{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "23rd June 2023", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/720906854924976128/", "html": "

fireleaptfromhousetohouse:

kontextmaschine:

notthateither:

kontextmaschine:

notthateither:

funnytwittertweets:

Americans making up the weird-ass fake name \u201cWaldo\u201d instead of using the real normal name \u201cWally\u201d that the rest of the world uses is so strange

It’s German. The early population of America was heavily German \u2013 with no overseas colonies of their own, the German diaspora (starting before German unification, of course) spread through the Americas \u2013 the thing about Nazis expatriating to Argentina postwar was that was the most advanced Germanophone community outside the WWII combatants \u2013 but a serious ethnosuppressionist campaign around entry to WWI has obscured this ever since.

You’re saying that the name Waldo is German, and they called Wally that in the states because there are a lot of German-Americans? Huh, I had no idea.

Why not just call him Wally?

Oh, you mean the striped shirt “find him on this busy illustrated page” guy is called Wally elsewhere? I thought you were just dinging us for naming people Waldo in real life. No clue, I’m guessing there was already an American “Wally” of some sort to confuse the copyright. Also while it does exist in America, “Waldo” is rare enough that it’s more memorable than Wally.

Curiously, American localisation of a certain similarly investigation-themed board game took the -do suffix off\u00a0the end, rendering it\u00a0\u2018Clue\u2019. This is probably explained by the fact the original name \u2018Cluedo\u2019 was a play on\u00a0\u2018Ludo\u2019, which as I understand it is only really known in the States as the slight variant \u2018Parcheesi\u2019.

\n

Huh! Yeah, now that I think of it I can see the resemblance.

My prior experience was our neighbors with a British Colonial background (the Cold-Eeze family!) would play Parcheesi and Backgammon at the side of our development (normal cul-de-sacs but with houses with staggered shared walls, using the innovative 1970s “condominium” legal real estate form!) pool

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