João and Maria Ninguém
Today I’m going to pick up from where I left off in the last post with João Gilberto’s seminal album Chega de Saudade. One of the songs on the album is a light, lilting number titled Maria Ninguém (“ninguém” is Portuguese for nobody/no one). If you don’t know the song, here is a link (be warned, it can get stuck in your head for days…).
As you may recall, I was listening to this music back in London, meaning my usual Brazilian cultural encyclopedia (AKA Mrs Eat Rio) was not around. It was only when I got back to Brazil that I discovered that Maria Ninguém has a husband named João and that this couple are actually figures of speech!
This is the work of Alberto Serrano, AKA Tito Na Rua. We’ll come back to this at the end…
João and Maria Ninguém
When I returned I was humming the tune and asked my encyclopaedia if she was familiar with it. She told me that Maria Ninguém is a nobody. Same goes for João. Here is an example of how it could be used:
“Well I think that feijoada needed more salt, but who am I? I’m just a Maria Ninguém!” [If the melodramatic salt addict is male he says João Ninguém instead]
“Interesting”, I thought, “I wonder if there are any more of these characters I should know about”. Well there are! In fact there is a trio:
Fulano, Sicrano and Beltrano
These guys make me think of the Marx Brothers! They are used when you need a random name, perhaps equivalent to A. N. Other that we sometimes see on credit card adverts. They can be feminised by terminating their names with an A instead of the O. There is some suggestion that perhaps Fulano originates from the Arabic word Fulaan (وعلان) which is also used as a placeholder name, though it may that both words came from a common Greek root. A similar name is also found in Punjabi (Phalana Dhingra).
Three mysterious fellows: Fulano, Sicrano and Beltrano.
And now, in the interests of cultural exchange, I will mention some of the English equivalents:
Joe Bloggs
This is just some guy – a hypothetical person. I’m pretty sure Joe Bloggs doesn’t exist in the US where John Doe takes his place. John Doe can also be an unidentified body, but Joe Bloggs is alive.
Tom, Dick and Harry
Do these guys exist in the US? Tom, Dick and Harry always go together and, speaking as a Tom, I’m sorry to say that they are often spoken about in an unkind way. Example: “My dad is very protective and insists on meeting all my boyfriends before he will let them take me out. He won’t let just any Tom, Dick or Harry take me on a date”. [Note: this is totally unfair and I’m pretty sure that discriminating against someone because of their name is illegal. Nasty protective Dad.]
The Cat’s Mother
Bit of a weird one this – again, I’m pretty sure this one didn’t make it across the Atlantic. Let’s say you, your friend and your mother are sitting in the living room. You and your friend are teenagers and therefore ignoring your mum completely. Friend asks if you’re going to the party tonight. You reply “I can’t, my mum says I have to stay in and do my homework. Jeez, she’s so annoying!”. At this point your mother could rightfully demand “Who’s ‘she’? The cat’s mother?”. Basically it is a way of showing mild outrage at being referred to in the third person whilst you are within earshot.
The cat’s mother.
OK, I think it’s time I wrapped this up. The reason I included that comic strip image at the top of the post is that the semi-clothed orange fellow goes by the name of Zé Ninguém (presumably a variation on João). I spotted this piece in Copcabana recently and found my curiosity piqued. A little searching uncovered the artist, Tito Na Rua (real name Alberto Serrano), a native of Queens, New York who now lives in Rio. Alberto has created quite a few of these ‘street comics’, mostly starring the homeless Zé and his faithful viralata (mongrel) dog.
Zé wanders the streets of Rio (and other cities around the world) looking for his lost love Ana. There’s some pretty cool stuff if you do a bit of googling. Alberto has also done some other really nice pieces – I’ll leave you with a couple of favourites:
This is somewhere in Urca (the neighbourhood around Pão de Açúcar) – I would love to find it!
This is in Copacabana. I like it!
Humn, a person calling him/herself a nobody because he/she is unable to intervene in the seasoning of a feijoada is revealing of issues beyond self-esteem.
Cat pics? Wasn’t the Rod Stewart centerfold enough . . .
Hmm, it might not have been the best example… I was trying to conjure up the image of some bossy mother-in-law character who likes to tell everyone what to do. When visiting someone else’s house, her demands for extra salt are rebuffed.
…i guess that is quite a lot of back-story isn’t it?
The MIL could just add salt to her serving/s. This way each party gets the amount of salt they are comfortable with; or am I missing something?
Off topic: do you find the expression “tá salgado” to be utterly annoying? It is used when the speaker
wishes to convey that he/she finds something to be expensive. So when saying that a feijoada is salty (salgada) one can mean that it contains too much sodium chloride, or that the price charged for said feijoada is too costly – which is what many past girlfriend’s mothers have complained to me when dinning over. And for some reason they never seem to return.
I hadn’t heard of ta salgado to mean expensive before – I guess it comes from the days when salt was expensive… But I can see that it could cause confusion if the speaker was both sensitive to salt and (how shall I put this?) ‘careful with their money’ …
You’re right, “Maria Ninguém,” was one of the first songs from that album to get stuck in my head, and it pops into my mind unexpectedly and I start humming it sometimes.
The first lines of the song “Todo Carnaval Tem Seu Fim,” by Los Hermanos (Brazilian, in spite of the Spanish name) includes a reference to José Ninguém:
“Todo dia um Ninguém José acorda já deitado
Todo dia ainda de pé o Zé dorme acordado”
I had come across “fulano” in Spanish meaning “some guy,” but wasn’t aware it was also used in Portuguese, and the etymology is interesting.
Here in my part of the US midwest, we use John (and Jane) Doe as a generic term, sort of equivalent to “Mr. or Mrs. Everyman.” We also use “Joe Schmoe,” which has a more dismissive connotation (“I don’t know who the hell he is, just some Joe Schmoe.”) People also use John Doe to refer to a signature, as in “Put (or sign) your John Doe right on the dotted line.” A less folksy variant meaning the same thing is “Sign your John Hancock right here.”
We use “Tom, Dick and Harry” (meaning everyone) in a sentence like “She has dated every Tom, Dick, and Harry in town,” and “Tom, Dick, or Harry” (meaning anyone) in a sentence like “You wouldn’t want just any Tom, Dick, or Harry working on your new Audi.”
I’ve never heard “the cat’s mother” but I like it, lol. If someone feels that they’re being neglected, or talked about in a way that ignores them, they might ask, “What am I, chopped liver?”
By the way, “A Tábua de Esmeralda” which you wrote about in an earlier post is amazing, so thanks for the recommendation….you’ve got great taste in music!
I need to proofread more carefully….the second reference to “Tom etc.” should have been “Tom, Dick, OR Harry” as I put in my sample sentence.
Nice comment Phil! :)
You explained Tom, Dick and/or Harry far better than I did (I cleaned up that typo for you) and I liked all the other examples you gave. The chopped liver one has definitely permeated my consciousness – for some reason it makes me think of Woody Allen. Maybe a Jewish expression?