BONZOZ BONZER BONANZA

Kia ora! (Mâori greeting: "Be alive", not "Get a life")

As you can see, the name of this blog is BONZOZ. It is not exactly an acronym, like ANZUS and ANZAC, but it does have New Zealand (NZ) and Australia (Oz!) embedded in it. Notice the beady eyes looking out at you in BoNZ0Z (sometimes bleary eyes as my posts are often sent out in the wee small hours). As a citizen of Australia and a resident of Aotearoa I am definitely not one-eyed. Ever since I was a literate little boy, B has been my letter, and from time to time I want to tell you about the origins of the letters of the alphabet (as on my cryptcracker blog).

Bonzo the happy dog and Bozo the jolly clown are lurking in the word BONZOZ, too. There is more than a hint of our Ocker word BONZER (a synonym of BEAUT), which means excellent, and seems to be connected with BONANZA, which speaks of prosperity and productivity (originally Spanish, meaning good weather). Our Sunday paper has a puzzle where you have to find about twenty words from five letters. This one is a challenge: boo, zoo .... no, on ... keep going!

I had thought BONZOZ was an original word, but when I did a web-search on it, six pages were offered to me! None of the examples were my blog (yet?). Somebody is using bonzoz.com, and the first one led me to Character Profile: Bonzoz.Spirestone - Thottbot: World of Warcraft.That does not sound like my style;"Blessed are the peacemakers" and "Peace at any price" are my mottoes. So I thought I might change it to BRONZOZ, with the Br- of my name, and the Bronz-element hinting that I live in the Bronze Age, with all my work on ancient scripts; and it evokes the image of a bronzed Australian (though that is not me, as the sun has merely blistered, freckled, and gnarled my tender white skin). And Bro is a New Zealand form of address, whereas Bo' is American (as in "Say, Bo", "Oui, c'est beau".)

But Bronzoz delivers five pages from a google search! So, I guess I will have to live with BO (for most of my life I have been told I am sweaty and smelly when I get off my bike).