Arnold Zwicky's Blog

🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate the month of May — Mayday celebrating labor, spring (new growth, rebirth, fertility), and romance, in a variety of ways (parades, dancing, maypoles, bonfires, public displays of affection)

From Hana Filip on Facebook this morning:

May 1: Workers’ Labo(u)r Day (international) and the day of (romantic) love celebration (a kind of Valentine Day on May 1 in the Czech Republic). Two seemingly incompatible ideas. Karel Čapek sees a connection between the two: “It is love that wreaked / inflicted on us life and all its travails … and so, dear friends, on Workers’ Labour Day we must talk about (romantic) love.”  [AZ: Čapek coined robot ‘humanoid machine’ from Czech robota ‘forced labor’]

And in France, from Wikipedia:

On 1 May 1561, King Charles IX of France received a lily of the valley as a lucky charm. He decided to offer a lily of the valley [muguet] each year to the ladies of the court. At the beginning of the 20th century, it became custom to give a sprig of lily of the valley, a symbol of springtime, on 1 May [le premier mai]. The government permits individuals and workers’ organisations to sell them tax-free on that single day. Nowadays, people may present loved ones either with bunches of lily of the valley or dog rose flowers.

Then more earthily on Facebook, from Chris Ambidge in Toronto:

and of course:

Hooray, hooray
the first of May
outdoor bonking
starts today

The distress call. Meanwhile, on a neighborhood walk yesterday with my helper Isaac, I remembered that today was Mayday, and he wondered why Mayday was used as a distress call. I hadn’t a clue — but then I looked it up. From NOAD:

noun Mayday / mayday: a distress signal using the word “Mayday”: we sent out a Mayday | the pilot was screaming “Mayday!” | [as modifier]: a Mayday call. ORIGIN 1920s: representing a pronunciation of French m’aider or m’aidez, from venez m’aider ‘come and help me’.

That is, French me (the pronoun ‘me’) + aider (the verb ‘to help, aid’). Isaac was duly impressed: French, nothing to do with either English May or English day.

Another distress call. Once Isaac had asked about Mayday, we both immediately were reminded of SOS. But this one I knew right off, because I had learned Morse code when I was a kid. Again from NOAD:

noun SOS: an international code signal of extreme distress, used especially by ships at sea: they put out an SOS that they were on fire. ORIGIN early 20th century: letters chosen as being easily transmitted and recognized in Morse code [AZ: . . . _ _ _ . . .  (3 shorts, 3 longs, 3 shorts)]; by folk etymology an [initialistic] abbreviation of [that is, an acronym for] save our souls [or ship].

As soon as I remembered the Morse Code for SOS, I wondered about Mayday: M _  A . _ Y _ . _ _ D _ . . No, not simple at all. Well, it’s French.

 

This entry was posted on May 1, 2026 at 8:55 am and is filed under Abbreviation, Acronyms, Events and occasions, French, Holidays, Language and plants, Language of sex, Signs and symbols, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.