Wednesday 10 June 2009

Not Wavian but drowning

In my blog for 5 Sep 2008 I asked a question intended to be jokey and rhetorical:
Shavian ˈʃeɪviən, for the writer George Bernard Shaw, is more recent (OED: 1905). And Fitzrovia, for the area around Fitzroy Square near Euston, is a mere half-century old (OED: 1958).
(Do you think anyone would give Waugh an adjective Wavian? No? Neither do I.)

I spoke too soon. The word had already been coined and used. In a review of Alexander Waugh’s book Fathers and Sons: the autobiography of a family, Christopher Hitchins wrote
If students of George Bernard Shaw can be called Shavians, a friend of Evelyn Waugh’s named John Sutro argued, then those interested in all things Waugh might be called Wavians. I now realize that, without knowing it, I have been a Wavian for many years.

The review is dated June 3, 2007.
Another review, by Barbara Kay, dated June 13, 2007, bore the headline Parental neglect: the Wavian muse.
In November 2007 there was even a punning headline, Wavian goodbye.
Let me update my question. In years to come, when someone writes a biography of our Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, will his views and behaviour be called Stravian?
Or we might reverse the process and start calling birds aws. (Think about it.)

8 comments:

  1. Nabokovian and even Karamazovian are well established to judge from a quick google, and I learn that "in Tanglewood Porch, Eustace Bright is described in Fanshavian terms". Didn't see any Goughs being called Govian though.

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  2. 246 Google hits for "wavian" "waugh", 36 for "stravian" "straw". (The quotation marks reduce autocorrected forms.)

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  3. You've got a point, in a tasteless kind of way; you've just misspelt /ɔːz/.

    ;-)

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  4. What about
    (More geography) Moldaugh, Tintin's Syldaugh? Belgraugh?
    Pope Octaugh?
    David H. Savaugh?
    The very bad Hossein Mousaugh?
    My father-in-lavian views and behaviour?
    Your left subclaugh?
    Re your hagiographical hobby: St Flaugh?
    OK, I'll stop misbehaugh

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