intermarried with women of the villages and later plundered along the coast of England.

According to Alexander Starbuck's History of Nantucket, “the name Starbuck is Scandinavian and signifies a person of imposing appearance, great or grand bearing.” In the Patronomyca Britannica there is a Norse name which is pronounced “Stor bokki”.  "Stor" means great (body, soul and spirit) and "bokki" means great ;man (one with higher status and ranking).  The spelling variations for this surname include "Starbocki", "Starbock", "Stirbock," "Stalbrook", "Sturbock", Styrbuck", just to name a few.  One family historian suggested that "Starbuck" was finally settle[d] upon because it was easier to pronounce "Stahbuck".

I don't quite understand that last sentence.

In the end, it all boils down to Nantucket, whaling, clipper ships for the tea trade, and the sirens beguiling the sailors who traversed the seas to bring back the coffee, tea, and spices so much desired by Europeans and Americans.  Plus, you see how important it is when choosing a brand name to take into account the greater power of initial st- over c-, even though the following two letters of both names (Starbucks and Cargo House) are -ar.  As for the final -s, well….

Selected readings

• "Sitting in a Starbucks" (2/13/23)
• "Impromptu biscriptalism on a Starbucks cup" (9/8/17)
• "Biscriptalism on Starbucks cups, part 2" (9/16/17) — all the names on the cups, even the ones written in Chinese characters, end in
• "Star what?" (7/24/11)
• "Sorrbucks" (7/7/18)
• "All the lonely Starbucks lovers" (12/4/14)
• "Taylor Swift fanilect" (2/7/23)
• "Latte lingo: Raising a pint at Starbucks" (11/30/04)
• "Hoisting a couple of pints at Starbucks" (1/25/11)
• "Starbucks and Haidabucks" (3/20/04)

October 11, 2024 @ 7:08 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Language and business, Language on the internets, Punctuation, Toponymy

Permalink