Talk:quod nomen tibi est
Latest comment: 4 years ago by Metaknowledge
As far as I know, "quid est nomen tibi?" is incorrect. In this sentence, "quid" is not an interrogative pronoun, but an adjective. Therefore, the correct question should be said as follows: "quod nomen tibi est?".
- I'm not sure why, but it seems that the two are in fact interchangeable in Classical Latin to an astonishing degree. Personally, I have a lot of trouble with it, but I have moved the entry to what appears to be the most common form/word order combination. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:14, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
- @Metaknowledge I think the move was in error - quid nōmen..? is the only idiomatic way to ask "what is your name?", while quod nōmen est tibi? means roughly "which name do you call yourself by?", and should have been about as idiomatic in Classical Latin as its English translation: I can see just one apparent instance of this usage, which might have also been caused by the coordinated genus - provided it's not a scribal error. The quod nōmen..? usage appears to prevail in post-Vulgate Latin, where it also appears. I suspect this was the culmination of the always-extant confusion of interrogative and relative pronouns coupled with the same mistaken rationalising as spurred the original question and can be seen in this Textkit thread. Still, the classically correct form was known to Giordano Bruno when he wrote "QUID sub qua sunt, Primo quid nomen; Secundo quod genus; Tertio quae essentia propria seu differentia" (c.f. quod genus with the one in Argonautica). I'd like to move the page back and make this one an alternative Late Latin+ form. Brutal Russian (talk) 12:47, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for checking up, and please feel free to go for it. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 16:38, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Metaknowledge I think the move was in error - quid nōmen..? is the only idiomatic way to ask "what is your name?", while quod nōmen est tibi? means roughly "which name do you call yourself by?", and should have been about as idiomatic in Classical Latin as its English translation: I can see just one apparent instance of this usage, which might have also been caused by the coordinated genus - provided it's not a scribal error. The quod nōmen..? usage appears to prevail in post-Vulgate Latin, where it also appears. I suspect this was the culmination of the always-extant confusion of interrogative and relative pronouns coupled with the same mistaken rationalising as spurred the original question and can be seen in this Textkit thread. Still, the classically correct form was known to Giordano Bruno when he wrote "QUID sub qua sunt, Primo quid nomen; Secundo quod genus; Tertio quae essentia propria seu differentia" (c.f. quod genus with the one in Argonautica). I'd like to move the page back and make this one an alternative Late Latin+ form. Brutal Russian (talk) 12:47, 5 January 2020 (UTC)