Peter Tamony

Peter Tamony

Peter Tamony (October 9, 1902 – July 24, 1985) was an Irish American folk-etymologist who is noted for his research on American colloquial speech, Jazz music and sports.

Tamony was born at home in San Francisco, California to Irish immigrants. He attended a parochial school at St. Peter's Church, and learned Latin and rhetoric from the progressive Father Peter Yorke, a supporter of modernizing the church, organized labor, and Irish independence. In 1905, Tamony's family bought a flat at 2876 24th Street in the Mission District where he lived for eighty years until his death at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital.

Tamony first became interested in etymology when he noticed various speech patterns. At the age of 20, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and couldn't participate in sports; this led him to pay close attention to sports in newspapers, and from there to analyzing how people used words. His sources eventually included any kind of material he could collect such as posters and blues records.cite web
title = WHMC - Tamony, Peter (1902-1985), Collection, 1890-1985 (C3939)
work = Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Columbia
publisher = University of Missouri
date = 2002
url = http://www.umsystem.edu/whmc/invent/3939.html
accessdate = 2007-10-15]

He later became a real estate broker and notary, but for more than 50 years, Tamony collected examples of language, storing hundreds of cardboard cartons with file cards, newspaper clippings, conversation notes, and literature quotations. Folklorist Archie Green reminisced about the late Tamony as his mentor: "I look back at Peter Tamony as a keeper of a Celtic clan's lore, a bard in a magic three-storied castle - not in legendary Erin, but rather in San Francisco's Mission District."cite book
last = Green
first = Archie
authorlink = Archie Green
coauthors = Robert Cantwell
title = Torching the Fink Books and Other Essays on Vernacular Culture
pages = 183-198
publisher = UNC Press
year = 2001
isbn = 0807849200]

On April 8, 1986, Kathleen Tamony donated her brother's collection to the University of Missouri, where it is archived in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Columbia.

elected works

*Citation
last = Tamony
first = Peter
title = Hoodlums and Folk Etymology
journal = Western Folklore
volume = 28
issue = 1
pages = 44-48
date = Jan. 1969.
*Citation
last = Tamony
first = Peter
title = Tripping out from San Francisco
journal = American Speech
volume = 56
issue = 2
pages = 98-103
date = Summer, 1981.

References


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