Everybody knows that when Julius Caesar realised that even his protege, friend and ally Brutus was part of the group of assassins who were ganging up on him in order to stab him to death, he exclaimed, in Latin, “Et tu Brute?!”, “and you too Brutus?!” We “know” this because those are the words that William Shakespeare has him say in his 1599 play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
In fact, though, it is highly unlikely that Caesar actually used this Latin phrase, not least because we know that in 44BC, when the murder took place, aristocratic Romans such as Caesar and Brutus did not speak Latin to one another, but Greek, rather as 19th-century Russian aristocrats most often used to speak French to one another rather than Russian. Latin was the spoken language of the Roman lower classes.
A different report has it that what Caesar really said, in the Greek of the time, was something like “Kaì sý, téknon?” “You too, son?!” But we have no real reason to suppose that he actually said anything at all.
Brutus’s full name was Marcus Junius Brutus, but Shakespeare has Caesar use the form Brute here, pronounced as two syllables, Bru-te. This at least is authentic, in the sense that it is what Caesar would have said if he had been speaking Latin. Brute is the form of the name Brutus which it took in the vocative case, the grammatical case which is employed when a name or title is being used to address or call to somebody.
English does not have special vocative-case forms, but many other languages do. In Modern Greek, masculine nouns have special forms for addressing or calling out to someone. If you want to attract the attention of Andreas, you do not call out Andreas! but Andrea! If you meet the doctor, you can greet him by saying “Kali mera Yatré!” “Good day, doctor!” where yatré is the vocative form of yatrós “doctor”. There is even a well-known Greek song where the chorus goes “Kali mera, ilie, kali mera!” “good morning, sun, good morning,!” where ilie is the vocative form of ilios “sun”.
The Christian liturgical Greek phrase “Kyrie Eleison” “Lord have mercy” includes the vocative case form of kyrios “Lord”, kyrie. In modern Greek kyrios means “gentleman”; and Kyrie! meaning “sir” or “Mr” is the usual term of polite address equivalent to English sir or French monsieur.
In Polish, feminine names can occur in the vocative, although these are apparently not used as frequently in the contemporary language as they were formerly. The given name Katarzyna “Catherine” has the hypocoristic or pet-name variant Kasia, which has the vocative-case form Kasiu!, as in “Dzień dobry Kasiu!” “Good morning Kasia!”
The Celtic languages also have vocative case forms. In Welsh, teachers may address their class as blant!, the vocative form of plant “children”. In Scottish Gaelic, personal names are often heard in the vocative case, involving the vocative particle a. Seumas “James” has the vocative form a Sheumais, pronounced “a Hamish”.
The Gaelic female name Màiri “Mary” has the vocative form a Mhàiri which is pronounced “a Vari”. The Scottish politician and former MP Mhairi Black, who pronounces her given name Mari, spells it incorrectly in terms of the norms of traditional Gaelic orthography, using the vocative-case spelling in non-vocative contexts.
IATROGENIC
An iatrogenic disease or medical condition is one which is unintentionally caused in some way by a doctor, such as one induced by a drug prescribed by a doctor or as a result of some kind of surgical or other medical procedure carried out by a doctor.
