On the Shelf

“Doge”: an Ancient Concept

We people seem to take great glee in creating acronyms (abbreviations formed from the initial letters of other words, and pronounced as a word) whenever possible. It is especially delightful when said acronyms create words that have double or triple meanings. There is one such acronym being thrown around copiously everywhere in the United States (and probably worldwide) these days: “DOGE”. We are told that the letters stand for Department of Government Efficiency. But, I’m wondering how many people know that, before this title was created, the word “doge” already had a life of its own.

A doge (plural “dogi” or “doges”) was an elected lord and head of state in several Italian city-states, notably Venice and Genoa, during the medieval (5th-15th centuries AD) and Renaissance (15th-16th centuries AD) periods. Such states were referred to as “crowned republics”. The word “doge” comes from the Venetian language, reaching English via French. “Doge,” along with the related English word “duke” and the Italian words “duce,” “duca” (both masculine), and “duchessa” (feminine) all descend from the Latin “dux,” meaning either “spiritual leader” or “military commander”. The wife of a Doge is styled a Dogaressa, and the office of the Doge is termed Dogeship.”

Even back in those earlier days, much surrounding the doge was complicated. Take, for instance, how the doge of Venice was selected. After 1172, the election of the doge was entrusted to a committee of forty, who were chosen by four men selected from the Great Council of Venice, which was itself nominated annually by twelve persons. After a deadlocked tie at the election of 1229, the number of electors was increased from forty to forty-one. New regulations for the elections of the doge introduced in 1268 remained in force until the end of the republic in 1797. Their object was to minimize as far as possible the influence of individual great families, and this was effected by complex elective machinery. Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who elected the doge. None could be elected but by at least twenty-five votes out of forty-one, nine votes out of eleven or twelve, or seven votes out of nine electors. The doge of Genoa, on the other hand, was elected without restrictions and by popular suffrage.

In Venice, doges normally ruled for life, although a few were forcibly removed from office. While doges had great temporal power at first, after 1268, the doge was constantly under strict surveillance: he had to wait for other officials to be present before opening dispatches from foreign powers; he was not allowed to possess any property in a foreign land. After a doge’s death, a commission of inquisitori passed judgment upon his acts, and his estate was liable to be fined for any discovered malfeasance. The official income of the doge was never large, and from early times holders of the office remained engaged in trading ventures. Originally, Genoese doges held office for life in the so-called “perpetual dogeship”; but after the reform effected by Andrea Doria in 1528 the term of his office was reduced to two years. The ruling caste of Genoa tied them to executive committees, kept them on a small budget, and kept them apart from the communal revenues held at the Casa di San Giorgio.

“Doge” is also an internet meme that became popular in 2013. The meme consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog, accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English. The meme uses two-word phrases in which the first word is almost always one of five modifiers (“so”, “such”, “many”, “much”, “very”), and the departure from English is to use the modifier with a word that it cannot properly modify, e.g., “such freeze,” “so snow,” “much noble.”

Döge is also a village in the northwestern part of Hungary. It is located west of the Tisza River, covers an area of 16.54 sq km (6 sq mi), and has a population of 2,206 (2013 estimate). It’s website is http://www.doge.hu.

Finally, at least for this discussion, Elphias Doge is a character in the Harry Potter novels. He was a school friend of Albus Dumbledore, and a member of the original Order of the Phoenix. It is he who writes an obituary for Dumbledore in The Daily Prophet. In the Harry Potter movies, he was portrayed by Peter Cartwright (“Order of the Phoenix”) and David Ryall (“Deathly Hallows - Part 1”).

All of the information in this column was gleaned from Wikipedia.