Talk:sweet summer child

RFV discussion: October 2018

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sweet summer child

Any takers (outside of Game of Thrones universe)? Needs converting to noun if OK. SemperBlotto (talk) 05:46, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

cited Kiwima (talk) 04:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 04:45, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Etymology

Can we confirm that G.R.R. Martin got it from the 1849 Babcock poem, and didn't coin it independently? All the citations in the sense given are post-Martin and evidently refer to his use. Equinox ◑ 21:07, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

There is no evidence that G. R. R. Martin was inspired by the 1849 poem "The West Wind" by James Staunton Babcock. Babcock doesn't even have a Wikipedia article. A Google search for his name in quotes only returns this Wiktionary entry and ebook copies of the Visions and Voices book in which the poem was published. Babcock very well may have been an author of some note in the 19th century, but he seems to have faded into total obscurity by the time GRRM was around to write A Song of Ice and Ice. Moreover, reading the poem in its entirety makes it clear Babcock used "sweet summer child" as a poetic allusion to wind. The other poetic usages on the citations page are not in the sense of "naif." There are no citations to support that sense ("naif") was used before Game of Thrones, much less that it was "popular" during the Victorian era as this drive-by IP addition claimed. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 01:53, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

FYI, I’ve opened a new thread in the etymology scriptorium about revisiting this. Cheers. Samppi111 (talk) Samppi111 (talk) 19:56, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

@Equinox: In his video essay Did Game Of Thrones INVENT "Sweet Summer Child?", specifically starting at the 27:48 minute mark,[1] Dime Store Adventures makes an argument that it was Frederika Bremer in 1843 who popularized "summer child" (without "sweet"),[2][3][4] as a metaphor for a beautiful child who brings joy to her family. He presents numerous sources which directly attribute it to Bremer. It is in this sense that some parents referred to a deceased child as their sweet "summer child" (marking the latter as a quote, often attributed directly to Bremer). This use is attested throughout the 2nd half of the 19th century. I find the argument convincing; and while the video may or may not be considered a reliable source, the primary sources presented in it definitely are, and we could take advantage of those (giving credit to Dime Store Adventures where appropriate).

Google Ngram shows that usage of the phrase spiked after 1840, with all uses of the metaphor that refer to an actual person (rather than, say, the wind) being attributable to Bremer.[5]

Whether or not GRRM was aware of Bremer's work is a different question, and is more speculative. As Dime Store Adventures demonstrates, Bremer's book was popular enough for people to directly refer to the metaphor as hers for many decades, and it is not impossible that the trained journalist GRRM knew this. Renerpho (talk) 02:45, 31 August 2024 (UTC)