Aptronyms

 

   There was an article in the New York Times yesterday about tree planting. It indicated that the tree planting now being done, may not be a good thing unless trees of different types are planted. Diversity in all things. 
   One of the people mentioned in the article has a name that is suited to his profession. Forrest Fleischman is a professor of environmental policy at the University of Minnesota. I knew that there was a name for such nomenclature, and it is 'aptronym.' I had to look it up, but I shouldn't have had to do so. 
   Apart from learning about tree planting and aptronyms, I learned that this blog is not working as it was supposed to - as a memory aid for me.  As I read up on aptronyms (again) I slowly began to remember that I was an authority on this subject back in 2018.  You should learn from this that, not only should you read this blog, you should also read the Post Scripts when provided. If you go back and look at my long disquisition about SPARROWS, you will find at the bottom a very interesting discussion about aptronyms and inaptronyms and a bit more relating to nominative determinism  and even nominative contradeterminism. In my defence the Post Script was not really a digression, since two of the people writing about our feathered friends were, Leonard Wing and George Bird Grinnell. If you are still not interested in going back to the sparrow story which contains good stuff about aptronyms, I will just say that in it I mentioned Anthony Weiner. 

Sources: 
  The article: "Tree Planting is Booming. Here's How That Could Help, or Harm, the Planet," Catrin Einhorn, New York Times, , May 14, 2022.
   The Wiki entries for both aptronyms and nominative determinism are very good and if you click on this link to learn about the latter, you will see that I am using a version called Wikiwand. 

The Bonus:
   There is an article in this month's Atlantic written by someone with a name that is perfectly suited, as you will see from the title: "Margaret Atwood on Envy and Friendship and Old Age," by Jennifer Senior.