Hey Readers
I have a flute and I just bought a piccolo from my friend kara. I have named my flute Isabelle and my classmates think I'm crazy. I'm thinking on naming my new piccolo Clarabelle, but I am not sure. Names would be helpful. I already have named my old Piccolo Silverbelle and my old flute Annabelle, and I would like an medevalish name.
I would really like some help.
I don't think there is anything crazy about naming your instruments. I do. It makes them feel more personable in a way and not just and object. I have no idea what to name your piccolo. I am not good with names. It took me two weeks before I came up with a name for my new bunny. Good luck with it though
Only that for me the piccolo is male... Latin-origin languages such as Spanish, Italian and French assign male gender to this instrument. The flute is, in these languages, feminine.
Of course you are free to name your piccolo the way you prefer or feel.
I am just curious to know where did you find the gender of this noun; I have three dictionaries and none gives a clue about the grammatical gender of the nouns (including a Webster English-English)
I also believe that noun genders were lost somewhere during the transition from Old English To Modern English and,
"picccolo" is an italian adjective, which is clearly masculine ("piccola" would be the feminine equivalent), meaning "small".
The small flute it refers to probably took its name from the italian equivalent of "small flute", (flauta piccola) and then became just the "piccolo" (il piccolo -masc.) For me it should have been "la piccola", but for some reason that I do not know, it became masculine.
Sorry I do not want to sound academic and maybe I am bothering you with these details you may not be interested in, as you just want to give a nice name to your instrument.
But I love languages and I am always looking forward to understanding how they are constructed and why. Not that I know much about this, but I am very curious any way.
<Added>
I note that I may have misunderstood your assessment and wrongly thought you had found (somewhere) this noun to be feminine. Sorry about that.
Right, Lera. Most european languages derive from Indo European and so do German, English and Latin languages.
In German it is however feminine (Die Pikkoloflöte). But in this case it is a composed noun and in German the root noun (Flöte -fem) transfers its gender to the complete word.
I apologize for having sequestered Flutefreak87 subject with something so thinly related to his question.
I plan to open a new thread asking forum goers opinions about this subject. In case somebody may be interested, there is an interesting conversation about this, going on here:
Don't worry about it. In fact my brothers and parents pick on me and tell me i should name it Brian Piccolo. I don't want to. I was thinking maybe a boy name. I have two Ideas and I want it to be somewhat elegant so help me decide.
Names:
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