Had a pretty decent bowl of Gumbo Ya Ya at “The Gumbo Pot” in the Farmer’s market by “The Grove” here in L.A. today. Also had an order of Hush Puppies.

For those of you who don’t know, a “Hush Puppy” is a smallish morsel of corn bread, fried in some kind of fat. The name comes from the story that cooks would make these to throw to the dogs to shut them up when they were barking. Don’t know if it’s true but it’s as good a story as any.

I was thinking about the fact that I, like a lot of Northerners, first heard the words “Hush” and “Puppy” put together as the brand name of a loafer. It turns out that the name of the shoe comes from a sales manager for a shoe company on a trip to the southeast, hearing the story about the origins of the corn bread nuggets and naming the shoes after them. At the time (late 50’s) it was common to call tired feet “Barking dogs.” so a shoe that would sooth them was a…

This morning I was reading an article about how words like “Kamikaze” and “Hara-Kiri” are actually not Japanese words at all. Rather they are misreadings of the kanji for “Shimpu” and “Seppuku.” These words were essentially invented by anglophone translators (in some cases Nissei) during WWII, who simply didn’t know the pronunciation of the original Japanese words (this is a very understandable error if you know how the Japanese language works). Nevertheless, Kamikaze and Hara-kiri are now part of the Japanese lexicon through adoption.

So, while I ate my gumbo and corn bread, I was imagining an irresponsible etymologist coming to the conclusion that their shoe brand was suggesting that they should quiet a noisy dog by kicking it.

Ah, life.