Butterfly ties

FARFALLA, n. We were eating this pasta shape recently and my kid asked what they were called. Our assembled family members gave three simultaneous answers: farfalle, butterflies, bow ties.

Farfalle—this is the plural, the singular is farfalla—is the Italian word for butterflies. Then one of us asked if perhaps the Italian word for butterfly and the Italian word for bow tie might be one and the same, which turns out to be more or less true. WordReference gives "farfalla," "cravatta a farfalla" (butterfly tie; cravat, previously) and "papillon" (French for butterfly) as Italian for bow tie.

I bring this up mostly because this newsletter discussed "butterfly" in 2019 and it remains one of the best, strangest, and most memorable etymologies I've ever written about.

But also "farfalla" itself is a tiny bit weird. Most likely, it's from Old Italian parpaglione, itself from Latin papilio, and it's just that the Tuscans love to change <p> to <f>. Per Wiktionary, there's the slimmest of chances it's from Maltese Arabic "farfett," which I am including because it's delightful.

Lastly, that first Italian etymology dictionary I linked above says maybe "farfalla" is related to Kurdish "pilpilúk, fífilîk." I don't know enough (anything) about Kurdish to confirm this, and the internet has given me similar-but-not-the-same options for butterfly: pirpirok, pinpinîk (in Kurmanji), and a Sorani result in that language's script. I love how many of these words for butterfly have a doubled syllable or consonant, like a fluttering of wings.

Speaking of the fluttering of wings, or hearts, here are some chance encounters that lead to small-r romance happily ever afters:

Time Loops and Meet Cutes (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary, fantasy) by Jackie Lau. Noelle is a workaholic stuck in a rut, and then she eats some (unbeknownst to her) magic dumplings at a night market and ends up endlessly reliving versions of Friday, June 20. She keeps running into a man named Cam who seems to almost remember her. Could Cam be the key to getting free? Having unlimited opportunities to redo their first meeting gives Noelle the courage she needs to flirt, but the more she gets to know him, the more frustrating it is when the clock resets and he doesn’t remember her. Noelle also meets another woman stuck in the same time loop and they become friends, which I loved. This is such a loving portrait of (lightly magical) Toronto, and I had a ton of fun waiting to see how Noelle would finally break free. Deliciously readable. Library ebook.

Junker Seven (trans f/nonbinary, both lesbian, sci-fi) by Olive J. Kelley. Juno Marcus is a trans woman revolutionary, hunted by a fascist government, and she needs a clandestine ride to a distant planet, which she secures from a gruff butch loner who identifies themself only as “Junker”—someone who raids abandoned spaceships for valuable scrap. Over the course of their fraught and dangerous space voyage, naturally the two of them fall in love. This is great and has really lovable main characters, but its particular flavor of fascism tastes a lot like what we’ve got in the US right now, so caveat lector. And one more caveat: there’s a very affecting description of the death of a child (Junker’s little brother, in the past). Indie published; bought from itch.io.

Rules for Ghosting (bi trans m/gay cis m, contemporary, fantasy) by Shelly Jay Shore. Ezra’s whole life blows up through no fault of his own: he gets furloughed from his job at the Queer Community Center just as he’s moving into an old Victorian house with a bunch of new roommates, and then his parents split up and his mom leaves her job at the family’s struggling Jewish funeral home, forcing Ezra to fill in for her, even though he hates working there because, by the way, he can see ghosts. Meanwhile there’s a very handsome nice Jewish boy living in the Victorian house, one who seems to like Ezra a lot. Unfortunately his ex is haunting Ezra, and that makes flirting awkward. This book obviously has a lot of death and grief in it, but it is ultimately joyful, and I loved how Jewish it was. Library ebook.

And in things that are neither Romance nor romance, but that are lepidoptera-related, I read The Lantern and the Night Moths, Yilin Wang’s translation of five modern and contemporary Chinese poets, which was lovely. I bought it in print (from my local indie bookshop) and it’s beautifully typeset with the original Mandarin alongside the English translation, which I always appreciate even when I can’t read the language in question. The essays about each of the five poets were a highlight. I always love a good translator’s note and these are both about the process of translation and the personal relationship that the translator has with the poetry, whether it’s about gender or diaspora or communicating something that escapes the bounds of language.

Also possibly relevant to readers of this newsletter, the blog Strong Language is doing a series of posts on swearing in Mick Herron's brilliant Slough House novels (previously in Word Suitcase) and I very much enjoyed the first two entries.

That's all for this time. I'll be back in your inbox on July 27.