In the original "Little Mermaid" story by H.C. Andersen, published in 1836, the mermaid is never named, being only referred to as the youngest of 5 sisters, daughters of the Sea King. Disney introduced the name with their animated film. One of the 5 major moons of Uranus, Ariel, discovered in 1851 by William Lassel, an English Astronomer, was named with inspiration from Shakespeare, as have been several other moons of other planets in our Solar system.. (The play, "The Tempest", was first performed in 1611 and subsequently published in Folio in 1623.) Both Ariel Dorfman and Ariel Sharon also predate the Disney "Little Mermaid"-naming by decades. It is in fact, predominately a male name, (the female variant being Arielle or Ariella), and thus an odd choice by Disney for a female character. In any case, the most common source for the name is attributed to Shakespeare, as noted by Paul, even though it is a Hebrew name, meaning "Lion of God", and thus most certainly predates Shakespeare by many centuries…
Owned by Microsoft, the font "Arial" was ubiquitously introduced by that company, and is based on the Helvetica, or Geneva font-families. (As yet another side-note, the Arial Khan, the name of a river in Bangladesh, probably predates anything sited before in my commentary, having Sanskrit roots.)
On Wednesday, Nov 19, 2003, at 16:10 Europe/Oslo, Paul Berkowitz wrote:
On 11/19/03 3:09 AM, "Harry Zink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Nosce te ipsum: "Know Thyself"
on 11/17/03 11:51 PM, Beth Rosengard at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Ariel
The font is named 'ARIAL'. The mermaid is named Ariel.
Mermaid? The (male, as far as we can tell, although he's occasionally played
by a woman) sprite in Shakespeare's The Tempest is named Ariel. I'd bet that
pre-dates this mermaid of yours. (You'll note I spelled the font 'Arial'
throughout. I figured that the others might notice without my making an
issue of it. Ah well.)
Inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi
Erik Justus Paiewonsky
Oslo, NORWAY
