For World Book Day, I present for you an etymological rabbit hole that has everything: Hogwarts, British actors, warcries of the Thirty Years' War, and even McDonald's. The connection? Slogans and Slughorns!
Nowadays, a slogan is the motto of a brand or an ad campaign. For example, that quintessential slogan, I'm lovin' it!
Slogan is one of those English words that comes from the Gaelic. The Gaelic spelling is sluagh-ghairm (sluagh 'army', 'host' and gairm 'cry'). That is, the word originally meant WARCRY. Like those cries that generals yelled on the battlefield to round up and encourage their troops. For example, Santiago y cierra España, used by Spanish troops in the 30 Years' War, and Gott mit uns, used by the Swedes in the same war.
The meaning of warcry for "slogan" has faded away, but the word has a more Anglicized word derived from it, ie SLUGHORN. It is familiar to any Potterhead, as the surname of a famous and distinguished Potions Master. Horace Eugene Flaccus Slughorn is the full name. And oui, he is as fond of life and of pleasures as his namesake the Roman poet (Horatius Flaccus), famously translated by Fray Luis de León. Rowling sure knows her classics.
Horace Eugene Flaccus Slughorn, played by British actor James "Jim" Broadbent.
Obviously, Rowling has made a pun here on the old word for warcry and the "horns" of the slugs, used in potion-making.
A garden slug. Notice the "horns."
The process by which the Gaelic "sluagh-ghairm" became the English "slughorn" is known as the Hobson-Jobson effect, or Law of Hobson-Jobson. But what is this Hobson-Jobson effect and where did it come from?
In the British Raj, especially in Muslim regions like Pakistan, there was an Islamic celebration called the Mourning of Muharram. These annual rituals commemorate the death of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the third Shia imam. Husayn and his small retinue were slaughtered in the Battle of Karbala on 10 Muharram 61 AH (680 CE) against the army of the Umayyad caliph Yazid I (r. 680–683). The battle followed Husayn's refusal to pledge his allegiance to Yazid, who is often portrayed by Muslim historians as impious and immoral. In Shia Islam, Karbala symbolizes the eternal struggle between good and evil. Historically, the event served to crystallize the Shia community into a distinct sect and remains an integral part of their religious identity to date.
British soldiers and officials heard the mourners' cries during these festivals, of "Ya Hasan! Ya Hussein!" as "Hobson-Jobson." This same effect led to the Spanish "cucaracha" becoming "cockroach" and to the Gaelic "sluagh-ghairm" becoming "slughorn."
Ie the term "Law of Hobson-Jobson, or Hobson-Jobson effect" is used in linguistics to refer to the process of phonological change by which loanwords are adapted to the phonology of the new language, as in the archetypal example of "Hobson-Jobson" itself.
Furthermore, Hobson and Jobson were stock characters in Victorian times, used to indicate a pair of yokels, clowns, or idiots. Surely the existence of these characters influenced the British mishearing of "Ya Hasan! Ya Hussein" as "Hobson-Jobson," or the other way around.
