Title: The etymology of the name "rochambeau" for the game of rock, paper, scissors, and the importance of knowing foreign languages slug: etymology.md
I have recently been looking into the etymology of the often used name for the "rock paper scissors" game, *roshambo*. As it turns out, it wasn't so easy.I got interested more when it became apparent that no etymology dictionaries in my reach had an entry for roshambo or rochambeau. OK, so apparently the game is called rochambeau by some. It's obvious roshambo is a bastardization of this. It quickly becomes apparent that the title of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, who was comte de Rochambeau, has something to do with it. Many websites claim that it was named after him, and given the uniqueness of his nickname I wouldn't argue. Basically, anything named Rochambeau has been established long after his life. However, the question remains open, though, what the link between the game and the person could be.
There's a theory which says that we only need to know the surface of something to be able to know exactly what it is. It's in stark contrast to everyday research: I have very obviously only scratched the surface of the bubble that surrounds me and have still not come up with an answer for the question of rochambeau. The problem was that my bubble could not deliver the answer: I have no education in, and little understanding of, the French language. French is one of those few languages which still have a huge amount of knowledge written in them that is not accessible in English or other languages. I would say that the domains here are English, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and maybe Indian. From what I can tell, pretty much every country using languages other than this ends up translating into one of those; such "secondary" languages which are not on the list end up having knowledge bases largely derivative of the ones on the list (even Nietzsche and Chomsky agreed that the language we use limits the way our knowledge of the world can develop); people speaking such "secondary" languages often end up creating directly in one of the "primary" ones.
So my bubble did not contain French in any way. Given that the word was clearly of french origin, there was a higher likelihood of finding something about it.. in French. At first, I tried the French edition of wiktionary, and tried several dictionaries. Nothing came up. Then, I went to Freenode's ##French channel which is the best way to find friendly francophones. Soon, the user Milady has come up with a quote that explained it all:
En France et aux états-unis, en particulier, ce jeu est aussi appelé Rochambeau (ro-sham-bo) en l'honneur de Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, un héro français de la révolution américaine. Rochambeau était présent à New York lorsque le général Cornwallis se rendit à Georges Washington. On dit que Washington, Cornwallis et Rochambeau ont joué au Jankenpon pour décider qui serait le dernier à partir de la tente de Cornwallis après l'échange de formalités. A cette époque, il était plus honorable de partir le dernier.Rochambeau gagna la partie et le jeu est connu comme étant Ro-Sam-Bo depuis. Par ailleurs, une variante française du nom de ce jeu, 'chifoumi', est sans doute issu du japonais Hi-fu-mi (一二三) qui signifie "Un-deux-trois".
I have never stood a chance of finding this out. There's no way I could have come up with the right keywords to find the article on the etymology of rochambeau, and had I been presented it I would have quickly discarded it because my broken French in no way sufficed to understand the sentence that explains it:
On dit que Washington, Cornwallis et Rochambeau ont joué au Jankenpon pour décider qui serait le dernier à partir de la tente de Cornwallis après l'échange de formalités.
The text translates through googlish to:
In France and the United States, in particular, this game is also called Rochambeau (ro-sham-bo) in honor of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, a French hero of the American Revolution. Rochambeau was present in New York when General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington. It is said that Washington and Rochambeau Cornwallis have played Jankenpon to decide who would be the last to leave the tent of Cornwallis after the exchange of formalities. At that time, it was more honorable to leave as last... Rochambeau won the game and it is known as Ro-Sam-Bo since. Moreover, a variant of the French name of this game, 'chifoumi', is probably derived from the Japanese Hi-fu-mi (一 二三) which means "One-two-three".
It bears to say that Jankenpon is the Japanese name for rock, paper, scissors.
There we have it!
I would say that a person who understands all of the "primary" languages listed above must have an insane amount of freedom and flexibility in their thought, and a huge resource at their disposal with which to understand the world. Personally, I can only say I understand.. cumulatively, just above two of those. I am working on learning Italian very, very slowly, and am just as slowly learning Russian. Both languages are quite a stretch, mentally, but the amount of resources already available is very surprising. Italian less so, but it serves as a point of entry to the family of romantic languages (an easy one at that, since I have contact with Italian every day).
The language barrier obviously creates insular communities, where people work for generations on theories and technologies without speaking to people in another language domain. This is why reaching across those divides can be very enlightening; and, quite often, can create situations in which a concept revolutionizes the worldwide community once it breaks out of its domain.
You don't actually need to learn another language to experience the thrill of speaking and thinking in another language. For starters, if you're reading Wikipedia, look at the language list on the left and check if there's a Simple English edition. Often, the article is quite different and you can follow how the limitations of the language influencing the logical discourse.
Someone has at some point come up with E-Prime, the language you get if you take English and remove the verb to be. This is a fantastic mental excercise, and really changes the way you think about whatever you want to express. It is tough: I have considered rewriting this paragraph in E-Prime and failed. Try it yourself, the rules are described at the top of this article.
There is much to be said about choice paralysis. In my experience, many of the greatest artists and creative minds ended up being potent because their techniques only included approaches that were at best crude, even to their contemporaries. What many call purism, I call focus. A painful example is the creativity boost you can experience if you sit down in front of the legendary Roland TR-909; its limited, immediate, and self-sufficient interface means that you end up being much more productive than with the endless abilities of the likes of Cubase. The complete yet minimalistic approach is one of the most basic ideas of beauty and usefulness in many philosophies; for example, consider the prediction of the memristor.
Yet the kind of music a guitar player, even transcribed and played on the piano, is very different from the kind of the music created on a piano. Those two approaches are limited: after all, you're only playing one instrument; yet they are limited in different ways, yield themselfs to different chord progressions and harmonies, allow different rhythm and dynamics. In the same way, different languages will lead you to different ideas. The semantics, thesaurus, and operating dictionary end up inevitably padding different roads: different trains of thought. Similarly, other trains of thought can become cumbersome or unlikely. Then, once you stop thinking of the micro-structure of a language, you must consider the differing constellations of concepts, existing resources of culture and science, which ultimately shape the landscape we can discover as we follow each language's natural direction in our considering of some problem of question.
Etymology is a pet hobby of mine. Every time I come across a word which I cannot imagine the source of, I look it up on dictionary.com which often has several sources that explain the origin, history, or etymology of the term. It's also easy to type into the browser. Quite often, the evolution of the word will take you on a journey across the world, reveal the history of the world, and display the political changes that have been happening in Europe during the last millenium. Very often the etymology of swearwords is very funny, considering how upset some people are about them, the words often having started out as perfectly serious and acceptable forms. Reading up on etymology improves my creativity and sparks my fantasy; on the one hand it's like living in the 16th century for two minutes, and on the other hand after that I am stuck with this uncommon insight into why we use our words, why they even exist, and what the precise meaning of them seems to be. If you want to have fun, pick up any word, and look up its etymology. Then look up the etymology of its root. Look around and spot the alternative meanings, and check out the usage notes. Having sat down for five minutes you might end up engrossed while hours melt away. I believe okay was the first word that got me interested; in primary school, I asked the English teacher what the source of this word was, but she had no idea. This was long before access to the Internet had become common. The itch couldn't be scratched and it stayed with me for over a decade, after which finding out the reality of that little fact has started an amazing pastime.