What if it turns out that Pepe doesn’t come from San José?

The origin of Pepe and other biblically inspired sayings can be found in the book ‘The Secret Life of Words’

Words are full of mysteries, linked to their etymology and history, and revealing them helps to discover the unexpected relationships, and the whys and wherefores, of many elements of our culture.

That is the purpose of an essay like ‘The Secret Life of Words’ (Esfera), by Shayma Filali, Israel Villalba and Peru Amorrortu, members of the @EtimosDirectos team, one of the most followed accounts on Spanish on social networks.

Terms from all semantic fields parade through his book -personal and botanical names, animals or politics, but also insults or sexual life- among which there are also many references to the religious fact, as well as to the lexicon, expressions and confusion related to it.

Surely few readers know the meaning of the word hypocoristic, but they will get a quick idea if we talk about ‘Pepe’. Hypocoristics are affectionate names with which we address close people. On many occasions the new word arises from the shortening of the original, but this is not always the case, nor does this relationship always appear at first sight.

In the case of Pepe, the most widespread story links this hypocoristic to the person of Saint Joseph and his identification in the Latin missals as the putative father of Christ, the one who performs paternal functions without being a carnal father. ‘Josephus Pater Putativus Christi’ would be the way it was quoted in the old texts and, with the passage of time, the expression would have been shortened to PP in the missals, so that the parishioners who did not know Latin, the majority, would have read the reference as Pepe.

However, the authors of ‘The Secret Life of Words’ throw us a bucket of cold water because they assure that this is not the origin of José’s hypocoristic. “The truth is that this Latin expression, which hardly has any documentary evidence, is not at the origin of the diminutive Pepe, which is not exclusive to Spanish,” say the authors of ‘The Secret Life of Words’. And in its place they offer us another much more normal and prosaic, but surely also more logical.

What the etymology tells us is that Pepe “is a derivative of the name Josepe, which is widely documented in the 15th and 16th centuries, later falling into disuse”, they explain.

This original form is detected in the Italian Giuseppe, the Catalan Josep or the Basque Joxepe, for example. That is the facts, although it is legitimate to prefer the popular flavor of the old legend.

One of the most curious stories that this essay reveals is the one that explains the origin of such an established custom as that of identifying children with their paternal surname. A regulation, well known by historians, imposed between 1501 and 1506 by Cardinal Cisneros, a key figure in the history of Spain and then the main adviser to the Catholic Monarchs.

That the norm arose then means that it was not like that before. And, in fact, until the beginning of the 16th century, it was common for members of the same family to use different surnames, such as nicknames or nicknames, or geographical references, with which they were known.

But one of the challenges of the Catholic Monarchs was to launch a powerful administration capable of ordering the life of the country and the old form of denomination generated enormous chaos and administrative confusion, which the new ordinance eliminated.

“However, it was not easily accepted,” explain the authors of ‘The Secret Life of Words’. “Despite the efforts of the Franciscan of Alcalá, even in the times of Lázaro de Tormes, surnames were a difficult issue.” And this is recorded in the picaresque classic when Lázaro himself introduces himself: “Well, Your Grace knows that they call me Lázaro de Tormes, son of Tome González and Antonia Pérez, natives of Tejares, a village in Salamanca. My birth was inside the Tormes river, for which reason I took the nickname”.

The roots of the word God are also addressed in the essay and thus we discover that both the Latin deus and Zeus (the main god of Roman mythology) come from a common root that means sky and from which the word dies (day) also derives. of the week).

All of them with a marked celestial origin

Judeo-Christian religious references are also present in our days of the week, although, in this case, the Greco-Latin has more weight. Saturday comes from Sabbat, which is the day reserved for rest in the Jewish religion, and Sunday comes from ‘dies dominicus’ or the Lord’s Day, in Christian times.

However, ‘Monday’ comes from the Moon goddess; ‘Tuesday’, from the war god Mars; ‘Wednesday’ finds its origin in the god Mercury, patron god of commerce and messenger of the divinities; ‘Thursday’ comes from ‘dies Iovis’ or Jupiter’s day, which also appears in our language with adjectives such as jovial. And finally, ‘Friday’ is related to Venus, the goddess of love, who also gives her name to venereal diseases.

Many sayings and expressions also arise from the Bible and the entire culture that it generated. In some cases the result of a wrong interpretation. This is the case of the word ‘santiamén’ (very quickly) that emerges from a quick reading of the final form of the mass: “In nomine Patri, Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen’. Those final words (Sancti, Amen), said on the run by the parishioners who were anxious to leave the temple, due to the hardship of listening to mass in Latin, a language they did not know, resulted in ‘santiamén’ with the meaning of speed.

On the other hand, also the expression ‘I will not do something even if the sursuncorda tells me to’ comes from an inadequate interpretation of another part of the mass in Latin, the central one in which the priest rightly cries out Sursum corda (“Up the hearts! !”) expression that many faithful confused with the name of some important and mysterious personality.

‘The secret life of words’ also analyzes some biblical sayings such as ‘You are older than Methuselah’, in reference to the long-lived character in Genesis. But also ‘Throw daisies to the pigs’, which comes from an inaccurate translation of the Gospel of Matthew. In fact, the most correct translation, and the most logical, is “do not throw pearls before swine”. The problem is that the Greek term that he names both words is similar.

Expressions such as ‘scapegoat’ also come from the Bible, which the essay explains: “The book of Leviticus tells us that the Jews, to celebrate the feast of forgiveness, or Yom Kippur, brought a goat before the high priest. That goat, which they called Azazel, symbolized sin and the devil, and the priest conjured all the sins of the Jewish people on the goat. The goat was then abandoned in the desert to die of starvation and thus atone for the guilt of the Jews.

The word ‘onanism’, referring to the practice of masturbation, also has its origin in a biblical character, Onan, who married his brother’s widow but avoided having a child with her at all costs for reasons of inheritance. In order not to conceive, Onan practiced coitus interruptus, what is now known as ‘reverse gear’, and ejaculated outside her wife, on the ground, every time he slept with her. “This displeased Yahweh, who killed him. The theologians interpreted that Onan’s action was contemptible for having spilled his seed in vain, ”explain our experts in the etymology of words. This is also where the cultural censorship related to masturbation comes from.

The book dedicates an entire chapter to the words of our language that come from Arabic, the arabisms, among which some such as ‘hopefully’, ‘feat’, ‘watchtower’, ‘adobe’ and also some insults such as ‘mamarracho’ or ‘farruco’ (who acts in a cocky manner, like a rooster in a corral). ‘Zamacuco’ (clumsy and brutish person) and ‘Jamacuco’ (temporary indisposition) also have this origin.

But words from Caló, the original language of the gypsies, are also collected, among which are some such as ‘molar’, ‘chachi’, dabuten’ or ‘catear’, among others. The curious thing about the case is that an important part of what we know about the gypsy culture comes from the book ‘The Bible in Spain’, written by the Protestant George Borrow.

In the book “he narrates his adventures as a seller of bibles on the peninsula and they are one of the most important sources for learning about the customs and language of the gypsy peoples of that time, although the veracity and accuracy of the English stories is doubtful in some points”. The bibles that Borrow, and other proselytizers like him, distributed were bibles without notes or commentaries, as befits the Protestant conviction of free interpretation, which was not allowed at the time.

In the book we find many other curiosities of interest, such as the Mexican origin of what we know as Flor de Pascua or Nochebuena. There they called it ‘red fire flower’ and it was widely used as an ornament in Moctezuma’s palace. Its most common name, ponsetia, comes from the name of an American botanist who studied it Joel Poinsett.

The book also clarifies an old confusion that keeps repeating itself and is the one that attributes to Cervantes the expression “We have run into the Church, Sancho”, in reference to ecclesial power. But such a phrase does not exist as such in ‘Don Quixote’ or in any other work. The real expression is “With the church we have given” and it has no more meaning than the literal one of referring to the fact of having found a temple. As much as it may disappoint.

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