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Life
with Miles
Notes on the Given Name (First Name) Miles/Myles
Win Free Internet Miles
Some people named Miles or Myles have web sites.
How
has being a Miles or a Myles affected their lives?
You
tell me.
Planning
for the Upcoming MILES UnConvention
This
is an important moment in history for Miles. Today,
more than ever, parents of new children are choosing
to name their new boys Miles. (Really... check out the
numbers at the bottom of the page.)
But
how many of these misty eyed new parents are fully aware
of the illustrious achievements of the current generation
of Miles? Only a unique unConvention can highlight the
many faces of Miles-ness.
If
your first name is Miles you are invited to join in
the planning process for the first millennial Miles
unConvention. Current locations under consideration
include the metropolis of Miles
City, Montana, a good place to live like Miles,
Iowa, and the historically Black Miles
College in Decatur, Georgia. Or maybe we should
head to Galway,
Ireland and hang out at Miles Lee's Dew Drop Inn.
Or how about Miles
Cove, Newfoundland? I hope that geographer Miles
Ogburn can be of particular help in finding a good
place, one with weather that climatologist Myles
Allen approves of. We are leaning to a coastal location
so that Myles
Jenkins will be able to bring some folks along in
a yacht.
Invitations
and printed material will be designed by graphic artists
Myles Pinkney,
Miles
Teeves , and Miles
Cooley.
To
keep things lively we will get the bands Miles
From Nowhere or Miles
From Chicago to play. Or jazz singer Miles
Griffith, or musicians Miles
West, Miles
Pena, Miles
Tilman, Myles
Wilcott or Miles
Osland. In fact I'm beginning to suspect we could
put together an entire band with people named Miles.
Maybe that's because musically inclined parents of 20
to 50 years ago liked to name their children, consciously
or unconsciously, after the great Miles
Davis. (Let's hope we haven't been named after that
other famous Miles, the American colonist named Myles
Standish.) In any case, we hope to get Hard
Miles Music to record the proceedings.
To
house our convention
Miles Hardaway could design us a nice building in
which to meet, built under the direction of construction
consultant Myles
F. Corcoran, and furnished by Miles
Treaster and Associates.
The
building will need a stage because prior to the big
dinner actors Myles
Jeffrey and Myles
Nye will be doing an improvisational skit, and Miles
O'Keefe will entertain us with a one man Tarzan
show and reminiscences about his work with Bo Derek.
After
dinner mathematician Miles
Reid can entertain us all with a witty discussion
of recent trends in algebraic geometry, followed by
a modern dance rendition of the explicit birational
geometry of 3-folds. Then, to wrap up our technical
seminar, information scientist Miles
Efron will use three bottles of beer to demonstrate
how eigenvalue-based estimators and mild intoxication
can be used to optimally reduce dimensionality in information
retrieval and machine learning. If all of this seems
a little odd, even improbable, we can ask statistician
Myles Hollander
to explain precisely how odd it really is.
A
brief discussion of the "Miles by Choice"
movement will then be conducted by authors Miles
Aspden and Miles
Archer neither of whom was born a Miles, but who
instead chose the nom de plume after careful
consideration of many alternatives. While still small,
the "Miles by Choice" movement is growing
rapidly and may soon threaten larger and more well established
belief systems.
Although
we'll urge people to sober up before they leave, should
anyone be foolish enough to drink and drive attorney
at law Myles Berman
will be on hand to provide top notch legal defense.
We'll
put Miles
Fawcett in charge of documenting the event and creating
a web site, Miles
Hecker can handle photography, and surely a smart
guy like Miles R.
Fidelman can help out with our communications plan.
If we need consulting, Miles
Macleod can provide consulting services... whatever
those are.
If,
in all the excitement, anyone gets pregnant Miles
Cramer could handle the ultrasound, and in the event
of a sudden and urgent need for formalizing a relationship
Father Miles
O'Brien Riley and Pastor Myles
Munroe will be on hand to perform emergency marriages.
~
The
above are just the first 20 or so Miles I found on Google.
Kurt
Vonnegut defined new kinds of groups like the karass
(hidden, gets things done) and the grandfalloon (huge,
gets nothing done). I would suggest that the Miles
unConvention group is nothing less than an incidental
hullabaloo, hereby defined as a large group
of people who have exactly one thing, and only one thing,
usually something rather trivial, in common.
~
Are
you a first name Miles who wants to be on this list
or to attend the Miles unConvention? Send
e-mail to add your name or complain. If it's not
happening here, it's not happening.
Unconventionally,
Miles
Hochstein
Miles
of History, Etymology and Gematria
The
Latin
To
the best of my knowledge Miles is derived from a word
describing a Roman foot soldier, miles, and has
the same root as military (militis). The
Oxford English Dictionary gives the simple meaning of
miles as soldier under its definition
of militia, for example. I've never cared for
the military connotation. Fortunately there are other
associations with the word. Another
online source also claims a relationship between
Miles and the Italian Milo/Milon.
The
Norman
I
have read but not evaluated the claim that the name
Miles was introduced to Britain by the Normans. "Miles
was introduced to England by the Normans in two forms
Miles and Milon. Although never very common it has been
present ever since (rather less so, though, from the
16th to 19th centuries) in England, and later the United
States." (source)
Since the Romans predated the Normans in Britain by
many centuries, it is not obvious why it could not have
come earlier. That's one more thing to research.
The
Anglo-American
The
name Miles always sounded very English to me, and specifically
English colonial, with its association with Myles
Standish (b. ca. 1584, d 3 October 1656, Duxbury,
MA). I've been meaning to research the pilgrim Myles
Standish, but my understanding is that he was basically
a warrior in early colonial battles with Native Americans,
and a ship captain. I'd also like to know whether the
substitution of y and i has any meaning,
or
is just a random thing.
The
Spanish and Irish
But
the OED also reminds us of King
Milesius, "a fabulous Spanish king whose sons
are reputed to have conquered and reorganized the ancient
kingdom of Ireland..." (p. 436, OED compact edition).
Here too the association is with military conquest perhaps,
but for those who think Miles is too English, this gives
them a route from Latin, through Spain and then on to
Ireland. You can claim all of those national heritages
as yours in the name of Miles.
The
legacy of Milesius became in time more deeply Irish,
in the sense that, as the OED reports, by the 18th century
the plain (or jocular) meaning of "Milesian"
is simply "Irish" or an "Irishman."
So you'd be correct, in a rough way I would think, to
say that Miles is an old Irish name, at least as much
as it is English. As an Irish music fan, that makes
this Miles happy. Some online
sources are certainly happy to claim Myles/Miles
as an Irish name, giving it the meaning not of "soldier"
but of "hero", which is probably just a loose
translation of the Latin meaning.
In
the work and life of exile Irishman James Joyce, Myles
is a name that does appear (the character of Myles Crawford),
although whether its presence in Ireland stems from
the English occupation, or from a Latin or Church related
source, or even from the Mileisian etymology and connection
I do not know.
French
Stephen
H. wrote me of his investigations into names similar
to Miles to say "I found the etymology for Emile
to come from the latin aemulus which appears
to mean to seek to equal, to take as model, same as,
comparable to, emulate, jealous, rival, opposed."
Perhaps there is a connection there.
The
Miliesian Fables of the City of Miletus, in Asia Minor
Milesian
also pertains to the Ionian city of Miletus, in Asia
Minor (now Turkey), or to its inhabitants. Derived from
this is the notion of Milesian tales a "class
of voluptuous romances described by ancient writers"
[eg. 17th century]. (OED, p 436, compact edition). No
examples
of these tales are now extant, but apparently they were
quite racey in their day. I like the idea of being associated
with voluptuous romances. So, although I'm not claiming
that the modern name "Miles" has been widely
and intentionally given as a reference to voluptuously
romantic Milesian tales or to the city of Miletus in
Asia Minor, you are free to claim a "romantic"
dimension to the name Miles in addition to the more
militant ones.
The
Encyclopedia
Britanica informs us: "Latin - Milesia Fabula,
in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, a brief
erotic or picaresque tale of romantic adventure. This
type of tale was first written or collected by Aristides
of Miletus (c. 2nd century BC). In the 1st century BC,
Aristides' collection was translated into Latin by Lucius
Cornelius Sisenna as Milesiae fabulae; this volume served
as a model for episodes in Petronius' Satyricon…"
Miletus
and Cartography
The
city of Miletus is also associated with cartography.
Miletus
is the birthplace of the idea of a spherical globe where
"...[a]s early as 600 BC, Thales of Miletus hypothesized
a spherical Earth." So the round earth too can
be thought of as a Milesian concept, in a sense, and
Milietus can be called the birthplace of the global
idea and ideal.
It
is also claimed that "...the earliest ancient
Greek who is said to have constructed a map of the world
is Anaximander, who was born in 610 BC in Miletus (now
in Turkey), and died in 546 BC. He is said to have studied
under Thales but sadly no details of his map have survived."
The
city of Miletus has also been invoked in an ideological
context as as an example of one of the earliest locations
in which "grids" and rectangles were physically
imposed by the imperial mind upon the natural circles
that characterize village structure and life in contact
with nature.
Hebrew and Slavic Sources?
One
source asserts possible derivations from the Hebrew
"Michael" ("who is like God?", where
Mi = who; c' = like; ael = God). But I don't see any
c/kh consonant in there, do you? This same source
suggests Miles is related to the Slavic word "mil",
meaning "favor" or "grace." I have
not yet researched these claims, but they strike me
as fanciful. They are not presented in the online sources
I cite above with an argument that would explain the
basis of the claim.
The
Botanical Connotation
Miles
is also a weed, or perhaps we should say, a hardy and
rugged medicinal plant. The OED gives "miles"
as an archaic variant form of "milds", itself
a name for the Atriplex
(?) and Chenopodium
plants. Chenopodium has variants also known as "Lamb's-quarters;
Fat-hen; Anserine-blanche; Weiber-Gansefus; Anserina-branca;
Armuelle; Cenizo-blanco" An online source asserts
that one member of the Chenopodium family has a certain
medicinal value
"... to treat various symptoms attributable to
nutritional deficiencies. It's also said to have sedative
and refrigerant properties, and people have used the
poulticed leaves to soothe burns." So, counter
the militant sense of Miles, here is a meaning of "miles"
that is inherently "mild" and "healing."
The
Measure of Distance
Any
Miles has probably watched other children find amusement
in calling him "Kilometers" as if it had never
occurred to anyone before. However I see no harm in
imagining the clan of Miles being named after the measure
of distance, the mile, even though a reference to distance
was probably intended by no parents who named their
child Miles, and has no basis in etymology. Why not
let Miles also be a reflection of endless back country
highways or the vastness of intergalactic space?
What
is the actual relationship between "mile"
as a measure of distance and miles (as soldier)? I first
thought that a connection might lie in the fact that
soldiers are known for marching great distances, and
the accurate measurement of distance was something that
surely would have been inherently important to the Roman
military. However, one source, the
Online Etymology Dictionary, provides no reason
to think there is a direct relationship. The measurement
meaning of "miles/mile" derives from the Latin
mila "thousands" while the military
meaning stems from the Latin miles/militis "soldier/military".
This sources suggests an origin for "miles/militis"
in the Etruscan language.
- "mile
- O.E. mil, from W.Gmc. *milja, from L. mila "thousands,"
pl. of mille "a thousand" (neuter plural
was mistaken in Gmc. as fem. sing.). Ancient Roman
mile was 1,000 double paces (one step with each foot),
for about 4,860 feet, or about 400 feet shorter than
a modern statute mile."
- "military
- 1460, from L. militaris "of soldiers or war,"
from miles (gen. militis) "soldier," perhaps
ult. from Etruscan." (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
Why
"mil" came into the Latin with two senses,
spatial and martial, remains for me an open question.
Miles
of Gematria - Soldier for Peace, or Peace Soldier
Finally
for those into interlingual gematria (the Jewish
mystical tradition of deriving meanings from arrangements
and rearangements of Hebrew letters), if you read the
three consonants "M", "L", and "S"
you have the basic consonants in Arabic and Hebrew of
"Salam" and "Shalom." Read M-L-S
forward and you have a soldier, but read it backwards,
S-L-M (or in a right to left Semitic language) and you
have a greeting of peace, shalom/salam. That's war and
peace all in one name, depending on the alphabet and
language. Maybe when you combine the Arabic and Hebrew
with the Latin, Miles becomes a soldier for peace. And
maybe the possibility of realizing that fact is why
I spent all those years studying Hebrew?
Finally,
if you want to get really sappy, it will always be an
anagram for "smile." So put on a happy face...
;-)
Musical
Miles
Etymological
paths to meaning aside, there is one Miles who in the
20th century all but defines the resonances of the name:
Miles Davis. Each contemporary Miles marches to some
extent in the path of the patron, the jazz emblem of
cool, Miles Davis.
Wherever
Miles has come from, like any name, in the end we each
define its meaning in the emotional and factual realities
that come to be associated with our name through our
interactions with our fellow human beings.
What
associations do you have with the name Miles?
Frequent Birthing Miles
According to the Social
Security Administration, in 2002 Miles was the 242nd
most popular boy baby name in the United States.
This
data would seem to confirm the validity of my anecdotal
impression that the number of young children named Miles
is increasing in the U.S.
2002
rank 242, with 1396 new babies of that name
2001 rank 248, with 1358 new babies of that name.
2000 rank 259, with 1288 new babies of that name.
~
1997 rank 297, with 960 new babies of that name.
~
1992 rank 288, with 1034 new babies of that name.
1991 rank 283, with 1008 new babies of that name.
1990 rank 281, with 1010 new babies of that name.
Musical
Miles
- Miles
from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
- 8
Miles High (The Byrds)
- 500
Miles (traditional)
- 900
Miles (traditional)
No
doubt there are more, but they all refer to distance
- I've yet to hear the first name Miles appear in a
song as a name.
Fictional
Miles
Historical
Miles
Grammatical Miles
The
possessive of Miles is Miles', as in "This is
Miles' web page."
But
the plural of Miles has always been awkward. The plural
of Miles is properly, I suppose, Mileses, but
that doesn't look right to me, and it definitely doesn't
sound right if you pronounce the shwa and the second
s separately.
"Miles
Johnson walked over to Miles Smith and the two Mileses
shook hands."
Nor
do I like "Gus and Gus met, and the two Gusses
shook hands".
Perhaps
the not rightness of this stems from the fact that we
learn an aversion to doubling the final s when forming
the possessive - Miles' book is clearly to be
preferred to writing or pronouncing Miles's book.
We aren't required to double the "s" when
forming the possessive, so why should it be required
for the plural?
I'm lean toward simply and arbitrarily treating Miles
as a unique name that includes both the singular and
plural forms, just like one fish and two fish.
"Miles
Johnson walked over to Miles Smith and the two Miles
shook hands."
To
my ear and eye that looks and sounds better. But I suppose
you could object, not least on the grounds that it implies
that by themselves they are simply each a Mile. Fortunately,
there are very few of us so the above situation almost
never arises.
Finally
the plural possessive would then be simply the same
as the singular possessive, although I'm stumped as
to why you would ever in a lifetime need to form the
plural possessive of Miles.
~
After
I wrote the above, Dawn wrote me to say... "Actually,
Miles, Miles is my brother. When we were teenagers,
we attended a church conference together. Someone with
a slightly twisted sense of humor put my brother Miles
in the same room as another young man, first name -
Miles. That, therefore, was the Mileses' room.
I'm
grateful for Dawn's input. But I prefer to avoid the
plural form. Surely you could just as correctly say
and write above that it was the Miles room (the room
of those with the name Miles). Does adding the double
s and extra syllable make anything clearer? One fish
or two fish, one deer or two deer, one Miles or two
Miles, shouldn't it all be the same?
I
leave it to others to consider the potential psychological
and philosophical implications of the identity of the
singular and plural form. But I will speculate that
perhaps having the name Miles teaches a person a certain
flexibility of mind as we Miles learn to tolerate grammatical
ambiguity regarding one versus many, and to avoid
worrying about the petty details of possession and ownership.
Time
Wasting Miles
My
wife has observed that this page provides clear evidence
that I have WAY too much time on my hands. I can't argue
with that.
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