The Andrew formerly known as Prince (was: Jeffrey Epstein thread)

[Fussbudget]

Ha no it's not a rule at all, that last bit was just joshing around but I keep forgetting about that thing on the Internet where people can't hear my tone.

The H usually turns a soft G into a hard G in front of E or I, e.g. when transliterating from something like Italian, but Ghislaine is an exception. I can't be held responsible for what you guys do to the good honest French words we send you though.

[Bruno]

Yeah, it's apparently a Franco-Flemish carryover of Italian spelling for retaining a hard g. And the Latin Gislenus would be a soft g in Italian, so the current French pronunciation of Ghislaine might be due to that (somehow). But someone should notify the Google translate lady, who says "ghislain" with a hard g.

[WOM]

I watched the doc and I heard everyone saying Ghee-len'. I was also pronouncing it the French way all these years.

[Bruno]

There's the Germanic name Gisela (hard g), the French cognate of which is Gis?le/Giselle, and there are Romantic equivalents across the board with a soft g. My guess would be that the French have casually equated Giselle with Ghislaine despite the latter's spelling (which should render a hard g).

[WOM]

All this being underpinned by the fact that she's not French at all...

[Fussbudget]

It's a minging name in any language. Not sure why you'd saddle a child with a complicated poncey French name that she'll have to spend her life spelling out for people, but decide to pronounce it in an entirely different way anyway.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I saw the Ian Ghislaine Band at St George's Hall, Bradford in 1979.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I think that I first heard it pronounced (as Ghee-lane) on the TV news after Robert Maxwell's yachting "accident":

[Eggchaser]

The client I had with the name pronounced it "Gilane" (hard g).

[WOM]

It's a minging name in any language.

I went to University with a Ghislaine, whose nickname was Mudslide. She looked exactly like that, too. Heavy gal with shambolic hair, yellow teeth pointing in every direction, and on her best day looked like a drunk who'd just awoken from sleeping in a car. Also incredibly smart and from an old, wealthy Montreal family who carried herself like she had roughly zero fucks to give. She was a friend of my housemate who kept stopping in to see me long after he'd moved out.

[sw2borshch]

Sounds like she was wasting her time.

[sw2borshch]

Not sure why you'd saddle a child with a complicated poncey French name...

I know some people we could ask?

[Nocturnal Submission]

I know some people we could ask?

Ouch!

[sw2borshch]

Couldn't resist the tap-in...

[G-Man]

It's a minging name in any language. Not sure why you'd saddle a child with a complicated poncey French name that she'll have to spend her life spelling out for people, but decide to pronounce it in an entirely different way anyway.

Yes, especially since her father changed his foreign name, Jan Hoch, to an English one, Robert Maxwell. Having said that, I believe Ghislaine's mother was French, and Ghislaine was born in France. So there's at least something in her putrid life that she can justify.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The fact that he chose "Maxwell" as his new, English, surname reminds me of Maxwell House coffee (which apparently is still going, though I never see it these days) and specifically this, from the late 1970s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?edufil...&v=S3N15IYgbDs

[Nocturnal Submission]

Couldn't resist the tap-in...

#prayforsw2borshch

[WOM]

The fact that he chose "Maxwell" as his new, English, surname reminds me of Maxwell House coffee (which apparently is still going...

I'd hazard that it's the #1 instant coffee brand over here. When it's on sale, the skids are piled 10-high and the old people buy their limit of jars. My mother did the same for years.

[sw2borshch]

I would deserve anything I might get

Just been reading Cap'n Bob's wiki page and it's got me thinking about identity, in the ethnic sense. For all he was the 'Bouncing Czech' in that lazy old way of thinking, he wasn't ethnically Czech or Slovak but grew up in a place that was in the Ruthenian bit of the first Czechoslovakia, but in a Yiddish speaking family. The village/town became part of Hungary, is now in Ukraine and is just a hop, skip and a fall off a yacht from Romania.

Did Maxwell consider himself a Czechoslovak or primarily Jewish or Ruthenian/Rusyn or something else or just not really ever give it any thought or any kind of hoot whatsoever or just have a vague 'national' identity centred around his family and friends and the place he grew up? Did any of this make it easier for him to reinvent himself in the fog of war, as plenty did? Did he speak a few languages as a child which I understand was pretty normal for people in that milieu of the backwoodsy parts of central/eastern Europe? When borders are fluid and the authority of the centre is just an occasional pain the jacksie, it seems so alien to the likes of me, but also fascinating.

[ad hoc]

Blimey I've crossed the border there. Had no idea it was his birthplace

[ursus arctos]

Did Maxwell consider himself a Czechoslovak or primarily Jewish or Ruthenian/Rusyn or something else or just not really ever give it any thought or any kind of hoot whatsoever or just have a vague 'national' identity centred around his family and friends and the place he grew up?

The majority of the adolescents and young adults my mother worked with in the Displaced Persons camp after the war had similarly complicated ethnic and national histories, and I married into a family where they are also common (though grounded in the former Yugoslavia, rather than Central Europe).

My guess is that he didn't care about nationality, other than as a way to advance his personal interests. Joining the Czechoslovak Army in Exile seems primarily to have been an opportunistic choice given limited options, and one he shed as soon as something better became available. The Mossad links have always struck me as being grounded in a need for cover and a penchant for intrigue, rather than any strong devotion to the Israeli state. As you note, he almost certainly grew up with multiple languages; it was hard to function without that facility given all of the turmoil.

His original pseudonym was Du Maurier, which he took from a brand of cigarettes. There is at least a chance that he took Maxwell from the coffee.

[sw2borshch]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

I imagine it to be a bit like a County Durham ex-mining place. You should see if there is any memorial to him next time you pass through, ad hoc.

[ad hoc]

Fittingly it's one of the most corrupt border crossings I've ever been through. Ukrainian side especially, with the guy taking the passports not letting you through until you slip a note in them. "Tradiție" he said (Romanian word for tradition, like it's traditional to pay to get through the border)

[ursus arctos]

Salt mines are rather different from coal mines (at least in my experience)

ad hoc, did the guards "accept" Romanian currency? Back in the day it would have been Deutsche Marks, Dollars or Kent cigarettes.

And how did you get the diacritical? It doesn't want to copy for me.

[sw2borshch]

He was kind of a big figure in my life as a child, the Daily Mirror was the main paper we took if we got a national (our dad dallied with Today for a while too, always keen on an iffy proprietor...) and it was the national paper of choice round our Gran's where I spent a lot of time, but that house also contained my uncle's piles of Private Eyes which I also read from a pretty early age, what with all the cartoons to draw me in.