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Comment by robert_foss | Hacker News Reader

I think language matters, and de-normalizing language with a root in slavery is a good idea.

Also, on that note some Slavic countries might request their naming and history be changed to something delinked from slavery... Shall we rename Slovenia and Slovakia, too?

Yes. I suggest 'Primary', and 'Secondary'. Then let them sort out who is which. Winner gets to be...oh, wait.

Exactly. I am always shocked about some terms becoming a matter of sensation, yet those people condemning them oftentimes use the term 'slave' in their expression, instead of, say, the original 'servant'. And following their "feeling", there should be very few terms more offensive than 'slave' (it means that the default servant is a Slav).

And it's never the slavs being offended, but always middle-class white americans.

Sure, countries change their names all the time. North Macedonia and Eswatini in the last three years, for example.

They changed their name for non futile reasons.

And contextually, 'slave' comes from 'Slav', not the opposite: you meet a Pispathian, you decide that a "pisp" (which incidentally in local language with a good chance means "valiant" or similar) is a reifiable one of a reifiable people, and after the insult they should also change their name?!

Of course not.

> some Slavic countries might request their naming and history be changed to something delinked from slavery... Shall we rename Slovenia and Slovakia, too?

If they want to rename themselves, we should use their new names.

Are any people affected by slavery asking for Thunderbird to change the name of components with two decades of documentation?

I think the original poster meant that Slovenia and Slovakia would never think of renaming themselves, especially not for the absurd reason that the Romans attached an unflattering association with their name.

Edit: read my original sentence as "and after the insult they should also be thought considering changing their name?!".

The root of the names Slovakia (Slovensko) and Slovenia (Slovenija) trace back to "slovo", literally "word" (denoting people who speak the same language).

Yugoslavia is based on souther slavs (juzni slaveni), so slavs.

Source: born there

... and "slaveni" comes again from "slovo".

the usage of master in "Master Password" is an adjective; seems like pretty a weak connection to the noun "Master" in the context of slavery

Technically it's a noun adjunct (also called attributive noun or qualifying noun).

The world often divides in two. Surely, relevantly,

-- those who think that language is what median people use and that naive use has a right to be accepted and create rules, seeing language as a social matter, and

-- those who think that language is what the learned have built out of competence and reflection, calling language an entity rightfully separate from societies.

For both parties «language matters». But they do not speak the same language - the second party refuses to accept bastard semantics, illegitimately born "from the saddle of incompetence". Their conclusions are opposite.

The notion that language is "what the learned have built out of competence and reflection" is abjectly risible. The evolution of language consists of corruption, confusion, coinages of demotic provenance, and general chaos. The contributions of learned classicists to the modern language are subject to exactly the same inexorable flux.

There is no party that refuses to accept "bastard" semantics; in no language does there exist a fraction of a syllable of legitimate descent. The only recourse open to the pedant and misanthrope is to forgo the use of language altogether, which would in your case constitute a marked improvement in the discourse.

False, if only because it is evident that naive and competent are evident opposites, practically. You can see the competent and the naive use, they cannot be mixed.

By the way: you have completely misunderstood 'is' in the quotation. It was not descriptive language, it was deontic.

And for what your «which would in your case constitute a marked improvement in the discourse»: this is the first time I find myself in front of the shallow disrespect that I expect elsewhere from YCombinator. Happily - look around -, with that attitude, you are the one isolated.

"Master Key" precedes or is parallel to the Atlantic slave trade. I don't believe it has a root in slavery. Master Password is surely more related to Master Key than to any other sense of Master.

Not arguing that it should or shouldn't be changed. They can change it for alliteration for all I care. Just want to talk about this etymology because that interests me.

but then again the "master key" once probably was the key to the barn where the slaves were held or the one to the "master bedroom" or such.

“Master key” goes back to 1577, which predates English involvement in the African slave trade.

in my mothertongue a lot of words were misused during the course of time.

they had no bad connotation when they were introduced, but then they were used by "bad people" (by current standards) and now they are "dead" or rather "not to be used"

I guess it's the same in English :)

But times change

then again the term "ship" once probably was the vessel on which slaves were transported so we need new nomenclature for that as well.

Any word touched by evil men becomes automatically evil, hence they will control our thoughts and have already won...

that's why I am on team Lighbringer... go Luci, go!

Language is complicated, but I think I agree. Here are the most relevant bits I found just now in the Oxford English Dictionary:

master, n.1 and adj.

[...]

Origin: Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from Latin. Partly a borrowing from French. Etymons: Latin magistr-, magister; French maistre.

[...]

The classical Latin word has numerous Romance and Germanic derivatives, e.g. Italian maestro (compare maestro n.), Spanish maestro, Portuguese mestre (compare maistry n.); Old Frisian mastere, mestere (West Frisian master), Middle Dutch meester, meister, mester (Dutch meester), Old Saxon mēstar (Middle Low German mēster, mester, meyster, Low German meester), Old High German maistar, maister, meistar, meister (Middle High German meister, German Meister; compare Meistersinger n.), Old Icelandic meistari (Icelandic meistari), Norwegian (Nynorsk) meister, Old Swedish mæstare (Swedish mästare), Old Danish mester (Danish mester). See also mistress n.

Senses in all four branches are paralleled by uses in Latin, in branch A. III. initially reflecting use of Latin magister in the medieval universities.

With uses at branch A. IV., compare adjectival use in French in the sense ‘principal’ (applied to people from c1100 in Old French, to material objects and immaterial things from the 12th cent. in Anglo-Norman); compare also Italian maestro , used adjectivally in this sense from the 14th cent.

[..."Master-gate" was the closest I could find to master password or key...]

Compounds

C2. Applied in extended use to things, with the sense ‘main’, ‘principal’, ‘controlling’, ‘originating’. In such compounds master is generally construed as a noun, but in some cases the grammatical character of the compound is uncertain or fluctuating, and master may be considered to be functioning as an adjective.

a. Of material things. Esp. frequent in terms relating to building and the human body (in non-technical use), and later to machinery, electronics, etc.

master-gate n.

1340 Ayenbite (1866) 249 (MED) Þe mouþ..is þe mayster gate of þe castele of þe herte.

a1500 (▸?c1450) Merlin 422 He com to the maister yate of the paleys.

c1720 N. Dubois & G. Leoni tr. A. Palladio Architecture II. iii. 7 The chief Entry, or Master gate.

1998 Re: Sad Sight on Test Center in rec.games.computer.ultima.online (Usenet newsgroup) 8 Feb. I created a new character and walked through a Master Gate to do exactly what you do.

master has no root in slavery.

to put it in another way: if master has to be removed because of slavery in america, then we should also remove the words chain, boat and trade.

Comically terrible examples)reasoning. You could have just used "pussy" as the example and done much better.

Can you please explain me why?

I am able to connect chains to slavery, but pussy?

The way these things happen is someone makes a suggestion in the company. Anyone who wants to oppose this change has a risk of being labelled racist. Now, you don't want to be "one of those" people, do you? So, these things get pushed through without anyone challenging it. It is self-censorship.

If anything it's time to de-normalize American cultural imperialism.

That would make sense if this word in this connotation had any connection to slavery. It doesn’t.

I recommend "doubleplusgood password", should be maximally inclusive.

That assumes that the word master has a root in slavery. It was certainly used during slavery in the Americas. But it is much older. And changing the label does not change the ingredients. The impression that the word master is strongly associated with slavery is a concept that exist in that form only in the USA. But nevertheless, activists continue to fight dictionary entries instead of the problem they claim to be fighting.

The fight over every day language is a tool of opresive regimes, e.g. Hitler used it, Stalin used it, the DDR used it. I miss evidence that this fight has ever yielded positive outcomes.

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