Laudator Temporis Acti has an interesting post on Sir Walter Scott’s library. If you haven’t already read it, go and do so before continuing.
Done? OK, let’s continue.
I was naturally curious about the anagram, wondering how Scott’s library motto, clausus tutus ero, worked as “an anagram of his name in Latin”. It took a little while, but I eventually figured out how to equate the two. Quite a few adjustments are necessary, not least because Latin has no W:
- As “his name in Latin” implies, we must add -US to the end of both names. With four Us in the motto and none in the name, that’s an obvious first step. (Should we treat U and V as equivalent and make that -VS rather than -US? Yes: more on this below.)
- With only two Ts in the motto and three in the name, we have to omit the second T in Scott, making the Latin ‘Scotus’, as in Duns Scotus, not ‘Scottus’. Whether ‘Scotus’ would have been pronounced with a long or short O, I do not know.
- We cannot make Walter ‘Gualterius’, the usual Latin equivalent, because there’s no G in the motto, and we need two more Us. Instead, we must make the W – not allowed in Latin – into two Vs, as often seen in early texts of Shakespeare. This is where the V-U equivalence comes in: W may be called ‘double U’, but I’ve always seen it spelled double V when divided.
To sum up, the only way I can see to make ‘Walter Scott’ and ‘clausus tutus ero’ anagrammatically equivalent is to spell them VVALTERVS SCOTVS and CLAVSVS TVTVS ERO.
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