Language desk
< October 9	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 10

Souls or soles?

Last night on TV I watched the first episode of Manifest, and then the 2012 movie Flight.

In both shows there was dialogue about the number of "souls" on board. Or maybe it was "soles" (as in individual humans; but is there any other way to count people ....?).

Either way, I had never heard of this jargonic reference to human beings, outside of poetic contexts. Is this an established aviation industry usage, as its appearance in these shows made 6 years apart would suggest? What ever was wrong with "people" or "persons"? (Or maybe they count animals that are sometimes aboard, and have to have a generic term - I'm just guessing here.)

And what is it - souls, or soles? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:36, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Souls apparently, see here. Mikenorton (talk) 20:39, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Each soul would, on average, have very nearly two soles. DuncanHill (talk) 20:52, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Three. You forgot the R sole. Akld guy (talk) 01:54, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's generally used in situations where lives are lost or at least imperiled. It is meant to invoke the idea that human life is sacred. Far from being used to include animals, it is meant to specifically exclude them due to the common belief (less common nowadays) that animals have no souls. --Khajidha (talk) 23:31, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely "souls", and human only. Kind of an old-fashioned term, and used in one informal meaning of SOS, "Save Our Souls". I found interesting that they said there were 191 of them. That particular number (flight numbers, not souls) has kind of an infamous reputation in aviation history. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:46, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Souls" from the 1830s.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:54, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From the 1950s play Damn Yankees, "Two Lost Souls".[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:00, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

An Aussie band called "Souls on Board". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:01, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:40, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

- JackofOz, I seem to be late to the party, but with your interest in things Russian, I expect you're aware of Gogol's Dead Souls? Our article says [t]o count serfs (and people in general), the measure word "soul" was used: e.g., "six souls of serfs". The plot of the novel relies on "dead souls" (i.e., "dead serfs") which are still accounted for in property registers. --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I did say above I was aware of reference to people as souls in poetic contexts and the like. But I'd never heard of it in transportation or any public policy contexts, where belief in souls, spirits and the like is very much considered a private matter, decidedly on the church side of the separation-of-church-and-state paradigm. For that reason, "souls" seems quite an odd - even bordering on inappropriate - usage, and that's why I wasn't sure whether it was "souls" or "soles". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:34, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As you've seen, it's been in common usage in English for close to 200 years. And I can't speak for Australia, but in American or British English I've never once heard "sole" as a noun in reference to an individual. Only as an adjective, as in "sole survivor". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:09, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Me neither. So I had two possibilities, each as doubtful as the other. That's why I sought illumination. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:59, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect Australian usage is not dissimilar to that in the US. As mention in the StackExchange ref, it's a term of art for those involve in aviation, and you hear it a lot if you watch shows whether fictional or non-fiction which involve emergencies (including crashes) involving planes. It may be it's less common outside those contexts especially in news reports etc in Australian but I'm not sure.

See for example this concerning MH370 [3] [4] which includes a quote from the ATSB "We share your profound and prolonged grief, and deeply regret that we have not been able to locate the aircraft, nor those 239 souls on board that remain missing." While MH370 only came under the ATSB because of where it's believed to have been lost, I don't think that means ATSB was exclusively trying to use more international language.

This from Australian Flying is written by someone I think is an Australian and I presume from the site primarily direct at Australian pilots and says [5] "That is unless your aircraft is certified to carry 10 or more trusting souls."

This from ABC also uses souls both in the description and the audio [6] admittedly the person saying it sounds like they may be American (but it's QF74 so a Qantas flight). This from Australian Aviation [7] likewise quotes a Qantas captain, whether Australian or not I have no idea, who said "and that’s why when we got challenged with a ‘black swan event’, it didn’t just survive, it flew beautifully and 469 souls returned safely home.”"

This Courier Mail article which seems clearly directed at an Australian audience [8] links to another story with "VICTIMS: Lost souls on flight MH17" although I suspect that's mostly an emotional ploy on the subeditor involved.

Nil Einne (talk) 06:21, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:23, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese monarch

In English, why do we say that Japan has an emperor and not a king? [One normally would use "king" to refer to the monarch of a Japan-sized homogenous nation-state that doesn't control an empire beyond its borders; nobody talks about a contemporary "Emperor of Spain", for example, although Spain is larger and less homogenous than Japan.] I see from Emperor of Japan that his title 天皇 means heavenly sovereign, while other emperors are 皇帝; initially I imagined that he shared his title with other figures we call "emperor" (e.g. China), but clearly that's not the case. Emperor and King have Japanese babel links to 皇帝 and 王, respectively. Is the answer perhaps that other emperors share the 皇 character with the Emperor of Japan, or is there some other reason? Nyttend (talk) 21:47, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

One would think it's out of habit, when speakers of English got to Japan, they started calling him emperor (perhaps from experience with China or picking it up from the Portuguese, Dutch, etc.), and it has been fine ever since (and it was before the age of nation states, or perhaps even considering a people 'homogeneous', besides how homogeneous were the Daimyō. This article says, "the islands of Japan were divided into tens of kuni (国, countries)" ). Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:56, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There's really little correlation between the size of a nation ruled by a monarch who is styled an "Emperor", and one who is simply a "King". Nor are Empires always multi-ethnic or Kingdoms mono-cultural. Consider such places as the Central African Empire or the Empire of Trebizond or whatever. Many "kingdoms" were larger than those. These things generally come down to precedence, historical accident, the gumption of the ruler who assumes the title, etc. There's no international governing board that decides who has the "right" to any particular title. There really isn't any strict taxonomy of monarchical terms which is universal and perfectly logical. They just, kinda, happen. --Jayron 32 22:40, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Neither of those examples is typical, however; Bokassa merely decided to claim a title always translated "emperor" in English (and while opponents contested his rule, nobody claimed that he should only be a king, as far as I know), as did Napoleon III, while the Emperor of Trebizond ruled the remnant of a 1500-year-old empire with no significant breaks in continuity, and his title of basileus had not changed since the seventh century. (Remember that I'm asking about the translation of a title that was well established before any European languages were aware that such a ruler existed, rather than asking about any ruler's title in his own language; the point is "since they had to borrow the term or use an existing term, why did they pick this existing term instead of another".) It just seems that from the perspective of the first Europeans coming into contact with Cipango, calling him a "king" (or even "high king"; cf. Ireland, for example) would be a better equivalent to the positions of European monarchs than would using the title of the ruler of the Hapsburg realms; it's not as if the warring daimyos were as heterogenous as Leon vs. Aragon vs. Castile, or Burgundy vs. the Vendee vs. other parts of France (unless I misunderstand), but one doesn't talk about French emperors until later centuries, and Imperator totius Hispaniae fell out of use by the 13th century, long before Japan was much known in the West. But maybe the "from experience with China" from centuries ago is the explanation; thank you. Nyttend (talk) 23:42, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The examples I gave were not exhaustive, only representative. The central point was when I said "There's no international governing board that decides who has the "right" to any particular title. There really isn't any strict taxonomy of monarchical terms which is universal and perfectly logical." They're just words, and sometimes they just happen. This post from Quora is exactly about your question, and the best answer there is that there is no distinction between King and Emperor in Japanese, the word "emperor" got picked and just kinda stuck. This Reddit thread explicitly makes the Chinese connection as likely, it also claims the use of "emperor" for the Japanese was specific to the Meiji Restoration, and that it was a deliberate choice of the Meiji Emperor to encourage the use of the word "Emperor" in relation to Western languages only at that time. It also says that prior to the Meiji Restoration, the term Mikado was directly used in English. So take your pick from those discussion, they present various perspectives on the use of Emperor there. --Jayron 32 23:52, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Before they knew they existed: Well, Europeans probably imagined them, long before they "knew" them. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:28, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nyttend -- the short answer is that the Japanese monarch claimed to be equivalent to the Chinese monarch, and China (when unified) was the center of a whole sphere of surrounding tributaries and lesser powers, so that the Chinese monarch needed some more exalted title to be distinguished as being above an ordinary peripheral territorial king. You can see from the King of Na gold seal that the Chinese started out by calling Japanese rulers mere kings (王). As early as a few years after 600 A.D., a Japanese ruler sent out a notorious letter from "the Son of Heaven where the sun rises to the Son of Heaven where the sun sets" which was considered presumptuously arrogant at the Chinese imperial court. AnonMoos (talk) 02:07, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

He ruled the Empire of Japan (Dai Nippon Teikoku, which the article says means "Great Japanese Empire"), not the Kingdom of Japan. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:46, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that there's much point in taking sides in a 607 A.D. diplomatic dispute. Under the traditional Imperial Chinese Tributary System, the Chinese monarchs never recognized Japanese monarchs as equivalent in authority to themselves. It's quite different from the Western post-Westphalian diplomatic system, where the ruler of country A doesn't necessarily compromise his/her own authority by accepting the self-proclaimed grandiose titles of the ruler of country B... AnonMoos (talk) 09:23, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about the difference between kings and emperors (or kingdoms and empires) have come up a few times - see for example [9]. What generally seems to be the case is that when a really powerful monarch or state comes to prominence, they come up with a term to distinguish themselves from lesser rulers and states. (Emperor vs. King or Rex in Europe, Huangdi vs. Wang in China, Khagan vs Khan among the Turks and Mongols, etc. By analogy the superior title is usually translated as "emperor" in English). However once these titles have become established, other rulers may chose to use (or not use) them on the basis of whim, ego, politics, etc. Calling yourself an emperor means you are saying you are equal to other emperors, and superior to other kings - and possibly making a claim on their territories. And the only thing to stop you doing so is if those other rulers object, and are powerful enough to actually do something about it. In the specific case of Japan, the rulers of Japan used the same title to describe themselves as was used by the supreme rulers of China, and the Chinese never managed to stop them. Iapetus (talk) 12:32, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]