Marise Gwin writes:
>Mike Lippold writes:
 
>|| We have a pair of systems that seem to have "accidentally"
>|| been left out of the Company naming standards called
>|| PANT and GRUEL...
 
>In the 14th or 15th century, a guy named Rabelais wrote a humorous set of
>books with a character named Pantagruel.  He was a very, em, thirsty guy,
>and a giant to boot.  If my memory serves me (sometimes!), these books are
>set in a place called Cloud-Cuckoo Land.  Even though old, the books are
>really funny and amazingly . . . well, racy.  For the time.
 
The main character in the book is Gargantua, and yes, that's where
we get the word from. Pantagruel was another character in the book. The
guy who wrote it was a monk, and most of the characters are
thinly-disguised church figures of the time. He got in rather a lot
of trouble, but nobody every managed to silence him. He used a
new high-tech publishing medium, the printing press, and the authorities
couldn't figure out how to deal with it. The situation seems somehow
familiar.
 
One other machine I know of is named for a character in Rabelais's book:
Gargamelle, from whose ear Gargantua was born. Gargamelle is also the
name of a huge particle detecter at CERN.
 
-- Bruce Toback
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