Wizard last Friday at a representation Carnival of the Animals , Camille Saint-Saens (1886), punctuated by brilliant and funny text written by Francis Blanche (in the 1950s, I think) to accompany him, I burst out laughing at this passage:
"special kind of museum they
Gentlemen fossil
The iguanodon the megatheriums,
The pterodactyls, ichthyosaurs,
Nebuchadnezzar!
And other treasures
the old days
are just coming.
To take air,
The Quaternary, of course! "
The name" Nebuchadnezzar ", my dear Babylonian king (reigned 604-562 BC. JC) seemed indeed marry perfectly with the names"-saurus "monsters of remote antiquity.
This joke made me want to take a stroll around the two etymological roots which are both pronounced "zor" and have nothing to do with each other - or with Zorro!
The "-saurus" of ichthyosaur from the Greek "sauros" = "lizard". The ichthyosaur is a "fish-lizard", the dinosaur a "terrible lizard" brontosaurus and a "thunder lizard."
The "-sor" of Nebuchadnezzar comes from the Akkadian "wear". One we call "Nebuchadnezzar" and the English call "Nebuchadnezzar" specifically called "Nabu kudurri attrition", which means "Nabu (Babylonian god), protects my offspring! "Tear" means "Protects".
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