Today’s (4/26) morning names: sheldrake (or Sheldrake) and suzerainty. I have no idea how the gorgeous big duck (or the parapsychologist) got into my head; suzerainty might have popped up because of its prominent medial /z/ — I am ever Z-alert — though I don’t recall having seen it in print recently (I don’t think I’ve ever heard it spoken), so it might have come to me just for its oddness. The workings of my mind are often mysterious.
(The music playing at the time — well into a performance of Handel’s Messiah — provides no obvious source for any of these words.)
Now the title of this posting, that’s a play on “Sultans of Swing”, which Wikipedia tells us
is a song [AZ: a story song with really fine guitar work] by British rock band Dire Straits, written by lead vocalist and guitarist Mark Knopfler. The demo of the song was recorded … in July 1977 … The song was then re-recorded in February 1978 … for the band’s eponymous debut album.
(You can watch the official music video here.) “Sultans of Swing”, the song and its name, has been in my head more or less constantly since I first heard it in 1978; it would have been no surprise if that had been my morning name.
In my head — though not in the real world, apparently — the alliterative “Sultans of Swing” is an echo of “The Sultan of Swat” (like “The Colossus of Clout”), a nickname for Babe Ruth.
But the duck. From NOAD:
noun shelduck (male also sheldrake): a large goose-like Old World duck with brightly colored plumage, typically showing black and white wings in flight. [genus Tadorna, family Anatidae: several species, in particular T. tadorna of Eurasian coasts, with white, greenish-black, and chestnut plumage]
Tadorna tadorna, the common shelduck (photo by Thomas Landgren for sparrou.net)
And the exponent of morphic resonance. With an exquisitely British name. From Wikipedia:
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English author and parapsychology researcher. He proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture that lacks mainstream acceptance and has been widely criticized as pseudoscience.
… Sheldrake’s morphic resonance posits that “memory is inherent in nature” and that “natural systems … inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind.” Sheldrake proposes that it is also responsible for “telepathy-type interconnections between organisms.” His advocacy of the idea offers idiosyncratic explanations of standard subjects in biology such as development, inheritance, and memory
Hard to tell whether Sheldrake is an eccentric or a grifter. Could of course be both.
The family name Sheldrake might have originated in the bird name, used as a reference to a vain or showy person. Well, it’s a good story.
Finally, the vocabulary of governance. From NOAD:
noun suzerain: [a] a sovereign or state having some control [AZ: for the purposes of foreign policy and foreign relations] over another state that is internally autonomous. [b] historical a feudal overlord.
noun suzerainty: a position of control by a sovereign or state over another state that is internally autonomous: Henry claimed suzerainty over the duchy of Brittany | Norway was at the time under Danish suzerainty.
This technical terminology of governance rarely comes up in conversation, and you might be surprised that there are words for such schemes of political power. But … but … this arrangement is currently of considerable significance, since Denmark’s control over Greenland is a form of suzerainty, and the Empress of America would, apparently, like to replace this arrangement by absorbing Greenland as a territory of the United States. Or something that gives us control over the island and its resources, who knows what she really has in mind.
I’m pretty sure that the word suzerainty hasn’t come past me in all the Greenland news; it wouldn’t add anything to the discussion of the current situation. But it’s possible that the word flickered past in my mind as the status of Greenland vis-a-vis Denmark has been bruited about.
April 26, 2025 at 5:23 pm |
Allow me to put in a plug for the Paradise shelduck (Tadorna variegata) endemic to New Zealand. A handsome bird with a distinctive kazoo-like cry. Once very uncommon but now making a vigorous come back.
April 26, 2025 at 6:01 pm |
I knew little about shelducks until this morning. An assortment of remarkable birds, widely distributed about the globe.