What's in a Name?

I have just uploaded to Kindle Direct my latest collection of doggerel and wolferel (lines that are not quite poetry, not quite doggerel). It's What's in a Name? and Other Doggerel and Wolferel and costs $2.99--the lowest price I can use on Kindle Direct. It's worth every penny. (!) It should be available for purchase later today (after lunch? a verbal dessert? or purgative?).

Below, I've pasted some of the front matter + the Preface ...

What’s in a Name?

And Other Doggerel and Wolferel

(October 10, 2018–March 3, 2019)

by

Daniel Dyer

Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Dyer

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

To Joyce

Who has always understood … always cared … my breath … my life …

 

“What’s in a name?”

—Juliet in Romeo and Juliet,  2.2

(balcony scene—just before she knows Romeo is even present, listening to her.)

Preface 

I have no memory of how this idea arrived—the idea of writing a doggerel series about eponyms[i] (words derived from the names of people—or, in some cases (like sirenic, protean), from mythological characters and creatures). One day the idea was invisible; the next, glowing in my face. (Was this “false fire,”[ii] as Hamlet cries in that, uh, eponymous play? You’ll have to be the judges.)

I should quickly say that although this series may be exhausting, it is in no way exhaustive. There are myriads of eponyms in the sciences, for example, and although I did include some of them, there was no way to use them all. If I had tried it, readers would have disappeared more quickly—far more quickly—than they normally do. Also, I plead ignorance. I had no idea what some of those terms even meant or referred to (e.g., gauss = “a unit of magnetic flux density equal to 1 maxwell per square centimeter”).

So you will find no gauss doggerel here. (Are those sighs of relief—or disappointment—I hear?) Gauss does rhyme with house and mouse and louse and douse, etc. Maybe I should have included it?

A few other things to get out of the way. First of all, I owe a tremendous debt to two websites from which I took virtually all of these words:

            • englishclub.com

• alphadictionary.com

You can go to their sites and see all the ones I did not include. (Most of my choices, by the way, came from the latter.)

I usually used the definitions/sources provided on the sites, but I double-checked them all  for accuracy and other factors (at least, I hope I did!). I employed Merriam-Webster for the “first known use” of the word, a date I included with each one.

Next—the question of categories. As you can tell from the Table of Contents, there is a section of doggerel based on eponyms, then a section called Desultory Doggerel, followed by a final section called Wolferel. A word about the final two …

• Desultory Doggerel: Almost all of these are pieces I wrote now and then about quotidian events (usually), then posted on Facebook to give my friends an excuse to unfriend me. I have made some very mild adjustments to a few of them, Time allowing me to see the Error that had somehow crept into those lines after I published them. (Doggerel, of course, refers to light, inferior verse, as my efforts here verify.)

• Wolferel: This is a word I invented—a word I’m waiting for the Oxford English Dictionary to include. (Those of you who arrive in the Netherworld after I do must be sure to tell me if it ever happened.) It’s a word I use to refer to lines that are something more than doggerel, something less than poetry. Think, for instance, of baseball: We have the amateur leagues and the minor leagues and the majors. Those three categories align pretty well, I think, with doggerel, wolferel, and poetry.

So the journey begins … I hope you find these lines amusing, sometimes informative, always intended in good fun.

Whatever the case, I’ve had a great time composing them (I realize that word—composing—seems a bit uppity for such an enterprise as mine). And having a great time, for a scribbler, is really what it’s all about.

—   Daniel Dyer

March 3, 2019

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[i] EP-uh-nimz

[ii] “What, frighted with false fire?” Hamlet cries during the murder-of-a-king play he has staged for his mother and step-father, King Claudius, who is, naturally, alarmed to see a version of the murder he committed performed on a stage right in front of him (3.2).