What we’re reading: Crystal Wilkinson, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, is author of The Birds of Opulence, a quiet, lyrical novel about relationships between family members, and between humans and nature, about things said and unsaid with...
A San Diego, California, 12-year-old whose last name is Jones wonders: Why do so many African-Americans as well as European Americans share the same last name? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Common Name...
Drupe means a fleshy fruit built around a hard pit, such as a peach or cherry. A drupelet is one of the tiny seeded units that cluster into fruits like raspberries and blackberries. Those bead-like drupelets reminded professional namers of a...
Pat in San Diego grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with a Boston-area accent that people still notice even when no obvious “r” is involved. The accent’s hallmark is non-rhoticity: after certain vowels, the “r” may be weakened, changed, or...
Daniel, just outside Penetanguishene, Ontario, grew up in a family with Oklahoma Cherokee ties and heard his grandfather call himself Black Dutch, apparently to deny Native ancestry in a racist setting. The term is a knotty racial descriptor...