Nemo?

Feb. 8th, 2013 08:31 pm
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[personal profile] randomness
From Slate's Future Tense blog:
Contrary to popular belief, winter storm Nemo is not named after a fish. And it is most certainly not named after the fictional clownfish protagonist of the Disney/Pixar hit film Finding Nemo. Let me explain.

There are some, including the National Weather Service, who frown upon The Weather Channel's decision to begin naming winter storms at all. I am not among them. If people weren't calling this weekend's Nor'easter Nemo, they'd almost certainly be calling it something far more annoying, like Snowmageddon II or Snowpocalypse Now. But I and several readers did wonder, when The Weather Channel released its storm-name idea last fall, about the odd explanations for some of the names it settled on. Nemo, for instance, is defined thusly in the cable network's official announcement:
  • Nemo: A Greek boy’s name meaning "from the valley," means "nobody" in Latin.
That's not the only head-scratcher among the network's storm-name explanations:
  • Gandolf: A character in a 1896 fantasy novel in a pseudo-medieval countryside.

  • Khan: Mongolian conqueror and emperor of the Mongol empire.

  • Orko: The thunder god in Basque mythology.

  • Q: The Broadway Express subway line in New York City.

  • Rocky: A single mountain in the Rockies.

  • Yogi: People who do yoga.
Really. Not this:

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-09 01:28 pm (UTC)
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
From: [personal profile] redbird
When I originally saw their list, I was intermittently nodding and wondering at some of this (like "Gandolf" with an O) and then I got to "Q is for Q" and all I could think was "this is your first-year list, and you couldn't come up with one word or name starting with Q?"

(no subject)

Date: 2013-02-09 03:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] achinhibitor.livejournal.com
Khan: Mongolian conqueror and emperor of the Mongol empire.

Sorta strange, since "khan" is a title, not a name. (And for that matter, so is "genghis" -- the man's name was Temujin.)

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