Quest for the book detectives...

my-wings wrote:


Would it be OK for me to share your explanation with other people
who've expressed an interest?

Of course. It's in the public domain!

John

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 07:15:33 +0900, "John R. Yamamoto-Wilson"
wrote:

my-wings wrote:

One suggestion from a different list is that it's a
Chinese tax stamp!

Stick with that one, Alice. It's definitely in the right ball-park.

John


It certainly looks like a Chinese 'chop' of some sort, but whether an
official one or one of the many gift-shop variants out there I don't
know.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

I wrote:

The overall meaning will be something quite
different from the sum of the component parts.

Actually, but I'm beginning to wonder whether they might be two
pictograms side by side. The "no" + "flowers" bit on the right means
"shallot" (are shallots non-flowering?). It may be that the part on the
right is a separate pictogram and this is a two-pictogram compound.

If so, it's likely to be a person's name.

"flowers" is never used as a radical

I must have been very bleary when I wrote that! It is frequently used as
a radical. I can only cite a heavy cold in mitigation.

John
http;//rarebooksinjapan.org

my-wings wrote:

Someone wrote to me based on my website page about remainder marks and asked
if I'd ever seen a certain stamp before or had any information about it. He
says he's seen it in a number of apparently unrelated books from a variety
of publishers over the years, and had become curious as to its origin. I
have no clue, but find myself quite intrigued by it.

Here is a pictu http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg

Are all the marks he's seen over the years exactly the same? Or is this
just an example of the kind of mark he's seen?

As I said in another reply, it is either Chinese or Japanese (both
languages use the same pictogram script, with some local differences)
and I think it may be a personal name.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

my-wings wrote:

Here is a pictu http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg

Any thoughts on this little mystery?

I was too run-down with a cold to see my Japanese language mentor today
and, as it turns out, it might not have done any good. It seems that it
is Chinese, not Japanese. Here is a pretty definitive answer from a
respondent with fluent Chinese over on scl.lang.japan:

The seal is composed of three characters. The one on the right fills top
to bottom. The two on the left form the top and bottom quarter of seal.
The seal reads from the right, with the top left then bottom left
characters to follow. As I see it, it reads �力士 which in Chinese
reads fei li shi, which seems to me like a rendering of the English name
FELIX.

Notice that the horizontal line above in 士 is longer than the lower one.
This is the main characteristic to separate it from 'earth'...

Note that the characters chose 'power' 'warrior' is masculine in its
connotations in English. Had it been a girl's name another li and shi
character would be chose say in Felicity...

Although the character 'look ancient' it is a common practice to make
modern
seals using ancient characters. Your seal impression is relatively new. Say
the last half a century or maybe it was made yesterday, last week, or last
year. I may be wrong, but this is the gut reaction I have just looking
at the characters and sound.

[You may not be able to see the actual characters he cites, depending on
your encoding (if you switch to Japanese encoding it might help).]

So there you have it! Who "Felix" might be is a complete mystery,
The only thing I can add to this is the information that, unlike
Japanese, Chinese does not have a phonetic script to fall back on and
everything - including foreign names, etc. - has to be represented in
pictograms.

This means that Chinese pictograms have to be chosen to approximate to
the sound of the foreign name. "Feilishi" is apparently the nearest they
can get to "Felix".

The same sort of thing can be done in Japanese, and a few foreigners
adopt pictograms to represent their name, but there is a phonetic script
for foreign words and names, etc., and most people just use that.

So this "Felix" will presumably be a westerner who set up home in China
and took a Chinese reading to represent his name. I guess at some point
he must have returned, with his library, to the area of the United
States where your enquirer is living and his library subsequently dispersed.

Now, if someone can track down an eminent sinologist named Felix who
retired to that area, a bibliographic mystery will have been solved!

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote in message
...
my-wings wrote:

Here is a pictu http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/remainder001.jpg

Any thoughts on this little mystery?

I was too run-down with a cold to see my Japanese language mentor today
and, as it turns out, it might not have done any good. It seems that it is
Chinese, not Japanese. Here is a pretty definitive answer from a
respondent with fluent Chinese over on scl.lang.japan:

The seal is composed of three characters. The one on the right fills top
to bottom. The two on the left form the top and bottom quarter of seal.
The seal reads from the right, with the top left then bottom left
characters to follow. As I see it, it reads ??? which in Chinese reads
fei li shi, which seems to me like a rendering of the English name
FELIX.

Notice that the horizontal line above in ? is longer than the lower one.
This is the main characteristic to separate it from 'earth'...

Note that the characters chose 'power' 'warrior' is masculine in its
connotations in English. Had it been a girl's name another li and shi
character would be chose say in Felicity...

Although the character 'look ancient' it is a common practice to make
modern
seals using ancient characters. Your seal impression is relatively new.
Say
the last half a century or maybe it was made yesterday, last week, or
last
year. I may be wrong, but this is the gut reaction I have just looking
at the characters and sound.

[You may not be able to see the actual characters he cites, depending on
your encoding (if you switch to Japanese encoding it might help).]

So there you have it! Who "Felix" might be is a complete mystery,
The only thing I can add to this is the information that, unlike Japanese,
Chinese does not have a phonetic script to fall back on and everything -
including foreign names, etc. - has to be represented in pictograms.

This means that Chinese pictograms have to be chosen to approximate to the
sound of the foreign name. "Feilishi" is apparently the nearest they can
get to "Felix".

The same sort of thing can be done in Japanese, and a few foreigners adopt
pictograms to represent their name, but there is a phonetic script for
foreign words and names, etc., and most people just use that.

So this "Felix" will presumably be a westerner who set up home in China
and took a Chinese reading to represent his name. I guess at some point he
must have returned, with his library, to the area of the United States
where your enquirer is living and his library subsequently dispersed.

Now, if someone can track down an eminent sinologist named Felix who
retired to that area, a bibliographic mystery will have been solved!

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org


John: Thanks so much! I'll pass this on to my correspondent and try to find
out if she knows if the books are associated with anyone named "Felix." In
her last letter, she mentioned that she had just run across the sign again
in another book: "... from the collection ... of an extremely well-read man
who traveled just about everywhere, as he worked for ...[an international
airline]."

Thanks again for all of the effort you've put into this!

Alice

my-wings wrote:

Thanks so much!

You are welcome, Alice. By the way, I made several boo-boos yesterday.
In my snuffly, befuddled state I got my wires crossed between � and 韮.
The correct one is �, and means, basically, "inferior" in Japanese. You
can ignore all the stuff about shallots; they apply to the second
character, and are just the result of my mistake! Curiously, in Chinese,
� means something quite different. Here is Dylan Sung's breakdown of
the meaning, from the thread in sci.lang.japan:

just in case you really want the meanings (pointless in the case
of transliterations, IMO):
The following come from CEDICT

� [fei1] /rich/luxurious/phenanthrene (chemical)/Philippines/
力 [li4] /power/force/strength/
士 [shi4] /scholar/warrior/knight/

Notice that the horizontal line above in 士 is longer than the lower
one. This is the main characteristic to separate it from 'earth'...

Yes, I got that wrong, too, which was very sloppy of me; I really wasn't
on the ball yesterday!

I'll pass this on to my correspondent and try to find
out if she knows if the books are associated with anyone named "Felix."
In her last letter, she mentioned that she had just run across the sign
again in another book: "... from the collection ... of an extremely
well-read man who traveled just about everywhere, as he worked for
...[an international airline]."

So he may not have actually lived in China, but had been there and
picked up the idea of using a Chinese seal to denote his name. Which
part of the world is she in? Since books with the seals seem to be
turning up in her area it's a fair bet the original owner was from the
same area. If she googles for something like Felix + China + books +
[the name of the city or region] she might come up with something.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:
my-wings wrote:

Thanks so much!

You are welcome, Alice. By the way, I made several boo-boos yesterday.
In my snuffly, befuddled state I got my wires crossed between � and 韮.
The correct one is �, and means, basically, "inferior" in Japanese. You
can ignore all the stuff about shallots; they apply to the second
character, and are just the result of my mistake! Curiously, in Chinese,
� means something quite different. Here is Dylan Sung's breakdown of
the meaning, from the thread in sci.lang.japan:

just in case you really want the meanings (pointless in the case
of transliterations, IMO):
The following come from CEDICT

� [fei1] /rich/luxurious/phenanthrene (chemical)/Philippines/
力 [li4] /power/force/strength/
士 [shi4] /scholar/warrior/knight/

Notice that the horizontal line above in 士 is longer than the lower
one. This is the main characteristic to separate it from 'earth'...

Yes, I got that wrong, too, which was very sloppy of me; I really wasn't
on the ball yesterday!

I'll pass this on to my correspondent and try to find
out if she knows if the books are associated with anyone named "Felix."
In her last letter, she mentioned that she had just run across the sign
again in another book: "... from the collection ... of an extremely
well-read man who traveled just about everywhere, as he worked for
...[an international airline]."

So he may not have actually lived in China, but had been there and
picked up the idea of using a Chinese seal to denote his name. Which
part of the world is she in? Since books with the seals seem to be
turning up in her area it's a fair bet the original owner was from the
same area. If she googles for something like Felix + China + books +
[the name of the city or region] she might come up with something.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com

Hi John -

Probably a long shot, but I wonder if this could have any relationship
to "Felix Forrest", a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger, better known as SF
author Cordwainer Smith. I have read that Felix Forrest is a pun of
sorts related to the transliteration of "Linebarger" into Chinese
characters, which in turn can be interpreted as "Forest of Incandescent
Light" (this is all from memory, so I may have some of the details
wrong). Linebarger pere et fils have an extensive association with
Chinese culture and politics.

Regards, Tim

Timdo99 wrote:

Probably a long shot, but I wonder if this could have any relationship
to "Felix Forrest", a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger, better known as SF
author Cordwainer Smith. I have read that Felix Forrest is a pun of
sorts related to the transliteration of "Linebarger" into Chinese
characters, which in turn can be interpreted as "Forest of Incandescent
Light" (this is all from memory, so I may have some of the details
wrong). Linebarger pere et fils have an extensive association with
Chinese culture and politics.

Incandescent Bliss, apparently (rather than light). Hmm. Linebarger died
in Baltimore, Maryland. Does your query emanate from that part of the
planet, Alice? If so, he might fit the bill. The completest online data
I can find about him are he

http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/index.htm

No mention of him ever having worked for an airline company, though.

All in all, that's a good little website (a fine tribute from his
family) and, if it seems like a lead worth following up, they could be
contacted directly and asked if they recognise this seal.


John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote in message
...
Timdo99 wrote:

Probably a long shot, but I wonder if this could have any relationship
to "Felix Forrest", a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger, better known as SF
author Cordwainer Smith. I have read that Felix Forrest is a pun of
sorts related to the transliteration of "Linebarger" into Chinese
characters, which in turn can be interpreted as "Forest of Incandescent
Light" (this is all from memory, so I may have some of the details
wrong). Linebarger pere et fils have an extensive association with
Chinese culture and politics.

Incandescent Bliss, apparently (rather than light). Hmm. Linebarger died
in Baltimore, Maryland. Does your query emanate from that part of the
planet, Alice? If so, he might fit the bill. The completest online data I
can find about him are he

http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/index.htm

No mention of him ever having worked for an airline company, though.

All in all, that's a good little website (a fine tribute from his family)
and, if it seems like a lead worth following up, they could be contacted
directly and asked if they recognise this seal.


John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org


Sorry for the delay in responding. Things were slowed down a bit by the
Thanksgiving holiday.

However, I have now heard back from my correspondent. She is delighted! Her
customer's name was, indeed FELIX! Apparently, my correspondent and her
husband, book dealers, had purchased the books about two years ago from the
widow of the man mentioned. They had separated the collection and were
slowing getting them cataloged, which explains why they thought they had
seen the stamp in several unrelated books. The books were indeed related by
being in the single collection. It turns out, they are from my area of the
country, northern Illinois (about 50 miles away from me), and I think I've
managed to make a new friend over the matter.

John, kudos to your Chinese expert friend who deciphered the pictogram. He
(or she?) was exactly right! Thanks so much for all of your help.

Alice