At 05:11 PM 10/23/01 -0500, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: >BTW, the Slovak name of caron is "makcen" (with two dots over the a, >and caron over the c and n). It literally means softener. The word >"hacek" used by Unicode is a Czech word (with an acute over the a >and a caron over the c) and means little hook which refers to the v >shaped one variety only (while makcen refers to either as it >describes its function, not its looks).
And the origin of the word "caron" is shrouded in the mysteries of time (and the vagaries of early SC2/WG3 work on naming characters...). Neither on-line nor live searches in libraries have ever turned up any mention of 'caron' in descriptions of letter forms - other than references to 8859, 10646 or Unicode (and their derivatives). We(*) seem to have coined a novel word. A./ (*) more correctly - our predecessors in SC2/WG3