| ▲ | ambicapter 3 hours ago | |
> I think in Russian this is supposed to be an obviously silly name, like “Poop Poopson”. Is this correct? From the footnotes. | ||
| ▲ | zhisme 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
yep, that's right. The idea of his nickname that he is really silly. Small man and no good at anything. If you want to go deeper and harsh synonyms he is like "shitty" man, doing shit and receiving shit. His nickname fully describes him like useless, small, no influence, clueless, talentless man. One from the great unwashed | ||
| ▲ | justsomehnguy 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Nope. >> Gogol makes much of Akaky's name in the opening passages, saying, "the circumstances were such that it was quite out of the question to give him any other name..." The literal meaning of the name Akaky, derived from the Greek, is "harmless" or "lacking evil", showing the humiliation it must have taken to drive his ghost to violence.[citation needed] His surname Bashmachkin, meanwhile, comes from the word 'bashmak', a type of shoe. It is used in an expression "быть под башмаком" which means to be "under someone's thumb" or to "be henpecked". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overcoat#Interpretations Literally in the first paragraph it states what when p. was born they used the church calendar to randomly choose the name but they all were sounding unpleasant so the mother chose to use the father's name. There are multiple saints with this name and they are celebrated on Name day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_liturgical_ca... | ||