Re: Anne Lister's coded diaries

 Ar an seachtú lá de mí Iúil, scríobh Athel Cornish-Bowden:

 > [...] In the case of Hebrew I was inclined to believe [PTD]. Possibly
 > unwise, as our world expert on writing had apparently forgotten that
 > Armenian doesn't use the Roman alphabet. He attacked me once for writing a
 > name with -ian at the end, whereas he wanted -yan (or vice versa, I don't
 > remember), apparently unaware that -ian and -yan are written in exactly the
 > same way in Armenian. Consider Միկոյան (Mikoyan) and Խաչատրյան
 > (Khatchaturian).

Slightly relatedly, the Iranian president-president-elect Pezeshkian, پزشکیان،
has a transparently Armenian surname, with “pezeshk” the native Persian word
for physician. Wikipedia reports he is Azeri and I imagine he is Shia, my
working guess is that one of his ancestors converted to Islam after the point
that surnames became obligatory.

The Persian Wikipedia article lists him as a heart surgeon first, lots of
respect for physicians in that country.

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)