Poor Caesar

I have gleamed over the blog I was assigned. http://commonsensej.blogspot.com/ I have found that most of the posts are not things that I am really that interested in, however this post from Tuesday, January 27th caught my eye.

By Doug Fisher:

"AP stood its ground for years on the traditional spelling of Caesarean section, going back to the roots of the word (though as you can see from Wikipedia and alt-usage-english, those roots are mighty cloudy). No more.The wire service as of today has converted to the now more widely used cesarean section.Also note the new one is lowercase."

I wonder often how certain words get their meaning. Who decided that a c-section during a birth should be called a Caesarean? What in the world does it have to do with leaders of Rome, Augustus or Julius Caesar?

There is also Caesar dressing and Caesar salad which make a little more sense because maybe Caesar liked salad? Or was the name given to this salad because it is somewhat regal in appearance with its ingredients of croutons, shredded cheese, lettuce and a creamy dressing?

I really do not have an explanation for the salad but in the case of the C-section (for those of you that do not know what this entails, it is when an infant is cut out of the womb because of complications of the pregnancy will not allow the woman to birth the child naturally) I do have an idea. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death and I am sure that having a C-section is like being stabbed to death because a scapel cuts into the woman while she is still awake. This sounds so pleasant, doesn't it?

I wikipediaed (is that a verb) this and I know that I should not use the wiki as a reputable source, but it says that the origins of the name comes from the Latin verb caedere which means to cut a baby out of a woman before she died. Some say that Julius Caesar got his name this way because his ancestor was born by C-section.

Also with some research, I have learned that the Caesar salad was invented by a different Caesar, Caesar Cardini, in Italy in 1924. The story goes that on this day at Caesar's family restaurant, the place was packed and the cooks were running out of supplies. Caesar threw whatever he had together and supposedly gave it to the customers.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarean_section
http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/CaesarSalad/index.htm

Hope you all enjoyed this blog and I gave you something to mull over...until next time!