A Thane writes

Lori Thane writes:

I was just googling my last name and you popped up. Are you a Thane? It's my last name and we pronounce it "tiny."

This startling news from Texas, that there are whole families of "tinies," certainly merited further discussion.

I answered:

-----Original Message-----
From: Thane Plambeck [mailto:thane@best.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 5:14 PM
To: Lisa Thane
Subject: Re: just wondering

Really? You and your family in the USA pronounce "Thane" as "tiny" ?

Lori replied:

Yep! I know I hate it and I hated it all through school... :) My family tried to keep it close to our German heritage.

This raised the question, just how the hell could that happen.

In further email to Lori, I speculated as follows

* * * *

I haven't heard of German people using Thane as a last name, but it is certainly possible.

In modern German spelling, words that start with Th all have foreign origin (ie, not German).

In older German spelling, some words that started with T used to be spelled Th.

For example tun ("to do") used to be "thun".

"Tal" (valley) used to be "thal."

The word "Tanne" in modern german means "fir tree."

as in O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum (oh Christmas tree, o Christmas tree)

That word Tanne may have be spelled Thanne long ago (I'm not sure)

So your name might come from the word for Christmas tree.

Le Ciel est Bleu [music-making flash toy]

Panther writes:

I think the idea is that it's theoretically possible to get the machine into the right configuration to play a nice melody, and that's certainly the puzzle-related aspect. In any case, it's an interesting little toy. If you don't see any help bubbles when you move over controls with your mouse, click on the '?' in the lower-right to turn them on.

[I actually like the music already, in the start-up configuration. It's quite a bit of fun to play with..]

link

Posted by tplambeck at 10:23 AM