2020. We’re back to the 20s, but these ones don’t look the slightest with those that people lived a century ago. I suppose it would take a lot of historical distancing, that is, a good few years passing through, for me to be able to appreciate the new 20s in a relatively unbiased manner, but right now, I’m living through them. We are not starting the new decade just yet – don’t forget that decades never start in years which end with a 0. You don’t count from 0 to 10, but from 1 to 10. Pet peeve. Sorry about that. But I’m counting this year as the start of a new era in personal grounds. My life took a turn that started in 2010, so as far as I am regarded, that ten-year cycle ended on the 31st December 2019.
Naturally, this post should be about the roaring 20s. Flapper shoes. Shine and glitter. New music styles. That whole imagery that we get from films and shows such as the Great Gatsby or, if you prefer something slightly posher, Downton Abbey. Or about the important changes which 2020 will bring in the world, with the inevitable march of time and the apparent arbitrary nature of Mankind History. I’ll do neither. I will not sink into deep political subjects here, and I will not comment on flapper shoes, much as I do like them and find they’re a very comfortable alternative to undeserved foot pain caused by other types of heels. I wasn’t even sure what I’d talk about in this post, but I knew I wanted to make one and kick out my writing for the New Year. Writing is important to me on all grounds, as I consistently state in my posts, but as every writer knows, the cliché of writer’s block, motivated by chance or life, was my impending doom during the month of December. It sucks, but that’s life. I’ve suffered from it, both when writing my personal stories, blog posts or academic works. It’s something that can and will inevitable affect every single one of us. You don’t always have good ideas nor inspiration. There are loads of websites with solutions for it, of which the most common one is that in order to put an end to it, you just have to start writing. Another cliché. But it couldn’t possibly be truer. Trying to fight writer’s block through waiting for inspiration is like trying to open a lock without turning the key. You have the tools to do it, you have the willingness, but you’re just waiting for the key to magically turn without a turn of your hand. You’ll be waiting a long time for that. So, I thought I’d start the New Year with something I found the other day and which I felt particularly appealing and interesting. My nerdy interest for royal genealogy has long made itself known. I know all the Portuguese kings by heart. And the other day I was randomly existing in this planet, and I thought, Well, I want to know their nicknames. I find nickname a very wrong word for this, actually. You know how some kings have a secondary title they’re known for, like Richard, the Lionheart. In Portuguese, we call those nicknames a Cognome. This word derives from the Latin Cognomen, which has many different approaches that I will not engage into now, and which could, in fact, work as a nickname; but the fact that the word itself, Nomen, name, is in it, gives it a different feeling to me. It is more than a nickname that your friends or family will give you. It is something bigger, for which the generality of the world will know you for. In Portuguese, there are different words for it. A cognomen is what you call to those large-scale nicknames you give to, say, a king, or a military commander: our first King, for instance, was The Conqueror. Because he… conquered. A lot of things. We didn’t have time to think of deep philosophical nicknames back then. But there’s another word, alcunha, which is used for something more familiar. Something your friends, family or acquaintances would call you, but not something that was so heavily attached to you and your character, that it would be impossible to dissociate it from you. That’s why I don’t love the idea of calling it a nickname. Either way. I digress. I was looking for the cognomens of these different kings, trying to memorise them. I have trouble sleeping, and rather than counting sheep, I could kings, and I thought it would be a cool addition to my nightly list. Afonso I, The Conqueror. Sancho I, the Populator. Afonso II… you get the idea. So on and so forth. After memorising a good deal of these, which I subsequently forgot, I decided to look towards the queens a little more in-depth. Off I went to Wikipedia (#academicsin?), and started looking at queens and portraits of queens. As usually happens when looking through Wikipedia, I found a side-subject which interested me, on the account of its name. When I reached the third dynasty and got to King Philip II of Spain and I of Portugal (I’ll explain in a later post), I looked into the lives of all four of his wives, and when I got to Elisabeth of Valois, I was skimming through the page and found her. Sofonisba Anguissola. I work with Ancient History, so I get plenty of what are now unusual names. I find there’s an appeal in these old names, in how people called each other hundreds of years ago. The name itself has such an interesting sound. Try saying it out loud. Sofonisba. It’s not a name you’d expect to find when looking into 16th century royalty, with names that were preserved and repeated to exhaustion and often give a headache to those trying to draw the family tree, or rather, the family circle. I started looking into her personal history and it just got more and more interesting. Apparently, it wasn’t just her who had an interesting name. Her father’s name was Amilcare, like several Carthaginian military commanders, of which the most well-known is probably Hamilcar Barca. His son was called Asdrubale, after Hasdrubal Barca. His daughters, Sofonisba, Elena, Lucia, Europa, Minerva and Anna Maria. I often wonder what I’ll name my future children, if I ever have them. When looking through names, I start taking certain things in consideration, things that I probably shouldn’t care about. I wonder whether my family will like the name, whether they’ll be bullied (well, this one I do think I should care about)… but I also wonder whether I can give them a relatively lesser-known name and get away with it. So I stumble upon this fellow, who named his daughters Sofonisba, Europa and Minerva, and I cannot help but to admire him and wish it were safe for me to name my daughter, say, Iphigenia, after the Greek princess, without my family saying it’s really weird, or making her have to spell her name for the rest of her life. If it were for her name alone, Sofonisba would have been able to draw my attention with no effort. But the notion of a successful woman, especially in a time-period with such a heavily male-dominated society, is extraordinary, and Sofonisba was successful. She became a well-known painter in her own right, to an extent that she caught the attention of royalty, and became a painting teacher to Elisabeth of Valois. She painted king Philip, Elisabeth and his next wife, Anne of Austria, and she apparently gave some lessons to Elisabeth and her two daughters as well. Now, this is Wikipedia terrain, so follow with a pinch of salt, but it seems that after Elisabeth’s death, king Philip would have contributed to arrange Elisabeth’s marriage with a nobleman from Sicily, paying her dowry and supporting her painting all throughout. Somehow, Sofonisba made a name for herself against the odds. A woman who travelled abroad to work and gained new experiences in a foreign court. Even more interesting, it seems her status didn’t get to her head, at least not in a way that would affect human relations, because after her first husband died, she would have fallen in love with a ship’s captain during a voyage, a man called Orazio Lomellino (yes, Wikipedia data again), and married him in 1584. But there must be more to say about that. Saying she never hunted for money or power or status without actual confirmation is premature. It’s just interesting that a woman who lived at the court of one of the most powerful European monarch’s, descended from aristocracy and who’d been married to an aristocrat, would have married a sea captain, however wealthy he could be. Sofonisba had another unusual blessing during such an unstable time. She lived to the age of 93. Few were the people who lived to the age of 60, and Sofonisba, in spite of all her travelling and the risk of disease, lived to an astonishing age of NINETY-THREE. Better yet, she painted throughout most of her life, even in old age. Wikipedia even states that Anthony van Dyck found her “mentally still very sharp”. Unfortunately, Sofonisba was the exception and not the rule. Most women did not get to follow into professions (note, professions, as women were required to work, and often to take very heavy workloads), a great deal of them died during childbirth, an ever greater number never got recognised for their efforts. Sofonisba got longevity and acknowledgement during her lifetime. Cheers for more stories like hers. And cheers for more unusual names in this world, and cheers for diversity. (P.S.: Her Wikipedia page, for those of you who are curious to know more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofonisba_Anguissola )
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