Friday, August 26, 2011

Music on My Mind



historyteachers, "Chinese Dynasties." They have a number of good ones, including one for Thomas Aquinas*, but I think this is the one that works the best.

* Incidentally, I notice that there's a dispute in the comments section about whether "Aquinas was his name" is technically correct, the argument being that 'Aquinas' merely means 'of Aquino'. While this is right, the argument seems to me to assume naming conventions that don't apply in Latin, in which agnominal and cognominal names (of various kinds, depending on the era) were a tradition extending at least a millenium and a half before St. Thomas. It's like arguing that Karinsdatter can't be a name because it's just the description, 'daughter of Katherine' or 'daughter of Karen'; this, however, is to make an illicit conflation of distinct conventions of naming. Such is my two-cent contribution, anyway.