This is true, this is real, this is Straight Edge

Got to thinking today about which Indo-European derived Indian names (ie names from languages such as Sanskrit) are cognates with other names in their related cousin languages, such as English or Russian or what-have-you. Came up with a handful but surely there are many others:

Girish and Goran
Derive from the PIE root *gworh, "mountain, mountain forest". Became giri in India, whence comes Girish. In the Slavic languages the same root became gora, as Goran. The same root gave Albanian gur, "rock", and Old Prussian garian, "tree". The English term, "mountain", derives from PIE ?*men, "project, stick out", which also gave Welsh mynydd, "mountain", and Latin mons, "mountain".

Devdan and Theodore
Dev- and Theo- come from the same PIE root *deiwos, "god". Compare the Indian dev to Avestan daeva and Old Church Slavonic diva, both meaning "demon". This pair (dev/theo) can also get other cognates such as Devi and Thea. The second element comes from PIE *deh, "to give", which spawned Sanskrit dadami, danam and Greek didomi, doron. This pair of names mean "Gift of God".

Eugene/Eugenia and Sujana
PIE *gehn is the root of Greek genos, "race, kind", and the Vedic janas, "race clan". Their other common element is PIE *esu, "good, noble, excellent", which in Greek became eu and in Sanskrit su. In Hittite we find the same root as assu. So Eugenia and Sujana both mean "Well-born, nobly-born".

Raja and Rex
Both appear to come from PIE *hreg, "straightens, ruler." Their feminine versions, Rani and Regina, respectively, are also cognates. What's sort of weird is that the same root gives us various words for "right, correct, straight, lawful", etc., that sort of thing, such as Irish diriug, "straight". We might think of an ancient PIE king as the man who 'makes things right', so to speak.

Madhukar and Melissa
While not perfect cognates, they come from the PIE *medhu, "honey, mead." In Greek this root transformed into meli, from whence comes Melissa. The Hittite milit, "honey", is very similar. The Indian madhu can be compared to the Slavic medvedi, "honey-eaters", which means bear.

Something I have rarely mentioned on this lj is my other great love, genealogy. It's a natural progression from my love of history to genealogy; studying genealogy forces you to measure history in human lifetimes. It's also given me a new appreciation of American history. My most recent immigrant ancestor arrived in 1800 from Ireland; do you have ANY IDEA how many James Kellys are in the 1790 Ireland census? Fuck's sakes, his parents couldn't have named him Barnabus or Xerxes or something?

Anyway, something exciting I've been researching lately is my genetic genealogy. My mtdna results from SMGF have just come in, and I'm in haplogroup H (aka "Helena" from The Seven Daughters of Eve). This is a huge haplogroup, so I'll need more testing to determine my subclade.

Obviously, since I'm female I don't possess a Y-chromosome, but it's still cool to find out my male cousins' results. My biological father's y-line is R1b, a common haplogroup in the British Isles, France, Spain, and Portugal. Another of my lines on his side is HUDSON, which turns out to be R1b1b2. The R1b group is extremely large, and very common throughout Europe and North Africa.

On my mother's side, her father is I1, a haplogroup common in Scandinavia. That side is almost certainly Scottish or from the borderlands of northern England, so it seems likely we had a Viking somewhere in there. The most surprising is my BROCK ancestors, originally from Germany, who tested J2B, which is found primarily in the Arab countries, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Turkey, India, and Jewish populations. One of this BROCK family's closest matches was to a family named Abraham in Iraq.

An attempt to list the Marvel Comics-based slash fanfic (except X-Men slash) that's available on LJ. Additions? Comment.

I'm specifically focusing on rare pairings (which is, y'know, everything aside from X-Men and Young Avengers). No Ultimate-verse or movieverse fic, please. Also, no DC/Marvel crossovers, not because they aren't the shit, but because they really deserve their own listing.
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Odd little mini-project here. Working from Court, Household, and Itinerary of King Henry II (Robert Eyton) and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady (Bonnie Wheeler & John Carmi Parsons), I'm attempting to date where and when, approximately, the children of Eleanor and Henry II were conceived.

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Here's a little listing I've been working on regarding various Marvel characters and how old they were during a certain time period. If you're one of those people who's going to lecture me about how continuity doesn't matter, or whatever, just do us both a favor and pass on by. This is my little pet project that I'm working on and adding to.

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