What is the meaning of "GNU" and how should it be displayed on a cremation urn?
score:3
Discworld reference applicable to memorial
As @NigelJ found in the Urban Dictionary, GNU refers to a telegraphic code that Sir Terry Pratchett invented in his Discworld comic fantasy book series:
- G: send the message on
- N: do not log the message
- U: turn the message around at the end of the line and send it back again
so that the book character's son's name John Dearheart is memorialized forever as long as the "clacks towers" (a telegraphic device) is still in use. Chapter 4 prologue of Going Postal (a book in the series) says:
A man is not dead while his name is still spoken
(Source: GNU Terry Pratchett Home page)
Rendering
As for the rendering, the computer geek fans of Discworld seem to have established a convention right after Terry's death in 2015 to memorialize him: "GNU Terry Pratchett": GNU <first name> <last name> :
See a Jan 2020 reddit post title in r/discworld: I don't understand the "GNU Terry Pratchett" reference that elicited the highest voted comment quoting a March 2015 The Guardian article Terry Pratchett's name lives on in 'the clacks' with hidden web code:
Pratchett’s 33rd Discworld novel, Going Postal, tells of the creation of an internet-like system of communication towers called “the clacks”. When John Dearheart, the son of its inventor, is murdered, a piece of code is written called “GNU John Dearheart” to echo his name up and down the lines. “G” means that the message must be passed on, “N” means “not logged”, and “U” means the message should be turned around at the end of a line. (This was also a realworld tech joke: GNU is a free operating system, and its name stands, with recursive geek humour, for “GNU’s not Unix”.) The code causes Dearheart’s name to be repeated indefinitely throughout the system, because: “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.”
What better way to remember the beloved inventor of this fictional system, then, than “GNU Terry Pratchett”?
Users of Reddit (and users of Wordpress plugins) even embed "GNU Terry Pratchett" among the HTTP Response header (the "envelope" of a website's response to your browser) when accessing any page within the r/discworld subreddit in this post-telegraph world, aka. the Internet (source Wikipedia). To my surprise, it is still in effect today! I verified it using a tool like Fiddler / Postman / Curl (which you can also do using your favorite browser's built-in debugger):
The original meaning of 'GNU'
Terry Pratchett seems to borrow Richard Stallman's 1983 invention of the recursive acronym "GNU" = "GNU's Not Unix", the brand name of Free Software Foundation's software projects (see also Wikipedia).
A brief background for non-geeks: at the time, many critical software (such as an operating system, most notably Unix) needed a very expensive source code license when a programmer wanted to fix/extend the software at the source-code level because the official owner couldn't adapt fast enough to the rapidly changing computing hardware and computing needs. The user / programmer would need to submit a bug report and could have waited weeks/months before a patch is released. By modifying the source code themselves, they could fix not only a bug but also extend the functionality of the software and share it with others (an expression of Christian love, in fact, when proper copyright laws have been observed). "Source code" is the human readable version of a series of binary computer instructions ("executable") written in a computer language.
Conclusion
As @Lesley's post indicates, there is no spiritual reference to Christianity. I would consult your client to verify that Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld reference is indeed what the deceased and/or the client would have meant, and if so, it's best that the rendering follows Sir Terry Pratchett's fans convention.
Upvote:0
I have no idea if the letters GNU have anything to do with Christian faith but I did find this information:
Apart from the Gnu being a large South African antelope, the GNU acronym is the name of the Free Software Foundation's project to develop a free UNIX-like operating system. GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s not Unix”. Richard Matthew Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
Good News Unlimited is a Christian mission outreach. “GNU doesn’t represent a church; we simply represent the essential truth of the Gospel with no boundaries or limitations.” https://goodnewsunlimited.com/
GNU Atheist: A term used by atheists online to ridicule the idea that there is such a thing as a "New Atheist." Those Gnu Atheists are so militant in their hatred of religion! https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gnu%20Atheist
MIT Physicist Ian Hutchinson Calls Gnu Atheists “Militant” and Wants Greater “Respect” Directed Toward Religion and Faith https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/mit-physicist-ian-hutchinson-calls-gnu-atheists-militant-and-wants-greater-respect-directed-toward-religion-and-faith/
Before you start to engrave the urn with those letters, perhaps you should check to ensure that you have the correct letters and whether there should be a full stop between each of the three letters.
Upvote:2
Lesely and Grateful Disciple are probably correct in the no reference to Christianity reference:
Here's a pretty decent list of acronyms on EWTN.com in case you ever come upon a similar case again
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/list-of-abbreviations-and-acronyms-9534
and there's a wiki for latin abbreviations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_abbreviations
I didn't find it in there so... GORK?
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