My name (Michael David Hanscom) in Babylonian cuneiform:
    
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In the same MetaFilater post I got the cuneiform from, there were a few other language-related links, including one to the English Grammar FAQ — which actually provides for some fairly interesting reading (at least if you’re at all concerned about using the English language correctly, something that my parents did their best to instill in me).
Additionally, a couple weeks ago (I meant to post about it then, just spaced it until today) andersje remarked on a couple newspaper stories where people had either lost their jobs or were being threatened with the loss of their job because they used the word ‘niggardly’.
nig – gard – ly adj.
- Grudging and petty in giving or spending.
- Meanly small; scanty or meager: left the waiter a niggardly tip.
At first I couldn’t believe what I was reading — bascially, these people were being penalized for being able to use the English language correctly. But when I started talking about it at work, none of the three people I mentioned this to had ever heard the word ‘niggardly’ before, and they all made the immediate assumption that it was related to the derrogatory slang ‘nigger’. It really caught me off guard — admittedly, it’s not a word I’ve used often (if at all), but I did know it, and didn’t really realize that it was so rarely used as to be nearly unknown.
Pros and cons to having been gifted with an unusually large vocabulary, I suppose. Not that I mind in the least — I just thought all this was pretty fascinating.