Thoughts about a motto
03/09/16 05:46
We laid to rest one of the saints of our church yesterday. The funeral was more celebration than sadness. Though we will miss her, we admired the way in which she lived her life and faced her death. There is a sense of triumph in thinking about her life and her leadership in the church.
My mind, however, is prone to wandering. During the funeral I was drawn to the latin phrase that was printed on the funeral flyer. Our colleague, who was officiating at the funeral, said, towards the end of the ceremony, that placing the phrase in the flyer was a request of the woman we were honoring and that she also requested that no English translation of the phrase be included. She then proceeded to give us an English translation.
I am not a Latin scholar. I took two years of Latin in high school and I occasionally have the opportunity to use my meager Latin skills when researching scripture or church history.
The phrase that was printed was this: Quantum in me Fuit. I was and remain puzzled by the capitalization of the final word, but that isn’t important. I would translate the phrase like this: “As much as was in me.” It is a popular motto and appears in many different places. I recently saw it as a part of an advertisement for an outdoor adventure company. The popular translation is “I gave it my best.”
In the funeral service, the translation that was given was “I tried my best.”
I began to speculate on the contemporary uses of Latin phrases and how they might come across to people who spoke Latin as their native language. Latin mottos are nowhere near as popular as they were during the 19th century. Actually for many centuries after the middle ages, the use of Latin in scholarly settings was common. It was the language of the Christian Church and persisted in the Roman Catholic Church well into the 1960’s. Educational institutions were fond of having Latin mottos and posting them on their crests and logos. Such practice has faded in recent decades, but there is something about having a Latin motto that seems to make on distinguished.
But what words would one get if one asked someone who spoke Latin to translate a favorite phrase. Mind you, Latin is officially a dead language. There are no living native speakers of the language. It remains only as a written language. Still, translation remains tricky and there are many options when one is making translations.
A literal translation of “I tried my best” would be, I believe, “Ego contuse meos.” I don’t think that would roll of the tongue of an ancient Latin speaker, however. I think that more likely, the phrase used would be something like “Optimum quod facere poteram:” The best I could do, or perhaps as much as I was capable of.” In common usage, however, Latin, like other languages offers shortcuts. so if it were to be used as a motto, it might well be shortened to optimum quod poteram or even quantum poteram, which isn’t all that far from quantum in me fuit.
Mottos are tricky. Recently when traveling in Montana with friends from Australia, they commented that they saw a lot of materials promoting the state with the slogan, “The Treasure State.” They remembered the nickname “Big Sky Country” from the 1970’s and asked why the state had changed its motto. I responded that actually the state had not officially changed its motto. “Big Sky Country” and “The Treasure State” have long been used as nicknames for the state. Probably “The Treasure State” has a more long-standing history than “Big Sky Country.” The official motto of the state, which appears on the state seal and the state flag is a Spanish phrase, “Oro y Plata.” It means simply “Gold and Silver.” The state was organized around the mining industry. In the middle of the 1800’s substantial deposits of both gold and silver were discovered in the mountains of Montana and fortunes were made by those whose luck and timing came together in the right combination.
My adopted state, South Dakota has its motto in English: “Under God the People Rule.” Our nickname is “Mount Rushmore State.” It probably makes sense that our state motto isn’t in another language since we are one of the states that has officially adopted English as our state language. If we were to be completely honest, however, we would admit that the name of our state, Dakota, doesn’t come from English, but rather the indigenous language of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota nation. Then again our state bird, the ring-necked pheasant, isn’t native. It is an immigrant from China.
Language is a strange thing. It has great power to shape our thinking. Remembering the gracious woman with whom this blog began, if she chose Quantum in me Fuit as her motto and believed that it meant “I tried my best” that was certainly true of how she lived her life. It was an appropriate motto for her. She certainly always did try her best. She gave her best to the many tasks and challenges she accepted. It turned out to be a great motto for her,
I don’t think I have a motto. If I discover one, I don’t think I’ll go for Latin. I suppose if I wanted to be presumptuous, I could go for one of the languages of the Christian bible, Hebrew or Greek, but both of those languages sport alphabets that aren’t common to my computer. I can write both on the computer, but it takes a bit of extra effort. Besides, I’m no good at Greek at all. I can barely decode and am a long ways from being able to translate that language.
Perhaps my motto might be something like, “I overthink everything,” or “I can make any idea seem more complex.”
Then again, perhaps it is best for me to go without a motto.
My mind, however, is prone to wandering. During the funeral I was drawn to the latin phrase that was printed on the funeral flyer. Our colleague, who was officiating at the funeral, said, towards the end of the ceremony, that placing the phrase in the flyer was a request of the woman we were honoring and that she also requested that no English translation of the phrase be included. She then proceeded to give us an English translation.
I am not a Latin scholar. I took two years of Latin in high school and I occasionally have the opportunity to use my meager Latin skills when researching scripture or church history.
The phrase that was printed was this: Quantum in me Fuit. I was and remain puzzled by the capitalization of the final word, but that isn’t important. I would translate the phrase like this: “As much as was in me.” It is a popular motto and appears in many different places. I recently saw it as a part of an advertisement for an outdoor adventure company. The popular translation is “I gave it my best.”
In the funeral service, the translation that was given was “I tried my best.”
I began to speculate on the contemporary uses of Latin phrases and how they might come across to people who spoke Latin as their native language. Latin mottos are nowhere near as popular as they were during the 19th century. Actually for many centuries after the middle ages, the use of Latin in scholarly settings was common. It was the language of the Christian Church and persisted in the Roman Catholic Church well into the 1960’s. Educational institutions were fond of having Latin mottos and posting them on their crests and logos. Such practice has faded in recent decades, but there is something about having a Latin motto that seems to make on distinguished.
But what words would one get if one asked someone who spoke Latin to translate a favorite phrase. Mind you, Latin is officially a dead language. There are no living native speakers of the language. It remains only as a written language. Still, translation remains tricky and there are many options when one is making translations.
A literal translation of “I tried my best” would be, I believe, “Ego contuse meos.” I don’t think that would roll of the tongue of an ancient Latin speaker, however. I think that more likely, the phrase used would be something like “Optimum quod facere poteram:” The best I could do, or perhaps as much as I was capable of.” In common usage, however, Latin, like other languages offers shortcuts. so if it were to be used as a motto, it might well be shortened to optimum quod poteram or even quantum poteram, which isn’t all that far from quantum in me fuit.
Mottos are tricky. Recently when traveling in Montana with friends from Australia, they commented that they saw a lot of materials promoting the state with the slogan, “The Treasure State.” They remembered the nickname “Big Sky Country” from the 1970’s and asked why the state had changed its motto. I responded that actually the state had not officially changed its motto. “Big Sky Country” and “The Treasure State” have long been used as nicknames for the state. Probably “The Treasure State” has a more long-standing history than “Big Sky Country.” The official motto of the state, which appears on the state seal and the state flag is a Spanish phrase, “Oro y Plata.” It means simply “Gold and Silver.” The state was organized around the mining industry. In the middle of the 1800’s substantial deposits of both gold and silver were discovered in the mountains of Montana and fortunes were made by those whose luck and timing came together in the right combination.
My adopted state, South Dakota has its motto in English: “Under God the People Rule.” Our nickname is “Mount Rushmore State.” It probably makes sense that our state motto isn’t in another language since we are one of the states that has officially adopted English as our state language. If we were to be completely honest, however, we would admit that the name of our state, Dakota, doesn’t come from English, but rather the indigenous language of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota nation. Then again our state bird, the ring-necked pheasant, isn’t native. It is an immigrant from China.
Language is a strange thing. It has great power to shape our thinking. Remembering the gracious woman with whom this blog began, if she chose Quantum in me Fuit as her motto and believed that it meant “I tried my best” that was certainly true of how she lived her life. It was an appropriate motto for her. She certainly always did try her best. She gave her best to the many tasks and challenges she accepted. It turned out to be a great motto for her,
I don’t think I have a motto. If I discover one, I don’t think I’ll go for Latin. I suppose if I wanted to be presumptuous, I could go for one of the languages of the Christian bible, Hebrew or Greek, but both of those languages sport alphabets that aren’t common to my computer. I can write both on the computer, but it takes a bit of extra effort. Besides, I’m no good at Greek at all. I can barely decode and am a long ways from being able to translate that language.
Perhaps my motto might be something like, “I overthink everything,” or “I can make any idea seem more complex.”
Then again, perhaps it is best for me to go without a motto.