It's been a long time since my last post. It all seemed to be going well when I wrote Survivor Guilt.
I was working entirely from home rather than half and half and I had Fridays off as my firm moved to a four-day week. Like many others, I had such plans: improve my foreign languages; crack on with the novel I have started three times and am yet to finish the first chapter; all those home improvements. Out of these, the last has had the most success but even that has been restricted to organising rather than doing.
One of the reasons for so few posts is that most of mine are about incidents in life and not going out much for eighteen months puts a damper on that but I also have an interest in language and this post was spurred on as I queued for coffee after taking our dogs for a walk (to be fair my wife takes them and I provide moral support and buy the refreshments afterwards).
As I was waiting to be served I noticed their sign read Cappucino. I have found out after many false starts that no one wants their spelling mistakes pointed out, it should be Cappuccino (mnemonic think two CuPs of coffee to match the two central Ps and Cs).
However, what started me wondering was that I knew there is a type of monkey called a Capuchin and I knew there was a religious order called the Capuchins
- so how were these three related and which came first?
The word cappuccio meant a hooded cape of a type favoured by monks and worn by many orders including the Camaldolese. The diminutive, meaning a small-hooded cape, is cappuccino.
The actual Capuchin friars were founded as a splinter faction of The Franciscans in 1525 when Matteo da Bascio and others decided that the Franciscans, founded over three hundred years previously by Francis of Assisi, had strayed too far from their founder's way especially in matters of simplicity and discipline. They were given shelter by the Camaldolese and started to wear the same garments and took their popular name from the hooded cape.
Next came the monkeys which inhabit south and central America. They were named after the friars because of their colouring. I couldn't find out exactly when the monkeys were named but it appears to be sometime after their discovery (by Europeans that is...) in the early sixteenth century given that the Capuchin friars weren't well-known until later.
Finally comes the coffee drink. It was also named after the friars in the seventeenth century but was a different drink from one we know today. It took a couple of hundred years, at least, to settle down into what you will get when you order one now. Whether or not the idea of the monkey also influenced the name is not known for sure but it seems likely.
So now you know - to sum up, it was Capuchin friars, Capuchin Monkeys and then the coffee and don't forget - it's caPPuCCino.
