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Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

I must admit, for a very long time I thought he was Vietnamese, as Dang is a Vietnamese name.

Interestingly, I'm finding it hard to shake that initial visual image, even though I know it's wrong. Brains are weird.

It would be my honor. But the origins of the name are (1) it's my first name plus initial; (2) it was my email address at my first job; and (3) it's what you say when you make a mistake, which I knew there would be a lot of.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494440

bonus credit to DonHopkins https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120

I always thought it was 3)

Dang, because of the lowercase g I've always read it as Dang and said it with a twang in my head.

> ['dang': ] (3) it's what you say when you make a mistake

For the philologist, from around 1780, The chapter of accidents: a comedy by Sophia Lee.

> Jacob: Dang it, doan't I zeay, I'll tell thee present...

> dang it, I thought at first I ha' zwounded...

https://archive.org/details/chapteraccident00leegoog/page/n4...

...But I also immediately think of Gary Larson.

Wow. 18th century philology FTW!

How on earth did you find that?

> How on earth

My friend, have you noticed in these few years that I believe in particular attention to words? :)

It was pretty easy: Etymonline, which is part of my few core references as "dictionary of meaning" (as opposed to "dictionary of use"), gives the first clues at https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=dang . Then I looked for the original text and checked the details.

Specially if you are a Vietnamese like me. Still see him as Đăng

Precisely the same for me after, what, a decade? Plus my spouse is Asian and I always subvocalize his name to a pitched language, so I’m just screwed. “Dan Gackle” sounds too… alien

I had no idea either and had a similar visual image of @dang. I just had to google and find his full name and a picture to put a face to the name :)

> and a picture

I thought it was the only picture not published on YC and kept private.

Yes, same for many years.

Same. An unconscious bias buster.

And truly, thank you. Rock solid. Steady hand.

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