Many-Selved Etymological Glossary, OCRing Many Voices/S4OS, and Orion Scribner

[lb_lee]

There are a bunch of plural glossaries out there, but they tend to be lacking in context as to who created a term, where it came from, and how it spread. So, a few days ago, we decided to amass all the many-selved terms we could recall if not who coined it, at least a decent idea as to WHERE and WHEN it came from, with the idea of making an etymological glossary, both textual and visual (in the style of this chart of musical genres/musicians of the 1950s-1970s from Edward Tufte's Visual Explanations).

Right now we're at around 50 terms, ranging from highly unpopular medical terms of the 1800s ("duplex personality" never caught on) up to quoigenic at 2016. We are choosing to halt our charting at around then, because the genic slapfight EXPLODED with a gazillion terms that we never used and have zero interest in documenting, plus we have no idea which terms get fucking USED with any frequency besides traumagenic, endogenic, and quoigenic. (Besides, Pluralpedia probably has that time period covered better.)

Since our earliest medical term in English we have onhand is from 1816 ("double consciousness," used by Mitchell, and I'm pretty sure he yoinked it from the French) that gives us 200 years of many-selved terminological slapfighting in English. (There are a number of German and French sources from the 1800s that probably influenced the English terminology, but I'm choosing to stick with the language I know.)

Because of the nature of the sources I have, and my own upbringing, medical terms are disproportionately represented, and eventually I'll have to make a judgment call as to what terms doctors call us vs. terms we call ourselves, but that's a problem for future me. And I still think it might be valuable to chart which medical terms stuck around (multiple personality vs manifold personality), and also just to see the docs duking it out in the 1800s, especially since my multi community records don't start until 1986.

So far, the main research pools I've been drawing from are:

• Goettman, Greaves & Coons. Multiple Personality and Dissociation, 1791-1992: A Complete Bibliography (Man, SO glad we found that book, fed it through the bookscanner, and that Orion Scribner OCRed it for us!)
• fuckin' Astraea's private BBS .txt files from 1992-1995
• alt.support.dissocation (1994-2024, RIP)
• the Sidran Foundation's glossary from 1998 (linked a bunch in alt.support.dissociation, also surprisingly good at saying where it got its terms from--I might've helped chase where "blending" came from, thanks to it!)
• Eclective's soulbonding glossary from 2001?
• Anachronic Army's glossary from 2001
• The Pavilion Hall glossary (which yoinked Anachronic Army's in 2002)
• fuckin' Astraea's earliest glossary (which yoinked Pavilion Hall's in 2003)
• Eclective's soulbonding glossary from 2004

But I quickly realized there was a big, glaring hole in my research: the Many Voices newsletter archives, which ranges from 1989-2012 (and also I guess that one orphaned 1986 issue of Speaking For Our Selves). 142 newsletters, none searchable or screenreadable. The thought of manually reading through, one by one, made me shudder.

But then I went, "Hey... isn't Orion Scribner unemployed right now?" So I hired them and they went and OCRed the whole kit and kaboodle! What a public service! What a mensch!

Right now, I am completely exhausted and working on my taxes, but when that's out of the way, I plan to upload all of these files to archive.org so everyone can use them. Three cheers for Orion Scribner!

Comments

[gze]

Three cheers! Thank y'all for all your hard work, we're stoked to see the glossary and these files on archive.org! Etymology and how terms cross languages is so fascinating, we had no idea that those earlier English terms got their influence from French and German.

-The Silvermoon Team

[anomalymonster]

We're very excited for this and appreciate the effort behind this project! There's been ton of terms we've run into in glossaries and tried to research more into, but found nothing. Recently we also tried to track down where and when "fronting" started to be used, but turned up nothing beyond and iffy citation from Pavilion which we tried and couldn't verify. Having the Many Voices newsletter be OCRed would be incredible in general too and make it a lot more accessible!

[frameacloud]

^_^