Re: AsciiGangstein

Thanks for the story and the explanation, brian!

On the latter, I wonder how many people are prone to the connotation that you
described. I myself used to live for quite a while in a German culture, and I
did not notice the connotation, and I usually don't miss these things.

Is this perhaps a connotion of the _English_ viewing the German Jews?

===========================================================
[]                                                       []
[]     ,,   (__)    As bride and groom we hail           []
[]    ( ">  <" )    all devils with but one tail         []
[]   ,(> )><( <),                                        []
[]  (  ^^    ^^  )  http://www3.sympatico.ca/petecasso/  []
[]                                                       []
===========================================================

brian tivol wrote:
> Communities of Jews often lived in the same quarters of towns
> throughout Europe during much of this millenium.  Most of them didn't
> have family names like "<FIRST> <LAST>" but instead stuck to the
> age-old tradition of being referred to as "<FIRST> son of <FATHER'S
> NAME>".  Late in the millenium, German officials felt they needed to
> assign last names to these Jewish families, and assigned names
> somewhat randomly.
> 
> "Stein" is a common German word, but hardly one you'd've found in
> German last names before this happened.  And, yes, because German
> nouns are the way they are, names were often created that meant "gold
> stone" or "big stone" or "colored stone", or sometimes bizarre
> nonsense phrases like "frog stone".  These names were soon used
> throughout European literature of the time to immediately connote
> ridiculous, stereotypical Jews, and the more nonsensical the name, the
> better.
> 
> The names "Frogstein" and "Birdstein" sound like these sorts of
> fictional, over-the-top "Jewish" names.  By having these characters
> star in comic strips, you probably lead a lot of people to believe
> that you support the stereotype-- after all, it appears you think that
> both the characters and the names themselves are inherently funny.
> You give a worse impression when you add "-stein" to the end of an
> alt.ascii-art personality whom you're trying to argue with: there it
> seems that you're adding "-stein" to the person's name to demean them,
> that you are somehow "Jewifying" them as a personal attack.

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