Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

From David Aaronovitch in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1116839,00.html

<<  Call me David Column-writerwallah

On Friday Cyrus Todiwallah, the Parsee owner of Cafe Spice - one of London's
top Indian restaurants - was telling me where his name came from. Todi is a
drink created from the sap of palm trees (the phrase "hot toddy" comes from
this beverage), and a todiwallah was a vendor of todi, much as - in
England - a Fletcher was a maker of arrows. Other Parsee surnames, Cyrus
said, included Engineer and Contractor. But the best was given to the family
who first sold the gadgets for getting the tops off bottled drinks. To this
day, In India, there are people called Sodawaterbottleopenerwallah. Which
knocks Aaronovitch into a cocked hat. >>

I note OED has 'toddy' from Hindi 'tari' << (with cerebral r, approaching
English d) >> from 'tar' - palm tree.

We had a brief discussion recently about international cricketers and
Lancashire - I recollect Farokh Engineer was one of these.
--
John Dean
Oxford
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