At that corner, the letters incised into the concrete, pushed into the concrete when it was wet, want to say Stanyan, the name of the street, and basically do, but also say ST ANYAN, which I partly like, I like the an's. On the other hand, it's only one letter away from Aryan, an ok idea about language that became a terrible idea about some people being better and other people being killed.

I cringe around Aryan for the usual human reasons, and because I like and am interested in the history of language, and people who liked and were interested in the history of language started and some encouraged the bad turn of the idea of Aryanness. Also, as defined by Hitler, I look Aryan, a heck of a lot more Aryan than he looked.

If something had used to be called St. Aryan, now it would be called St. Indo-European. It's the name of the inferred pre-Sanskrit language that many other languages evolved from. But, like, if it existed, it was spoken, like Sanskrit, in the Indian subcontinent, and what with the weather and all, people there do not look like what Hitler said Aryans looked like. Dark skin, dark eyes, while my ancestors were not inventing the core European language and were paling out in Northern Europe where oft there is little sun.

The idea of Aryan, a pre-Sanskrit core language, got mixed in with the idea of some group of people is much better some group of people is much worse, and get inaccurate and nuts. The speakers of the theoretical language kept being placed further and further west of where they would have to be, if they existed at all--instead of being in the Indian subcontinent, they were inferred to be in Northern Europe, pale because of local climate, and better because of why? Partly because of speaking a theoretical language they never spoke.