King of the Etherworld?

King Of What?

Job Titles are funny things. When I started my job at Software Associates International, I was given the title of Consultant. At that time, I was the only technical person in the company, so who was I to complain about my status in relation to the rest of the company?

About six months ago, I launched a campaign within my company to have my title changed to King Of The Etherworld. Why? Because that is the kind of title you give to someone who is a legacy and development programmer, internal infrastructure developer, system administrator and technical support person. Never mind if they don't know what l:p: means. What the man with the admin password wants, the man with the admin password gets!

Management seemed to disagree. So in protest, I changed my mail signature from
Robert I. Konigsberg - Consultant, Technical Services
to
Robert I. Konigsberg - King Of The Etherworld

They laughed. Who the hell am I to call myself King Of The Etherworld? Well, I'd like to offer my justification.

Now that we're rolling over our business cards, I've been given a new title, Senior Software Engineer. It's a spiffy title, certainly not one I could have had when I started (who was I senior to?) Does it explain all the various types of work I do? Nope. So on with the campaign.

Robert I. Konigsberg - King of the Etherworld

Okay, Why?

Obviously you don't know much about German language roots.

What we call Konigsberg today was written as Koeneingsberg in Upper Early German. Let's break that down.

Koen, or King.
nein or no.
berg, or town.

That means, King of Nothing Town.

Let's look at ether.

e*ther n 5. Phys. An all-pervading, infinitely elastic, massless medium formerly propogated as the medium of propogation of electromagnetic waves.

Since ether is that which exists where there is no mass, I am clearly "Robert King of Ether-Town", or King of the Etherworld.

In the less popular Lower Late-Mid German, the same word is Koeneingsveld, or King of No World which makes much more sense.

"Robert" is Teutonic for "Fame Bright" (see http://www.engr.uvic.ca/~mcampbel/etym/r.html), which means that not only am I King of the Etherworld, I'm obviously very good at it.

Therefore, Rob Konigsberg means "Fabulous King of the Etherworld." I just drop "Fabulous" for the sake of modesty.

Robert I. Konigsberg - King of the Etherworld