Havelock and Xform
Mar. 17th, 2006 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackStupid questions, but where google and wikipedia fail me, my friends generally know.
1. "Xform" as an abbreviation of "transform". That's standard, isn't it? But where does that come from? I'm suddenly unsure. Is that just 'x' being 'an arbitrary operation'?
ETA: Thanks to three people who almost instantly pointed out that X works for 'trans', in the sense 'cross'.
2. "Havelock". I'm really only familiar with it as in "Vetinari", but I have the feeling it's a reference to something or other. There's a few other Havelocks on wikipedia, but nothing that made sense to me.
1. "Xform" as an abbreviation of "transform". That's standard, isn't it? But where does that come from? I'm suddenly unsure. Is that just 'x' being 'an arbitrary operation'?
ETA: Thanks to three people who almost instantly pointed out that X works for 'trans', in the sense 'cross'.
2. "Havelock". I'm really only familiar with it as in "Vetinari", but I have the feeling it's a reference to something or other. There's a few other Havelocks on wikipedia, but nothing that made sense to me.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 04:45 pm (UTC)Havelock Vetinari is the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, so crops up incidently in many references to it.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 04:55 pm (UTC)