RAMONA...

[sufiazafran]

Hello everyone:

I guess this has been said before, and it may sound stupid, but everytime I read GtG and I get to the Ramona entry I feel like I have to say it, just in case.

Ramona is a female name in Spanish, and one that sounds rather funny, if I'm not mistaken (if I am, please correct me). Everytime I imagine myself playing in this city I see my players laughing their asses off and in the end, we have to stop because nobody takes it seriusly. 

I guess in any other country it sounds pretty cool, not in Spain. 

As an example I leave this old Spanish song dedicated to the saintly city of Ramona:

That's all, thank you for everything.

Edited January 17 by sufiazafran

[Joerg]

There is a practical solution: rename whatever you think sounds stupid. The name occurs exactly once, you can use corflu and nobody would have noticed it, at least notyet nochet. Others may have had their problems with mangled latin, like the evil midwife of the devil who is named something like "apple girl" rather than "bad one".

[mfbrandi]

On 1/17/2024 at 6:26 PM, Joerg said:

the evil midwife of the devil who is named something like “apple girl” rather than “bad one”

Μηλέα or Μηλιά? Fruit tree + “serpent” + woman = evil entering the world? It’s a whole misogynistic thing, I’m told. So maybe not a mistake; I don’t know.

But according to George Jackson, “One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl.”

Edited February 3 by mfbrandi
Song credit fixed thanks to Ian Absentia

[Jeff]

Ramona is also a not uncommon female name in parts of the US. Nonetheless it is fine as the name for city. After all its etymology is (fem.) "wise protector".

[John Biles]

20 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Ramona is also a not uncommon female name in parts of the US. Nonetheless it is fine as the name for city. After all its etymology is (fem.) "wise protector".

Like Ramona Quimby, star of her own book series.

[Alyrodri]

Ramona is Scott Pilgrim's girlfriend

[mfbrandi]

There is at least one precedent for calling a town “Ramona” (in California):

• The first post office was called Nuevo. The town took the name Ramona in 1886, when a land speculation syndicate, headed by Milton Santee, “organized the Santa Maria Land & Water Company and acquired 3,200 acres (13 km²) for a townsite in the Santa Maria Valley and named it Ramona” after Helen Hunt Jackson's recent novel Ramona, which had stirred a nationwide interest in a romanticized vision of Southern California.

In at least some of these cases, the towns will have been named after women — for example, Charlotte, North Carolina. Weirder to call a child “Innsbruck,” “Bognor Regis,” or “Kingston upon Hull”, no?

[Sir_Godspeed]

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

There is at least one precedent for calling a town “Ramona” (in California):

• The first post office was called Nuevo. The town took the name Ramona in 1886, when a land speculation syndicate, headed by Milton Santee, “organized the Santa Maria Land & Water Company and acquired 3,200 acres (13 km²) for a townsite in the Santa Maria Valley and named it Ramona” after Helen Hunt Jackson's recent novel Ramona, which had stirred a nationwide interest in a romanticized vision of Southern California.

In at least some of these cases, the towns will have been named after women — for example, Charlotte, North Carolina. Weirder to call a child “Innsbruck,” “Bognor Regis,” or “Kingston upon Hull”, no?

I mean,  we HAVE people called Rome and London nowadays. 

[g33k]

20 hours ago, John Biles said:

Like Ramona Quimby, star of her own book series.

8 novels (published 1955-1999) by Beverly Cleary; well-beloved by several generations of children.

Before that, a 1928 movie based on an 1885 novel, both causing significant spikes in popularity of the name.

All this is USA data, tho.

[Darius West]

Adelaide, Alberta, Alexandria, Annapolis (Maryland), Augusta, Athens, Aurora, Beatrice, British Virgin Islands, Cape Ann, Carolina, Catalina, Charlotte, the list goes on.  There are loads of places named after women IRL, even Spanish names.  Why is Ramona so funny?🤔

[g33k]

12 hours ago, Darius West said:

...  There are loads of places named after women IRL, even Spanish names.  Why is Ramona so funny?🤔

I suspect it's something specific to the sounds, for a native speaker; and possibly some different cultural referents & touchstones to the USAian sensibilities.

Edited January 20 by g33k

[Darius West]

Is the song Ramona a lewd song ?  Is that why its funny?

[sufiazafran]

 

On 1/20/2024 at 1:37 PM, Darius West said:

Is the song Ramona a lewd song ?  Is that why its funny?

It's more like just... embarrassing it's very paleto or palurdo, which would be European Spanish for redneck o hillbilly.

[sufiazafran]

And yes the song is kinda lewd. It's a man singing to the fattest woman of his village, but basically it's three minutes of fat jokes.  

I guess it was the usual thing in the last years of the dictatorship (Spain had a 40 year dictatorship that ended in 1978, just in case).

[Ian Absentia]

On 1/17/2024 at 11:13 AM, mfbrandi said:

But according to the Jackson 5, “One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl.”

You're confusing (or conflating) your Saturday morning musical cartoons.  That was The Osmonds.

!i!

Edited February 3 by Ian Absentia
I am shamed by my pedantry

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

You're confusing (or conflating) your Saturday morning musical cartoons.  That was The Osmonds.

Didn’t see either (I don’t know whether they ever ran over here), but fair point — I will fix the song credit above.