Re: bye, various comments, culture/religeon.

[cowan (John Cowan)]

Eric Raymond writes (in a message that looks like it was meant for
the list, but went only to me):
> John Cowan writes:
> > la artr. protin. asks for translations of "so'icevykri" (pagan)...
> > ["so'icevykri"] is "many-gods-believer"...
> 
> Then Mr. Cowan is in error; "so'icevykri" is `polytheist', not `pagan'.
> 
> The English word `pagan' has some additional connotations which vary between
> speakers (etymologically, just it means `country-dweller', reflecting the
> historical fact that Christianity was at first a religion of urbanites).
> 
> To a member of one of the so-called "ethical monotheisms" it has ethnocentric
> connotations of savagery, primitivity, and backwardness.
> 
> To those of us including myself who call *ourselves* pagans, it connotes not
> just polytheism, but nature-centered polytheism with a substantial magical
> element.  Even this oversimplifies, because modern pagan (`neo-pagan')
> theology also embraces pantheism and comfortably involves many who (like
> myself) could be described from another angle as materialist atheists.
> The subtleties involved aren't easy for people confined to a Judeo-Christian
> semantic map to understand and would be *very* hard to capture in a tanru.
> 
> For the moment, I think `pagan' is not a word we should grapple with.  It's
> too loaded.  The coinage "so'icevykri" should stand as `polytheist'.
> 
> John Cowan's name makes an amusing synchronicity with his (understandable)
> mistake.  Many Celtic Wicca traditions (which form a large and important part
> of the modern pagan movement) use `cowan' as a term of art derived from a
> Welsh word meaning `outsider'; it means `non-initiate' with connotations of
> `ignorant person'...  :-) :-)
> 
> (No offense meant, John...)

Hmmp.  I will now bore you with the true etymology:

"Cowan" is of Irish origin, and represents the name which also Anglicizes
as "Gowan", "McGowan", "McCowen", etc.  The "C" comes from "mac", the
normal Irish word for "son of..."  Originally, Irish names were patronymics
like Russian middle names, but long ago the patronymic system was abandoned
in favor of English-style patrilineal surnames.

The "owan" part represents "Eoin", the old Irish form of "John", taken
directly from Latin in the early days of Celtic Christianity.  "Sean"/"Shawn"
is a later form, an Irish-adapted version of English "John".  Until my
father's time, the name was pronounced "ko,n" (in Lojban phonetics)
or even "kawn" (to rhyme with yawn) but my father changed it, supposedly
under the prodding of a high-school football coach.  The change then spread
to the others of his generation, so all living Cowans related to me
use the pronunciation "kau,n" (in Lojban phonetics).  That doesn't stop
most of the world from reading off the name as "ko,n", especially in New
York, where it is generally assumed that "Cowan" is some weird variant of
"Cohen".