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Trinkbert von Köther

Lemniskate

on June 6, 2017

Correct rendering: Trinkbert von Köter, alternatively Trinkbert von Köther

Huh. I forgot I had some stuff to upload…
Кузебай Герд is the father of the Udmurt intelligentsia. He was a folklorist, a playwright, a teacher and everything else. Then he was killed in a Gulag (fuck you, Stalin!) and it took 20 years for the Udmurt intelligentsia to be recreated.

In Udmurt there is some variation as to how to write his name: Кузёбай or Куӟебай. The second variant makes his name look like it's related to the Udmurt verb кудӟыны 'to get drunk'.

It's as if Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were called Trinkbert von Goethe (ger. trinken 'to drink', -bert suffix for forming given names).

And Goethe, if pronounced sloppily, can be mistaken for Köter 'mutt'.

There is a famous painting called Goethe in the Roman Campagna.

The more you know.