Egyptian Card Games

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, good morning. This is Laura from San Diego.

Hi, Laura. Welcome.

What’s up? How can we help?

So, I have been thinking about the fact that there are several card games that I play that have multiple names. What brought it to my attention was my friends introduced me to a card game called Nerds. And when they taught me the rules, I said, oh, that’s Canfield. I’ve been playing that since I was a kid. And there’s several other games that are like that. And I was just kind of intrigued by the idea that there’s these card games that the rules are the same, but people know them by many different names.

Is nerds the one that involves shouting nerds really loudly?

Yeah, when you win, you shout nerds. Because I remember my parents playing nerds. Although growing up, we shouted Canfield.

Oh, really?

I was going to say. I thought Canfield was a type of solitaire.

You know, I actually just looked it up recently, and it turns out that if you play nerds alone, you’re playing Canfield. But growing up, I learned Canfield as the group game.

Oh, okay. There we go. This is all over my head. I don’t know either of those games. But I love this because… And I just learned that Canfield is the name of the casino owner who invented the game.

That’s right.

Robert, was it?

Robert Canfield?

I’m not sure. He died, actually. He fell in the New York City subway, and he cracked his head and died from that.

Oh, that’s true. I want his story to be something dramatic at the poker table, but no.

So you’re not going to tell me that Nertz is named for Mr. Joe Nertz?

No. That’s what I know of. No. But first I want to address the reason that she called, which is why there are all these names.

Right. Because these games are still a part of the language. I mean, what we call them still behaves by the principles of slang and insider groups and the way we think alike, people like us, how we exclude others intentionally or include others intentionally. And certainly these games are passed almost in the same way that folklore is passed from person to person. I mean, most people who learn these games learn them by word of mouth from somebody else and not from like a Hoyle’s rule book or anything like that.

Right. And so the names, too, are part of that. The names can be changed. People are whimsical with names. But the other thing is I love that so many of these names for card games sound fierce and strong and bold because partly what you want to do is psych out people, right? You train the noob or the rube because you’re going to take them for a lot of money and you want them to be further psyched out by calling it something really exaggerated.

A good example of that is a game that I learned as Egyptian racehorses.

Yeah. But I learned it at church camp, and it turns out the real name is Egyptian Rat Screw or Egyptian Rat F-word.

Oh, F-word.

Oh, yeah. I also learned there’s a card game called BS, which stands for a bad word, but I learned it, and we would euphemistically call it Bible study.

Outstanding.

Oh, you’re a kindred spirit. Outstanding. That’s the camp I went to.

Well, the Egyptian notion is real fun, too, because the playing cards are thought to have entered European culture from Egypt. Apparently they started in China, traveled through Asia, through what was then Persia, in Egypt, and then came up with the Mediterranean traders into the southern European countries. And there’s always been this notion since like the 12th century that there’s something vaguely Egyptian about the card games.

Kind of exotic.

Yeah, kind of exotic. Maybe even the game Pharaoh is somehow connected to the name of the Egyptian leader. We don’t really understand this distance. But the thing I want to talk about is nerds, because nerds, what you’re shouting is a whimsical, corrupted form of the word nuts in UTS and all of the meanings of it. And I will not elaborate here, but I will say that it’s directly related to when someone says, like, you need to give me all your money because I’m going to the store. And you say, nuts to you? I’m not giving you anything. It’s that nuts. It’s kind of like the in-your-face kind of exclamation or interjection.

Yeah, but I don’t know why it was corrupted, but it goes back to at least the 1920s in the nerds form.

Nerts. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it says it’s also known by the names Hell, Pounce, Peanuts, Racing Demon, or Squinch.

Squinch.

Yeah, I don’t know any of those. But Peanuts, that fits with what you’re saying.

Yeah, I don’t know any of those. But in my house, my parents would play. There were certain family members when they’d come to town. There was a card tournament upstairs, and you wanted to plug your ears because they’re so loud. And some of these games, you not only shout out something when you’ve done the deed, whatever it happens to be, but there’s table slapping as part of the game, right? You’re supposed to pound the table or claim a card as it’s turned over?

I don’t even know.

No, in that game, you’re all trying to play cards on the same spot. And so it’s whoever can play it faster and that probably gets loud. But it ends up as table pounding.

Yeah.

Really aggressive.

All right. Well, if you are interested in cards, I think there is an opening for a book or at least a long article about the names of card games. Because as far as I know, no real substantial work has been done on the names of card games.

No, like tracing the names of the etymological history. Plenty of work has been done to trace the games themselves, but not the names.

There you go, Laura. You got your work cut out for you.

Oh.

Thanks for your call, Laura.

All right. Thank you, guys. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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