Re: by any other name

On Aug 26, 2006, at 1:10 AM, siblings-digest wrote:

> In light of the name change thing I'm wondering if we
> now should now call ourselves "Isslings" or
> "Issalings" rather than "siblings"?  "Issling" sounds
> close to "gosling" - but that would make us baby
> geese.
>
> Does a sibling by any other name smell as sweet?
>
> After some research (well, actually a few minutes on
> an etymology website) I discovered that the name
> "Issa" is a variant of the Arabic "Isa" meaning
> "Jesus".
>
> Your fellow sibling-issaling-issling,
> David L.
> ("David" being Hebrew for "Beloved"  and "L" being,
> well, "L")
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com

As the founder of this group, back in March of 1994, I'd be a little  
sorry to see the "Siblings" name go, but I'm no more than an ordinary  
member now, so my vote doesn't count any more than anyone else's.

Besides, the name "Siblings" was mostly the result of squinting at  
the "When I Was a Boy" CD booklet at 3 A.M. without glasses -- I  
misread "sibline" as "siblings" and thought, "Boy, that's a neat name  
for a Siberry newsletter." The next day I re-read it and saw my  
mistake, but later that year, when I was starting a new Siberry fan  
email list (the old one had sputtered and died sometime the year  
before) I remembered my earlier delusion and decided to make  
"Siblings" a reality.

Besides, I thought it would be a good symbol for a more open and  
tolerant fan-community; the Kate Bush and Tori Amos fan lists had  
already suffered through some hideous flamewars by that time (the  
Kate Bush group had actually splintered as a result), and I thought  
that as a group, we should treat each other as siblings do -- arguing  
sometimes, yes, but holding back from the really nasty personal crap.

Just my 2 cents' worth...

Brian Gerstel
The *original* Sibling, still alive and well...