
Once upon a time there was a woman called Miss Nomer. While she is not, in particular, the main character in this story, she is an exemplar of the others, so let's start with picturing this Miss Nomer for a minute. She is a rather prim, properly dressed, well-spoken schoolteacher. She sits on the schoolboard, attends all the meetings and serves at her church's soup kitchen once a month. She espouses universal values of peace, tolerance and equality. She is almost certainly a Protestant. She may be British. Despite her seemingly blemish-free character, and her professed abhorrence of lying, she routinely cloaks truths in misleading language, with professed good intentions. She is earnest, supercilious yet apparently modest, self-satisfied, and while well-educated and intelligent, displays an impressive ability to ignore facts and evidence when they do not conform to her worldview.
In our story, Miss Nomer has a large family of cousins, none of whom are married. For this reason the family is sometimes waggishly referred to as the "Miss Nomers," though this term is frowned on by these upstanding women. The cousins hale from various countries, and an unusual number serve in government, the United Nations, and UN related bodies. The cousins meet for family gatherings once a year, or more, as needed, in Geneva.
At one such meeting, seeking meaning beyond their lives of selfless public service, the Miss Nomers decided to consult a genealogist to trace the roots of their family and the meaning of their name. This proved unsatisfying. While the Nomers exist in nearly every country, no clear family tree could be found. To make matters worse, the etymology of the family name "Nomer" could not be traced, although the genealogist suggested that the origin might be French, related to the Old French mesnomer, to name wrongly, which in turn came from the Latin, nominare, to nominate.
The Misnomers resolutely rejected this tentative conclusion, and resolved to resolve the matter, drafting a resolution. "What's in a name?" Miss Nomer the schoolteacher said, quoting the famous line from Romeo and Juliet. She was roundly scolded by one of her Canadian cousins, citing the fact that Shakespeare, an old white male, should not be a source for anything. The Canadian cousin was, in, turn, scolded by a Danish cousin, who reminded the ladies that many of the people working with them on their important projects were male or one of the other many genders, and they were white and otherwise.
The topic of the Nomers' surname is, in fact, one of the few that gets them angry. They are all, ordinarily, paragons of verbosity, diplomacy, and almost surreal patience. During this particular discussion a Russian cousin pounded her shoe on the table. "Хватит уже с названием!" she shouted. ("Enough with the name, already.") To cool their rising tempers, they all had tea.
Much of this meeting was devoted to work on the Nomer website, and the drafting of several formal resolutions which were posted online. The schoolteacher, a meticulous grammarian, posted, "There is no evidence that the term misnomer (a wrong or inaccurate name or designation) is logically related to the Nomer family." One of the American cousins took it on herself to collect misnomers, which were then published on the Nomer website, so that there would be ready examples of misnomers at hand when anyone questioned the family name's connection to the word. From the website: koala bears are not bears, Chinese checkers is neither Chinese nor checkers, peanuts are legumes, not nuts, jellyfish and starfish are not fish, Jerusalem artichokes come from North America and are not artichokes, Arabic numerals originated in India, fireflies are beetles, not flies, guinea pigs are clearly not pigs, and they are not from Guinea (***This is a partial list. See www.nomers.com for an extensive list of misnomers, as well as for current news and views about what and who are right and wrong in the world, particularly in the Middle East).
To put an end to the rumors once and for all, an Irish cousin conducted independent research showing that the name Nomer actually comes from Sanskrit, नाम (namah) this being a humble greeting, often used in Hindu mantras, and part of the well-known humble greeting, "namaste."
Finally putting this matter to rest, the family moved on to honing the artistry of their important work, manipulating historical, linguistic, religious and geo-political elements into "narratives," investing selfless time on the art of "the deal," the art of the peace "process" and the art of the two-state "solution."
Namaste. Till next time.
Thank you, Deborah, for shedding light on the character of the misinformed, "well-meaning" and confused influencers of today.