Re: Today's Good News
Reply #32 –
In Romanian, and I think in a couple more languages, the word for carp is crap. Rather fitting, especially based on the way that bottom feeder is usually cooked in Europe.
Slate had
an entry on kimchi in China. It seems to have missed that Han refers to both the Han river, running through Seoul, and to the Han dynasty that later gave the name to the Chinese ethnicity (particularly default non-minority Chinese). Han refers to anything and everything Chinese, except when it refers to Korea and everything Korean. That is pretty confusing.
As far as I can trace it the Han river for unknown reasons gave name to an area near Xi'an, Hanzhong (Central Han), far away from Seoul, and
the first Han emperor claimed it as his origin, and hence the dynasty was named for it. During this dynasty much of what is known today as Chinese culture was disseminated and created, so Han became synonymous with Chinese culture and ethnicity. Meanwhile, back in Korea, the Han river became a metonym to refer to Korea itself.