THINK TANK; After Deciding What to Call It, What Do You Call What You Call It?
Published: December 30, 2000
H-Ideas is an electronic forum (at www2.h-net .msu.edu/ideas/) devoted to the history of ideas, and it has 1,800 participants. Anyone who wants to discuss intellectual history can pose research questions, initiate a dialogue or publicize conferences and new sources of information. H-Ideas is part of an organization called H-Net that is dedicated to developing the educational potential of the Internet, and it is moderated by four academics: C. Wyatt Evans, Neil Brody Miller, Mark Reger and Andrew C. Rieser. Here are excerpts from an exchange over the past month.
My students and I have been pondering the following question: Is there a term for concepts labeled retrospectively? Holocaust was so labeled in 1954. ''Epistemology'' was given its label by Ferrier in the 19th century, but the concept traces back to the ancient world. Even ''concept'' itself does not appear as a label until the 18th century, even though the notion of concepts, like epistemology, traces back to the ancient world. Naturally, there are many other examples that can be cited. Anybody out there know of a label for this phenomenon?
Western Washington University
Sociology makes use of the term ''retrospective interpretation.'' Your term is quite similar, but better suited to the act of labeling phenomena after the fact.
Yes -- as usual the French have come up with the appropriate term -- avant la lettre. Thus those discussing Arminian ideas in the 16th century before Arminius will be spoken of as ''Arminians avant la lettre.''
PROF. ALAN FORD
Department of Theology, Nottingham University
Some suggested neologisms to serve your purpose:
''Clionym'' would do nicely, meaning a word created by historians, but I haven't seen the word in a dictionary. Clio was the Greek muse of history.
''Retronym'' mixes Latin and Greek, so it wouldn't please the purists. We need a Greek prefix for nym which means ''retro.'' ''A word being placed into the past'' would be the meaning of this word. The purist Greek neologism ''trapemanym'' would be absolutely obscure. But retronym is a nice word in that a person might quickly guess its meaning, and it could mean ''a word we use today to explain the past.'' When you use a lot of retronyms in conversation you might be accused of conducting a ''retrologue.''
''Anapodism,'' a Greek adverb for ''going back,'' sounds rather medical, and won't do. Some words that are in dictionaries: Retroflexion or retroflection is the closest existing word we could use in this circumstance. There is always the familiar anachronism.
ALBERT SCHORSCH III
Associate Dean, College of Urban Planning
and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago
The labeling that you are concerned with is a function of writing history. Historians using the language of their day or by creating a word name things in the past; it is a part of the art of being an intellectual after a fashion.
Another possible term would be ''back-formation,'' which is itself, of course, a back-formation.
Religion Department, Sweet Briar College
This goes beyond retrospective labeling, but such is often a component in historical reconstruction, a phrase I first ran into in that old chestnut, ''A History of Historical Writing'' by Harry Elmer Barnes. Indeed, I would argue that such labeling usually involves a bit of historical reconstruction.
Gregory HOLMES SINGLETON, PH.D.
Professor, Chair and Resident Old Curmudgeon,
Department of History,
Northeastern Illinois University
One possibility would be ''retrolocution,'' but I like the term proposed by Albert Schorsch better: retronym.
KEN FRIEDMAN, PH.D.
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
After I finally got a few moments to pore over the O.E.D., I did find a word which does answer Prof. Ray McInnis's original question, the secondary meaning of which I paraphrase from memory as, to cast back into the past a meaning from the present:
Retroject, verb; retrojection, noun.
O.E.D. had an example from 1881 of the word used in precisely the above sense. We use retronyms and clionyms when we retroject.
Now here's another puzzle: to find a word for that special case of retrojection where a scholar claims that because a thinker from the past never used the modern word, the ancient person never held beliefs consistent with the modern concept.
Example: Garry Wills, in his recent book ''Papal Sin,'' inferred that Augustine of Hippo did not hold to the traditional Catholic teaching of ''transubstantiation,'' the Catholic recognition of the ''real presence'' of the body and blood of Christ in the form of the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist, because the word ''transubstantiation,'' a later term, does not appear in Augustine's vocabulary. Augustine scholars have criticized Wills's opinion, since Augustine held this belief in ''so many words'' in many of his writings.
In searching for new words for this special negative example of retrojection, I can think of a couple: retrotraction, and retronegation. Retronegation, like retronym, wins because you can figure its meaning on your own.
Matters theological, of course, abound in examples of retrojection and retronegation.