You have no idea how much more captivating this form of commentary is rather than a generic speech to text voice mixed with 8 minutes worth of meme cutaways
@@ChrisSpinney You are 100% right on point!!! (That is unless you are being sarcastic? It can be hard to tell given the limited amount of information present, hence why I’m making sure of what you meant exactly by what you said…etc…). It’s quite funny how something as simple as someone talking in front of a camera ( the more interesting the scene/backdrop where filmed, usually the better off one is in regards to the contents quality, i.e. its gone up….etc…) about something interesting/ funny/ fun/ captivating, etc…, as well as orated well. And so long as it’s spoken in a way that hooks viewers, it doesn’t have to be a technically good oration so to speak, so long as how they say what they are going to say in such a way that viewers are hooked and or captivated by how it is said……… So its really surprising how we don’t see more ppl simply making videos on topics/ domains of inquiry upon which their expertise lie and thus make videos talking about interesting things/ things that ppl want to watch/listen to about especially when its content that you won’t get on TV bc of this reason or that reason… RUclips truly is the future of TV so to speak. TV is dead and YT has been taking its place as it should since so many ppl have been/are making shows that are original and a million times better content wise than what we would get on cable TV or any TV for that matter. Which is exactly why YT is the best and will continue its climb over cable TV etc… Cheers! Metatron
@@metatron5199literally almost every single one of the hundreds of RUclips channels I follow are just the person talking to the camera and talking about something so I'm wondering what kind of content your watching that this is a one off for you? 🤔
Laughed out loud at the reveal of the 1920s newspaper mentioning chewbacca. Your ability to find bizarre minutia from old newspapers is unrivaled. By the way, I love that you film videos like this in the woods. It really sets your channel apart.
How does he do these in the woods, btw? Does he have a teleprompter set up (there have been some shots where it seems like the sun would be shining right on it though)? Does he just have a really good memory? The way he talks is so casual it just comes across as him remembering the story in detail. I'm always in awe of this simple presentation because I legit don't know how he pulls it off.
I only recently learned that the phrase had anything to do with Game of Thrones (having never read the books or seen the show). Still, I’ve only ever encountered “sweet summer child” in contexts where it was really obvious what it meant, and therefore I never had to ask for clarification. If I hadn’t watched this video, I could very easily have assumed that I knew the definition because it was something I picked up as a child while learning to speak (which it demonstrably isn’t, as I was a teenager when Martin coined the modern usage).
It makes logical sense, in the world in which Westeros is located, the summer can last for many years, thus a young child born in the summer will not yet have known the harshness of the winter in that world.
I'd venture to guess this is one of the universe's little jokes. I'm going to assume Martin has no idea, but that he will cough, look around, and then claim credit for the irony anyway lol
GRRM uses so many things from real life in his books. He even literally has references to the New York Giants since he's an enormous fan of them. He has references about how they beat the Patriots in the Superbowl lol.
No. He made it up because summers are ridiculously long in the world he created. Do you seriously think he got the phrase from an obscure poem in 1865? He’s a man with a very creative mind, and a wordsmith.
16:10 I did a bit of digging, and it appears that yes, the use of “summer child" in Esperance's dedication is indeed referring to literal summer. The firstborn daughter being referred to is Margaret Louisa Lawrence, who was _born during the summer_ (July 13th 1842), and whose mother, Margaret Oliver Woods Lawrence, wrote Esperance under the pen-name “Meta Lander”.
I'm guessing a lot of the people arguing against it being from Game of Thrones are likely misremembering someone saying something like "My sweet child" with no reference to summer whatsoever. I can 100% believe someone calling a naïve person their sweet child before game of thrones and now with how widespread the "Sweet Summer Child" phrase has become their memories have become clouded.
If you looked at the Google Ngram Viewer for "my sweet child", you'd see that the phrase seems to appear more frequently before 1900s, with peak popularity in 1843. Until a minor ongoing resurgence in ~1996, it was at its lowest written usage since the start of the 20th century.
People are also just defensive when they feel othered/made part of the "outgroup". If you're not part of the fandom that spawned this phrase you've been using for years, it feels alienating and you're prone to immediately double down + reject the thing which has made you feel othered.
The phrase "Summer Child" is also used a lot, and dwarfes the usage of "Sweet summer child" in Google Ngram Viewer. The latter was probably inspired by the first two to begin with as well
I think part of the brilliance of the phrase is that it doesn't feel contemporary. It doesn't have the particular flavor of Gen Z slang, nor the melodrama one would expect from high fantasy. Even at its most popular, GoT was "only" being watched by one in six Americans. My guess is that fans started saying it, non-fans heard it, filed it away as a typical Southern phrase, and adopted it themselves.
The first time I heard it, was to me, in the early 00s, and it was in Arizona from Kris Hunt, who I can't discount got it from GoT though I can't confirm if he heard it from a fellow nerd or the book directly. But it began to appear as a snarky phrase among well read nerds towards lesser nerds around that time, and probably jumped cultures thereafter.
My favorite thing about this argument is that the phrase, used to mean someone who hadn’t experienced hardship yet, literally does not make any sense in our world. It only makes sense in a world with long summers and winters. It’s so obviously from Game of Thrones, but people will swear up and down that it’s from somewhere else
It seems like the modern usage of the word is unique to the Game of Thrones universe, where a "summer child" is a child born into a years-long summer season. Otherwise, why would someone use the phrase "summer child" to mean a child that is naive or has never experienced hardship?
I think because summer is associated with lots of life, flowering, food, growing etc. whereas the connotations of winter are bitter, hardship, lack of warmth and food. So if you were born in summer, you came into the world in an “easier” season
@@Joe-sg9llbut where is the evidence it was used in this way? The video managed to unearth examples the 'direct' literal meaning from a wide breadth of sources that arent even Google archived, but why is there no written example of the sarcastic sense? Especially the South who loves to display their idiosyncrasies. No songs, no recordings, no shows, no films, no books, no poems, no personal correspondences in archives? Literally zero example of the sardonic sense which people claim existed back then?
@@Joe-sg9ll you think there was no sarcastic or ironic writing before the internet?? seriously? I mean ”bless your heart” is also used sarcastically and has been for decades and that shows up everywhere in the chart (I’m sure the usages are both sarcastic and genuine)
i mean, its very easy to imagine it as a metaphor. a baby born into the summer is probably gonna have an easier first few months than a baby born into the winter, less parents worrying over if their newborn is gonna freeze to death, more plentiful food sources to get a better start. Like, I never heard it personally, but as a metaphor its like. super obvious. "someone who hasnt yet experienced many hardships because they were lucky to be born into good circumstances".
I am from Missouri and 68 years old and don't know if I have ever heard that phrase, if I did it didn't stick! And the first time I heard Chewbacca I thought of chewing tobacco.
this has happened before! the term "bucket list" was coined by the 2007 movie but people remember it being a term referring to "things to do before death" way before 2007.
I was taught the term in 2001. I was pregnant and my roommate who was from Texas taught me that term. I'm not claiming it's an old phrase, it that it was popular, but it did exist before 2007.
@@ninjalectualx no I'm not. I have one specific memory of one person teaching me a phrase that was not common. The movie put the phrase out there and made it common.
I think people are actually remembering the very southern phrases "my sweet child" and especially "oh, honey child", which is said in an almost identical cadence and tone. But "my sweet summer child" so perfectly fits into the southern-grandma-pitying-you cadence, that I'm sure that's the reason it really caught on.
This is what gets me about 'Mandela Effect' type happenings, there is an obvious link with a common phrase or spelling and people just refuse to acknowledge the very logical leap to the misunderstanding. It's like when people think Looney Tunes is actually Loony Toons, it's a very reasonable mistake to make. Same with thinking you've been hearing "sweet summer child" and not just "sweet child" or "sweet sweet child"
It should be noted that the exact phrase "sweet summer child" is only used once in the original Game of Thrones book, specifically by Old Nan in reference to Bran, and never again in any other book in the series. The phrase "summer child" appears two more times in the two following books. In Clash of Kings, Shireen is called "summer child" when she asks a question about the winter, because, like Bran, she was born in the long summer. Then Bran again is called a summer child by Jojen because he is used to easier times despite the fact that winter is coming. Both of these examples are use the phrase more as an explanation for why a child doesn't know something than as a general accusation of naivete. Jojen even says that Bran would be wise if the days were still getting longer. The word "Sweet" seems to be an incidental addition to a stock phrase even in Martin's original work, since it is Old Nan, Bran's nurse, who probably called him "sweetling" throughout his childhood. It should also be noted that Bran is, in all senses of the term you discussed, a "summer-child" when the phrase is first used in GOT. He's born in summer and has never seen winter, he's the favorite child of Catelyn (she begs Ned to let her keep him in Winterfell while the other kids go south), he's a lively, happy kid who loves running around and climbing the castle walls, and his story is all about moving from pure ignorance to terrible knowledge, from summer to winter. The intrinsic meaning of the phrase in GOT is much closer to the 19th century one than you might initially think; Old Nan is not just calling Bran a summer child because he is naive, she's saying he's naive about the winter because he's a summer child. I'd bet money that Martin was familiar with the older usage of the term "summer child" meaning a child born in summer, a child suited to summertime, a child favored by their mother etc. and he chose to use the term in GOT with a somewhat twisted meaning. However, Martin clearly didn't conceive of the phrase as a colloquial saying for just any naive person. It is only ever said about actual summer-born children, and doesn't mean naive in general, but specifically about winter. That meaning was really cemented by GOT the show, which used the phrase more often and inspire the meme "sweet summer child". So its present meaning is really just the meme's meaning, ignoring the full meaning from the book, show, and whatever older meaning originally inspire Martin.
Does GOT the show even use the phrase more than once? All I remember is that one time. But because it became a meme, it became so widespread despite only a single appearance.
I feel like maybe people are misremembering hearing people use "honeychile" or "honey child" being used in a condescending manner. It's also possible they are thinking of another term of endearment like "oh sweet baby" "oh honey" or something like that. I don't believe George R. R. Martin invented the concept of using a term of endearment to condescend to a child. I seem to recall my parents condescendingly saying "oh honey" to me as a kid. But as far as the specific phrase "sweet summer child" I think your case is pretty solid.
@@Thunderous333 Whoa. You have read a lot into what I said. I wasn't defending my own memory. I just find the whole phenomena of memory to be interesting. I was just suggesting that maybe people misremember this because they have memories of older people condescending to them using terms of endearment. There's no need to get mad. I was making an observation and add to the conversation, not trying to argue or prove anything.
I think people saying they heard the phrase before game of thrones is just a mandela effect based on not knowing when game of thrones was published, or when the episode aired. My first instinct when watching this video was to say "What?! There's no way Game of thrones invented that, I saw it all around Tumblr as a kid!" but then you revealed the episode with the phrase aired in 2011 and... yeah the timeline lines up now
Yeah, 2011 WAS over a decade ago, but for the term to have disseminated as much as it had in such a natural feeling way I think you have to put the blame on the books not the show.
@CM-db5cg he clearly shows the graph in the video. The books gave a miniscule bump and then it falls back to not being used at all but after 2011 usage skyrockets and stays there. The books were never and will never be as popular as the show. People just don't like to read and books don't spread through the culture like shows and movies do. Reminds me of Elves. Which while not invented by Tolkein he invented the modern concept of Elf but they were never described as having pointy ears. Yet everyone imagines them with pointy ears and will swear the books mention Elves having pointy ears but they don't. In the movies they do though and in other media inspired by Tolkein predating the film trilogy they do.
@@quickpawmaudThe LotR movies did not invent the depiction of pointy eared elves. The trope was well established by the victorian era and dates back much further; this is not a good comparison to "sweet summer child". Sweet summer child as used specifically that way was not seen prior to 1996, pointy ear elves were *absolutely* seen before the LotR movies and not every fantasy media that uses them was inspired by them in any way.
Memory is a tricky thing. Mandela effect seems to be hitting these folks pretty hard. I grew up in the South, and while I could definitely see myself imagining/misremembering it as having been a common phrase, if I'm entirely honest, I wouldn't be able to pick a specific instance of someone having said that. But I can do it a thousand times over with phrases like, "Bless your heart." or simply, "Oh, child..." or, "Aren't you precious?" But I think this video is pretty convincing evidence that should disabuse any honest person of the notion that this was just a common phrase that they heard regularly prior to ~30 years ago, or even 15 years ago. It's seen such frequent usage over the past several years on the internet (post GoT) that I think a lot of people have just adopted it as a common turn of phrase, and they just simply can't remember a time when it wasn't just a standard part of the lexicon.
I believe the show assigned too much condescension to the whole monologue. The delivery is purposely harsh and foreboding, it is not at all subtle. I read the passage in the book and Old Nan doesn't sound condescending to me. She sounds affectionate at first, calling Bran her sweet summer child and her little lord. Then she gets lost in the memories and the storytelling, which is when the tension and foreboding really builds and breaks. I think she says "my sweet summer child" exactly as Bremer defined it.
Ehh, she definitely is a bit sweeter with it in the book, but it still is implicating naivete by referencing the extra long seasons. Or she wouldn't have gone down the winter is when the real shit happens path with the convo
It's not just condescension that's talked about, it's nativity. Because the character says ''My sweet summer child, what do you know of winter''. Within the context of the books, 'summer child' is someone who has never faced the reality of the end of summer, ie, the harsh winters and/or ice zombies and all. In none of the examples did I see any hint of calling the child naive.
What drives me crazy is that the modern definition of the term to mean naive only works as a reference to ASOIAF lore. Because in Westeros seasons last for decades, so a child born in summer is naive to the suffering of the long winter. If your southern grandma said that in 1990, that means that she got isakaied from a fantasy world.
The phrase obviously works just fine in the real world, evidenced by the fact that real people, many of whom have not watched Game of Thrones, use and understand the phrase regularly, despite living in the real world and not the ASOIAF universe. Summer is associated with comfort, bliss and innocence. It was historically the time of the harvest. In many Western countries being outside in summer is relatively pleasant and being outside in winter is less so. So a sweet summer child is a child who is innocent, comfortable and blissful. As if their entire life is like summer. It is a very simple and intuitive metaphor which is what allowed it to spread so quickly.
People understand the intent behind the idiom, but that doesn't mean they understand it literally. Most idioms don't make any kind of sense, we just accept them anyway
@@ninjalectualx This is true of old idioms which have fully engrained themselves into the cultural lexicon, but not of new idioms which require being easy to intuit with contemporaneous cultural knowledge in order to spread in the first place. The idiom “run of the mill” might still be used by us even if we cannot intuit its meaning from its words, but the people who originally created and spread the idiom would have had the cultural knowledge to intuit its meaning. If “run of the mill” never existed as an idiom and somebody tried to popularise it today, they would obviously fail because very few would have the cultural knowledge to inuit its meaning. So its fairly safe to say, combined with summer’s common cultural associations which I laid out, that the reason sweet summer child is spreading is that its meaning is fairly easy to intuit. There’s also the fact that terms of endearment for children are often turned into insults implying naivete and ignorance. “Oh sweetheart/baby/darling/honey” can all be used in effectively the same way as “my sweet summer child.”
personally, living in texas with southern grandmas, i never heard this phrase. like, it totally makes SENSE as a phrase that COULD HAVE happened (child born into the summer who has an easier start at life and hasnt experienced many hardships, theyve been sheilded from a lotta stuff), its a good metaphor, but like. i never heard it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Great video! Now for a bit of a long winded reply. First off, One thing that I think is critical to remember is that the TV show came out in 2011 while the book came out in 1996. During that 15 years a lot happened. The internet became ubiquitous and meme culture came to the fore. I wonder how much of people saying that they used it "before" game of thrones are simply thinking about the fact that it was used before the show. A lot less people had read the books prior to the show coming out. I also think his use of the phrase is so clearly rooted in his storytelling that the meaning of it is distinct. In the first book, he clearly sets an expectation on the reader that this will not follow standard fantasy tropes. The reader is in essence, the "sweet summer child" in addition to the character Bran. The author is warning the reader that they are a sweet summer child and are not ready for what is about to come their way. Sorry for the long response, but I love those books and I love this video. Keep up the good work
I do love that uncovering the beginnings of sweet summer child used to be endearing and sometimes used in mourning, adds a sense of irony to Bran being his mother's sweet summer child. That old woman in the meme isn't his mom, just the households wet-nurse and nanny named Old Nan. For those who do not care to be spoiled on part of a plot began in the late 90s and blossomed in popularity in the 2010s, Catelyn dies believing that Bran (and the youngest but often forgotten son, Rickon) to have died with no other, elder family around in the family castle. Bran specifically had been in a coma for a while when Catelyn left to do family business in book one of the series and the beginnings of winter have only started to occur in book five, to the best of Catelyn's knowledge her youngest boys lived and died sweet summer children.
A minor consideration, it might be worthwhile to see if the phrase "Summer Child" or a variation of such was ever popular in Medieval Latin. Given his background and the inspirations for his writing, it might be that he is referencing a much older phrase. Babies who are born in Winter and early Spring tend to be healthier due to a higher caloric intake historically, so it might be that something similar to summer child was used to denote excess and being sheltered, someone who is able to live as though it is summer all the time. This doesn't solve the issue of people remembering having heard "Sweet Summer Child", but I have a mundane possible explanation, it is common to refer to a baby born in a given season as a baby in regards to that season, like a Spring Baby, a Summer Baby, a Fall Baby, or a Winter Baby. It isn't a stretch to think people may have used Summer Baby and Summer Child interchangeably, and thus the phrase became extremely familiar but underrepresented in literary works.
I'm sure that this will be picked up by the algorithm. I hope they get routed to the rest of your videos! Your regular stuff is the best videos on RUclips
Being someone who is positive to a fault doesn’t seem like that far of a stretch to get from Frederika’s definition to the modern definition without GOT but I was really surprised you couldn’t find evidence of it. Thanks for your hard work!
It’s funny you bring up Chewbacca because it’s speculated that the appearance of Chewbacca was inspired by the art from George RR Martin’s Sci fi story “And Seven Times Never Kill Man”. The characters even both carry crossbow like weapons. There’s a lot of other unexpected little things he’s contributed to sci-fi and fantasy over the years indirectly.
The Star Wars' wookiees are inspired by the Jaenshi, a race of humanoids that appear in the George R.R. Martin's 1975 novelette "And Seven Times Never Kill Man!".
This was genuinely so much fun and so interesting to watch! Also love how you're sitting outside, gives a different (and better, in my opinion) feeling to the whole video :) I'm looking forward to watching your others as well! The discovery of Fredrica Bremer potentially creating the phrase "summer child" is so cool!! Since no one explicitly states it necessarily, but the pieces all line up perfectly.... It's also pretty funny that her usage of summer child is the opposite of the game of thrones & modern usage of sweet summer child. Personally I find the phrase hard to connect to anything in our world before it's used in game of thrones because... The game of thrones explanation for it just makes so much sense. It's part of the worldbuilding, and I can't think of another instance in our world that would warrant the phrase being used in such a specific context as it is in the books/show. Maybe people have said "sweet child" in a similar way - referring to naivety - in the past, and people have since attached the common pop culture sweet summer child phrase to it and gotten confused? I feel like I've heard people say "my sweet, sweet child" in the same way, maybe the alliteration throws people off?
It also makes a ton of sense for a person of swedish origin to invent the term summer child. The winters are harsh in sweden and the summers have very long days and very pleasant climate. It would be interesting to know wether there is an older swedish usage of the term "summer child". One consistent meaning is the light heartedness of the summer child. The twist in meaning towards naivity as you excellently layed out definetely seems to come from Game of Thrones.
I have missed you so much!!! Thank you for sharing your insights, humility and humor. I think this particular case is a perfect example of the Mandela Effect, where the phrase feels so perfect or obvious in its use that it must have always been in use this way.
I mean I was born in 1970 and my Mom called me "sweet summer child" when I was good and "serpent's tooth" when bad (but also I was born in July, and she was very much into Victorian lit)
I suspect many people swearing they heard this expression growing up are actually thinking of “bless your heart”. It essentially means the same thing - it’s a superficially endearing but deeply condescending accusation of naïvety, used by the same demographic in the same scenario
"Bless your heart" also usually does not mean what the Internet thinks it means. Rarely has it been used with the same kind of condescension as "sweet Summer's child" is used in ASOIAF, but because Internet we have a lot of Generation Xers who remember hearing these expressions and are now seriously wondering if Gran was calling them "simple."
So what I’m hearing is that it was invented by an author in the 1840s to refer to a joyful and carefree child. Then, after it had been in the zeitgeist for a century and a half, George R.R. Martin used the phrase (or something close to it) in an ironic way to refer to a naively joyful and carefree child, which caught on in an even bigger way than the original meaning. It’d be neat to get Martin’s take on where he got the phrase from, to see if he thought it was original or just a play on a common phrase. And yeah, he definitely invented the exact phrasing of “sweet summer child” instead of “summer child”.
I agree. I also think it was an ironic coment meaning the original meaning twisting it into opsite meaning by using irony. The sweet is just comon way to underline the irony. So maybe people used it from time to time in an ironic maner but the GoT popularized it.
I think it may be possible that george created the phrase independently just from his world building, the concept of a child (older than one) having only experienced summer is unique to his world
I think any connection berween Martin's use and the 1840's use is pretty tenuous. In his book the phrase isn't used as a canned phrase or a metaphor, it is a very literal description, a child who literally has only existed in summer. The concept comes so directly and easily from the fantasy worldbuilding concept of years long seasons that it doesn't seem necessary for him to have heard the phrase before.
Zeitgeist implies that it was a common phrase in the public consciousness. A dozen (if that) obscure literary mentions of a similar phrase in the 1800s is an extremely tenuous way to make that case. Just pull up any phrase like "bless your heart" (which he shows in the video) and "sweet summer child" on the same google ngram graph (you can do this by typing in both phrases with a comma between them) and its completely definitive that "sweet summer child" just did not exist, perhaps outside of coincidence, between those few stories/poems in the 1800s and the release of Game of Thrones
@@Beefbarsyeah for all the people who swear it was common use, there's zero examples of the sardonic version of the term. Compared to equivalent phrases that show up everywhere across different mediums
I'm a southerner. I know phrases like "bless your heart" and I know that we invent phrases like "well that's just a rotten peach" at the drop of a hat. (Fellow southerners: I just made up "well that's just a rotten peach" but I bet you are all immediately aching to use it; we all already know what it means. Don't explain it to the yankees.) I'm pretty sure I adopted "sweet summer child" from George RR Martin, and the fact that we know who originated that term is actually really fascinating because most of the time those kinds of phrases are anonymous, but we pick them up as a matter of habit.
@@ohno5559 oh they're part of every variety of English - but that fact doesn't conflict with the fact that they get adopted more quickly and invented more fluidly in some regional varieties than others. London makes rhyming wordplay, Australia doesn't make a lot of backwards pronunciations anymore but they sure did a hundred years ago, and the southeastern US isn't alone in making up these kinds of idioms but we do it a lot more than people from other regions.
Considering how big poetry used to be, I’d guess you can find almost any combinations of words in some old timey poem. That was kind of the whole thing with the poetry fashion, arranging words in beautiful or interesting ways
Imagine if you were that journalist in the Arizona Daily Star who put "chewbacca" in that article for a laugh then you go to watch that new film everyone's been hollering about later in life...
I think you hit the nail on the head with the punctuation marks. I was wondering why quotations around “summer child” but not “sweet.” That would certainly explain it. It also makes me think about that nursery rhyme from the 1830s called Monday’s Child. The line at the end goes: “the child born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.” The Sabbath Day being Sunday. Anything relating to children and the sun in the 1800s seems to result in a radiant little darling.
Wow I love your original historical research. It's so depressing to see people uncritically reposting whatever the first result of Google incorrectly claims... I would be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of that in the past. Man, I need to do better. Please keep this going man, proper research is so important.
Cool video, as always! Quick comment on the Chewbacca thing: the way it was used in the 1924 article was referring to chewing tobacco. So it would be pronounced as chew-back-ah. Like chew, and tobacco combined, but tobacco pronounced with an a on the end. Which was not uncommon. Still not uncommon in some places. Anyway, great video! I'm excited for the next one!
The best conclusion from this wonderful review is that George R.R. Martin did NOT invent the phrase, but DID give the phrase a new nuance to suit his fictional world, which has now become the primary usage. As Dime Store points out, Bremer's usage of "summer child" was adapted to "sweet summer child" by a number of other writers long before 1996, so it's likely that Martin was also adapting Bremer's usage, but with a more profound implication in the context of a world with years' long summers. The character it's applied to does seem to be a "summer child" in Bremer's sense, but Martin added in the implication of naivete as well by using the phrase in the context of a conversation about his world's extended seasons. So...do people actually remember hearing others use this phrase before 1996? I suspect a lot of this is some form of Mandela effect, perhaps in this case real memories of similar phrases with the details altered in their minds after the fact. But given that several writers did use the exact phrase "sweet summer child" in Bremer's complementary sense over the course of about a hundred years, it's entirely possible that some people do remember hearing the phrase before 1996, albeit probably not with the 21st century implication of naivete attached.
this reminds me of how looney toons redefined "nimrod" from a biblical(?) hunter to a synonym for moron. grrm probably was calling back to the positive connotation of the phrase and using it ironically, but because its an archaic term it was then repopularized in a new way
As others have pointed out, they wouldn't describe "sweet summer child" being used in an ironic sense to be the "invention" of the phrase, similar to how "nimrod" went from a great biblical hunter to "dumb person" because of looney tunes or how you seem to only hear the phrase "spring chicken" to say that someone *isn't* one (meaning they are young) and instead imply that their age is getting to them.
This is like the most soothing channel on RUclips. You seem like a very chill guy. Also, it doesn't really apply to this video, but I have to say, the way you share the stories of ordinary people who have been forgotten or "done dirty" by history is really admirable. You're doing God's work and it's great to watch.
Or people just tell themselves they remember hearing it because they don't like to admit how easily they are influenced by pop culture, and like to feel like the phrase they use to sound super condescending to people, isn't some new trendy stupid thing, but rather some old school classic thing. Doesn't need to be the mandela effect when it could just be cognitive dissonance. Also, I met Mandela once. Not that it matters, just interesting.
@@davidgreenwood6029I'm always surprised about the Mandela example being the one used to name the effect. How the hell do people think Mandela died in prison? I mean if they're dumb kids in America in the 80s I guess so. But that's no reason to make it everyone else's problem😂😂 everyone else knows he survived and lived until his victory over legal apartheid
@@FlameQwertthere was another famous anti apartheid leader who famously died around the 80s, cant remember his name, but him bring confused with Mandela likely started it.
From what you conveyed, it seems like Martin may have used the phrase 'sweet summer child' in a sarcastic sense or tone. Also, things like this is why etymology can be so fascinating!
I have recently befriended a Russian woman and have been helping her with her (already super great) English. This phrase came up early in our conversations and I have been wondering about its origin ever since. Thank you so much for solving my question for me!
Or people just tell themselves they remember hearing it because they don't like to admit how easily they are influenced by pop culture, and like to feel like the phrase they use to sound super condescending to people, isn't some new trendy stupid thing, but rather some old school classic thing.
Thank you! Was sure this doll heard it before ASOIAF was well-known, let alone Game of Thrones the TV series coming out, but had a hard time finding conclusive evidence one way or another. (And it can’t rule out, if it happened, the person was already familiar with ASOIAF) This is the best evidence it’s found.
I think you’re underestimating the power of the Mandela effect. In the context we’re discussing, the phrase “Oh, my sweet summer child,” was indeed coined by George RR Martin in 1996, and went viral and into the vernacular from there. Your search for other usage in the same context prior to 1996 will continue to be in vain. There can never be “too many people” when it comes to the Mandela effect. People just remember shit wrong. And for many, if not most people, the simple pointing out of the actual truth just makes them double down on the lie because they can’t handle ever being wrong about something, and they weren’t trained for critical thinking. Peeps be dumb. Straight up.
I think it's so cool that the world mechanics of a fantasy series has embedded and melded itself into our own lingo. I know this happens all the time where literature creates new language for us to use but it's even cooler when it comes from a straight up alternate dragon world haha
I wonder how many people get it mixed up with the old GnR song 'Sweet Child O' Mine' and that's why they're thinking they've heard the term 'sweet summer child' before GoT. Every time you mentioned it in this video, that song popped up in my head.
I think this is a case of a Mandela effect type thing, where people are remembering similar phrases and then getting it confused with sweet Summer child. Stuff like bless your heart you sweet child or something like that.
How weird, but very interesting, is the fact the one person would spark a debate on said phrase "Sweet Summer Child." I also kept hearing "Sweet Child of Mine" hahaha😊 I also have never heard that phrase before. It's an interesting phrase, to be honest!
Very interesting video. I was totally expecting to hear that it was actually in use well before the books, so I'm surprised and glad to hear somebody finally put in some effort into finding out what's up with this phrase. As for any contrary evidence, one's best bet would looking close to the release of the book. From what you establishes, it seems clear that it wasn't some old timey expression that George R R Martin just put in. It was either his invention and it's a coincidence (which is possible considering the context of the fantasy world), or it began to be used right around the time he wrote the book and it was simply the first usage of the expression that got famous. Or maybe he had the Frederika Bremer sense in mind and Old Nan just used it because she felt that Bran was the perfect child and used it as a term of endearment but in the context of summer/winter in the book's world the meaning twisted a little. Either way, it's interesting and you did some great work here. If someone does find a smoking gun like you said, it'll be near the book's publication.
Since I haven't watched GoT I've never heard the phrase in that original context, so I've always thought it meant the same as just "summer child", and that the naive meaning of it was just people using it sarcastically. Also, as someone from Sweden, if the term has it's roots in swedish it certainly hasn't survived to today.
@RoyalKnightVIII I couldn't find the exact phrase from "The Home" highlighted in the video but it did contain the word "sommarbarn", literally "summer child", in three other places. Which in Sweden would refer to a child at summer camp which were a pretty big thing in Sweden during the 1900s. Though I don't think it had that meaning when Fredrika first used it. Nowadays the word is pretty much never used.
Oh, my sweet sweet meme child, we said that in the 1990s. Which makes sense now if you're saying the books came out in 1996. I recall asking my mother why that term was used as a child maybe I was old enough that these books came out by then, I would have been 15/16. She told me it was because a summer child was a sweet lovable child who was that way because they were well off and had things well in life, life was always summer to them, and so it was a pejorative to call someone that if used condescendingly as they were clearly not familiar with how hard life could be, but was a nice thing to say if you just mean the child was sweet and life treated them well. Sorry.pwrhaps this is a sign of the begining of the change
the one time southern grandma's weren't shading their descendants is the one everyone assumes they were, all because of the tits and dragon show. people are amazing.
I would say that some of those early uses refer to, or evoke, innocence. Naivety and innocence often go hand in hand. I think because the phrase always worked well as a poetic version of innocence it could easily start to get used with condescension. That's why that usage caught on so well outside of the fandom. It's a slight twisting, not a wholesale reimagining. It just works because the phrase evokes innocence even without knowledge of the lore.
Maybe people who tink they've heard it before was called "summer child" (the old meaning) by an older relative when they were a kid, but just dont remember the context or understood the meaning since they were a child?
You have no idea how much more captivating this form of commentary is rather than a generic speech to text voice mixed with 8 minutes worth of meme cutaways
Just a guy talking to camera with visual aids to help explain. What else could you need or want! Wish more would do this style.
@@ChrisSpinney You are 100% right on point!!! (That is unless you are being sarcastic? It can be hard to tell given the limited amount of information present, hence why I’m making sure of what you meant exactly by what you said…etc…). It’s quite funny how something as simple as someone talking in front of a camera ( the more interesting the scene/backdrop where filmed, usually the better off one is in regards to the contents quality, i.e. its gone up….etc…) about something interesting/ funny/ fun/ captivating, etc…, as well as orated well. And so long as it’s spoken in a way that hooks viewers, it doesn’t have to be a technically good oration so to speak, so long as how they say what they are going to say in such a way that viewers are hooked and or captivated by how it is said……… So its really surprising how we don’t see more ppl simply making videos on topics/ domains of inquiry upon which their expertise lie and thus make videos talking about interesting things/ things that ppl want to watch/listen to about especially when its content that you won’t get on TV bc of this reason or that reason… RUclips truly is the future of TV so to speak. TV is dead and YT has been taking its place as it should since so many ppl have been/are making shows that are original and a million times better content wise than what we would get on cable TV or any TV for that matter. Which is exactly why YT is the best and will continue its climb over cable TV etc…
Cheers!
Metatron
@@metatron5199literally almost every single one of the hundreds of RUclips channels I follow are just the person talking to the camera and talking about something so I'm wondering what kind of content your watching that this is a one off for you? 🤔
What *isn't* more captivating than generic text voice mixed with 8 minutes worth of meme cutaways?
That sweet Southern New England drawl doesn't hurt either.
Laughed out loud at the reveal of the 1920s newspaper mentioning chewbacca. Your ability to find bizarre minutia from old newspapers is unrivaled.
By the way, I love that you film videos like this in the woods. It really sets your channel apart.
I cannot believe our man really used Cochran's defense in a historical debate.
How does he do these in the woods, btw? Does he have a teleprompter set up (there have been some shots where it seems like the sun would be shining right on it though)? Does he just have a really good memory? The way he talks is so casual it just comes across as him remembering the story in detail. I'm always in awe of this simple presentation because I legit don't know how he pulls it off.
Worth noting that, like with the 'mandela effect', human memory is fickle, but it truly FEELS like it isn't fickle at all...
I only recently learned that the phrase had anything to do with Game of Thrones (having never read the books or seen the show). Still, I’ve only ever encountered “sweet summer child” in contexts where it was really obvious what it meant, and therefore I never had to ask for clarification. If I hadn’t watched this video, I could very easily have assumed that I knew the definition because it was something I picked up as a child while learning to speak (which it demonstrably isn’t, as I was a teenager when Martin coined the modern usage).
Hard hitting journalism that can only be found at the ol' Dime Store
If George R. R. Martin knew of Bremer's usage as a term of endearment, he brilliantly transformed its meaning.
*its
It makes logical sense, in the world in which Westeros is located, the summer can last for many years, thus a young child born in the summer will not yet have known the harshness of the winter in that world.
I'd venture to guess this is one of the universe's little jokes. I'm going to assume Martin has no idea, but that he will cough, look around, and then claim credit for the irony anyway lol
GRRM uses so many things from real life in his books. He even literally has references to the New York Giants since he's an enormous fan of them. He has references about how they beat the Patriots in the Superbowl lol.
No. He made it up because summers are ridiculously long in the world he created. Do you seriously think he got the phrase from an obscure poem in 1865? He’s a man with a very creative mind, and a wordsmith.
16:10 I did a bit of digging, and it appears that yes, the use of “summer child" in Esperance's dedication is indeed referring to literal summer. The firstborn daughter being referred to is Margaret Louisa Lawrence, who was _born during the summer_ (July 13th 1842), and whose mother, Margaret Oliver Woods Lawrence, wrote Esperance under the pen-name “Meta Lander”.
I can't believe you used the Chewbacca Defense.
I was aghast
my great-grandpa was mumbling about chewbacca's all the time but no one knew what he was talking about, he seemed unsettled
It didn't make any sense, but I found it compelling.
If the bacca don’t fit then you must acquit!
@@BodywiseMustard chewbacca's balls
I'm guessing a lot of the people arguing against it being from Game of Thrones are likely misremembering someone saying something like "My sweet child" with no reference to summer whatsoever. I can 100% believe someone calling a naïve person their sweet child before game of thrones and now with how widespread the "Sweet Summer Child" phrase has become their memories have become clouded.
If you looked at the Google Ngram Viewer for "my sweet child", you'd see that the phrase seems to appear more frequently before 1900s, with peak popularity in 1843. Until a minor ongoing resurgence in ~1996, it was at its lowest written usage since the start of the 20th century.
People are also just defensive when they feel othered/made part of the "outgroup". If you're not part of the fandom that spawned this phrase you've been using for years, it feels alienating and you're prone to immediately double down + reject the thing which has made you feel othered.
The phrase "Summer Child" is also used a lot, and dwarfes the usage of "Sweet summer child" in Google Ngram Viewer. The latter was probably inspired by the first two to begin with as well
I think part of the brilliance of the phrase is that it doesn't feel contemporary. It doesn't have the particular flavor of Gen Z slang, nor the melodrama one would expect from high fantasy.
Even at its most popular, GoT was "only" being watched by one in six Americans. My guess is that fans started saying it, non-fans heard it, filed it away as a typical Southern phrase, and adopted it themselves.
The first time I heard it, was to me, in the early 00s, and it was in Arizona from Kris Hunt, who I can't discount got it from GoT though I can't confirm if he heard it from a fellow nerd or the book directly. But it began to appear as a snarky phrase among well read nerds towards lesser nerds around that time, and probably jumped cultures thereafter.
@@BrandanLee Yep!
My favorite thing about this argument is that the phrase, used to mean someone who hadn’t experienced hardship yet, literally does not make any sense in our world. It only makes sense in a world with long summers and winters. It’s so obviously from Game of Thrones, but people will swear up and down that it’s from somewhere else
that's the kicker for me.
not to mention that george rr matin never uses phrases or sayings from the real world and invents ones for the books.
It seems like the modern usage of the word is unique to the Game of Thrones universe, where a "summer child" is a child born into a years-long summer season. Otherwise, why would someone use the phrase "summer child" to mean a child that is naive or has never experienced hardship?
I think because summer is associated with lots of life, flowering, food, growing etc. whereas the connotations of winter are bitter, hardship, lack of warmth and food. So if you were born in summer, you came into the world in an “easier” season
Because it's a metaphor for innocence and inexperience.
@@Joe-sg9llbut where is the evidence it was used in this way? The video managed to unearth examples the 'direct' literal meaning from a wide breadth of sources that arent even Google archived, but why is there no written example of the sarcastic sense? Especially the South who loves to display their idiosyncrasies. No songs, no recordings, no shows, no films, no books, no poems, no personal correspondences in archives? Literally zero example of the sardonic sense which people claim existed back then?
@@Joe-sg9ll you think there was no sarcastic or ironic writing before the internet?? seriously?
I mean ”bless your heart” is also used sarcastically and has been for decades and that shows up everywhere in the chart (I’m sure the usages are both sarcastic and genuine)
i mean, its very easy to imagine it as a metaphor.
a baby born into the summer is probably gonna have an easier first few months than a baby born into the winter, less parents worrying over if their newborn is gonna freeze to death, more plentiful food sources to get a better start.
Like, I never heard it personally, but as a metaphor its like. super obvious. "someone who hasnt yet experienced many hardships because they were lucky to be born into good circumstances".
I am from Missouri and 68 years old and don't know if I have ever heard that phrase, if I did it didn't stick! And the first time I heard Chewbacca I thought of chewing tobacco.
That’s so funny about thinking tobacco. Maybe a company should come out with a form of chewing tobacco and name it: Chewbacca!!
@@karenroot450ohhhh you know they would have if it was still popular
@@karenroot450 I don't think Disney would be cool with a tobacco brand being named after one of their characters.
this has happened before! the term "bucket list" was coined by the 2007 movie but people remember it being a term referring to "things to do before death" way before 2007.
yeah that is another major example
that one had crazy arguments going on twitter, people were saying "i made a list myself!" but no one could ever produce a picture of one
I was taught the term in 2001. I was pregnant and my roommate who was from Texas taught me that term. I'm not claiming it's an old phrase, it that it was popular, but it did exist before 2007.
@ketu you are being mandala'd, sorry
@@ninjalectualx no I'm not. I have one specific memory of one person teaching me a phrase that was not common. The movie put the phrase out there and made it common.
I think people are actually remembering the very southern phrases "my sweet child" and especially "oh, honey child", which is said in an almost identical cadence and tone. But "my sweet summer child" so perfectly fits into the southern-grandma-pitying-you cadence, that I'm sure that's the reason it really caught on.
This is what gets me about 'Mandela Effect' type happenings, there is an obvious link with a common phrase or spelling and people just refuse to acknowledge the very logical leap to the misunderstanding. It's like when people think Looney Tunes is actually Loony Toons, it's a very reasonable mistake to make. Same with thinking you've been hearing "sweet summer child" and not just "sweet child" or "sweet sweet child"
It should be noted that the exact phrase "sweet summer child" is only used once in the original Game of Thrones book, specifically by Old Nan in reference to Bran, and never again in any other book in the series. The phrase "summer child" appears two more times in the two following books. In Clash of Kings, Shireen is called "summer child" when she asks a question about the winter, because, like Bran, she was born in the long summer. Then Bran again is called a summer child by Jojen because he is used to easier times despite the fact that winter is coming. Both of these examples are use the phrase more as an explanation for why a child doesn't know something than as a general accusation of naivete. Jojen even says that Bran would be wise if the days were still getting longer. The word "Sweet" seems to be an incidental addition to a stock phrase even in Martin's original work, since it is Old Nan, Bran's nurse, who probably called him "sweetling" throughout his childhood.
It should also be noted that Bran is, in all senses of the term you discussed, a "summer-child" when the phrase is first used in GOT. He's born in summer and has never seen winter, he's the favorite child of Catelyn (she begs Ned to let her keep him in Winterfell while the other kids go south), he's a lively, happy kid who loves running around and climbing the castle walls, and his story is all about moving from pure ignorance to terrible knowledge, from summer to winter. The intrinsic meaning of the phrase in GOT is much closer to the 19th century one than you might initially think; Old Nan is not just calling Bran a summer child because he is naive, she's saying he's naive about the winter because he's a summer child.
I'd bet money that Martin was familiar with the older usage of the term "summer child" meaning a child born in summer, a child suited to summertime, a child favored by their mother etc. and he chose to use the term in GOT with a somewhat twisted meaning. However, Martin clearly didn't conceive of the phrase as a colloquial saying for just any naive person. It is only ever said about actual summer-born children, and doesn't mean naive in general, but specifically about winter. That meaning was really cemented by GOT the show, which used the phrase more often and inspire the meme "sweet summer child". So its present meaning is really just the meme's meaning, ignoring the full meaning from the book, show, and whatever older meaning originally inspire Martin.
Does GOT the show even use the phrase more than once? All I remember is that one time. But because it became a meme, it became so widespread despite only a single appearance.
I lean toward this.
This combines four of my favorite things; historical linguistics, meme culture, deep dives on unsourced claims on the internet, and you!
I feel like maybe people are misremembering hearing people use "honeychile" or "honey child" being used in a condescending manner. It's also possible they are thinking of another term of endearment like "oh sweet baby" "oh honey" or something like that. I don't believe George R. R. Martin invented the concept of using a term of endearment to condescend to a child. I seem to recall my parents condescendingly saying "oh honey" to me as a kid. But as far as the specific phrase "sweet summer child" I think your case is pretty solid.
He never said George invented the idea of condescension. Jesus you people will say anything to defend your worthless memory.
@@Thunderous333 Whoa. You have read a lot into what I said. I wasn't defending my own memory. I just find the whole phenomena of memory to be interesting. I was just suggesting that maybe people misremember this because they have memories of older people condescending to them using terms of endearment. There's no need to get mad. I was making an observation and add to the conversation, not trying to argue or prove anything.
@@gswanson My bad. I was very tired and wasn't thinking like I usually do. Sorry if I upset you, that's on me.
@@Thunderous333 No problem. I know how that is. :D
I think people saying they heard the phrase before game of thrones is just a mandela effect based on not knowing when game of thrones was published, or when the episode aired. My first instinct when watching this video was to say "What?! There's no way Game of thrones invented that, I saw it all around Tumblr as a kid!" but then you revealed the episode with the phrase aired in 2011 and... yeah the timeline lines up now
And on top of that, the book came out in 1996!
Yeah, 2011 WAS over a decade ago, but for the term to have disseminated as much as it had in such a natural feeling way I think you have to put the blame on the books not the show.
I'll be honest, I remember the post that made it popular on tumblr and was confused wtf it even meant because I was born in spring
@CM-db5cg he clearly shows the graph in the video. The books gave a miniscule bump and then it falls back to not being used at all but after 2011 usage skyrockets and stays there. The books were never and will never be as popular as the show. People just don't like to read and books don't spread through the culture like shows and movies do. Reminds me of Elves. Which while not invented by Tolkein he invented the modern concept of Elf but they were never described as having pointy ears. Yet everyone imagines them with pointy ears and will swear the books mention Elves having pointy ears but they don't. In the movies they do though and in other media inspired by Tolkein predating the film trilogy they do.
@@quickpawmaudThe LotR movies did not invent the depiction of pointy eared elves. The trope was well established by the victorian era and dates back much further; this is not a good comparison to "sweet summer child". Sweet summer child as used specifically that way was not seen prior to 1996, pointy ear elves were *absolutely* seen before the LotR movies and not every fantasy media that uses them was inspired by them in any way.
Memory is a tricky thing. Mandela effect seems to be hitting these folks pretty hard.
I grew up in the South, and while I could definitely see myself imagining/misremembering it as having been a common phrase, if I'm entirely honest, I wouldn't be able to pick a specific instance of someone having said that.
But I can do it a thousand times over with phrases like, "Bless your heart." or simply, "Oh, child..." or, "Aren't you precious?"
But I think this video is pretty convincing evidence that should disabuse any honest person of the notion that this was just a common phrase that they heard regularly prior to ~30 years ago, or even 15 years ago. It's seen such frequent usage over the past several years on the internet (post GoT) that I think a lot of people have just adopted it as a common turn of phrase, and they just simply can't remember a time when it wasn't just a standard part of the lexicon.
I think it makes sense that GoT lead to a usage of "summer child"in a sarcastic manner.
These videos are so cool, thanks for doing all the legwork digging through the old docs.
I believe the show assigned too much condescension to the whole monologue. The delivery is purposely harsh and foreboding, it is not at all subtle. I read the passage in the book and Old Nan doesn't sound condescending to me. She sounds affectionate at first, calling Bran her sweet summer child and her little lord. Then she gets lost in the memories and the storytelling, which is when the tension and foreboding really builds and breaks.
I think she says "my sweet summer child" exactly as Bremer defined it.
Ehh, she definitely is a bit sweeter with it in the book, but it still is implicating naivete by referencing the extra long seasons. Or she wouldn't have gone down the winter is when the real shit happens path with the convo
It's not just condescension that's talked about, it's nativity. Because the character says ''My sweet summer child, what do you know of winter''. Within the context of the books, 'summer child' is someone who has never faced the reality of the end of summer, ie, the harsh winters and/or ice zombies and all. In none of the examples did I see any hint of calling the child naive.
I’ve been fighting for my damn life over this exact argument for years thank you for providing me with the evidence in a well laid out video
What drives me crazy is that the modern definition of the term to mean naive only works as a reference to ASOIAF lore. Because in Westeros seasons last for decades, so a child born in summer is naive to the suffering of the long winter. If your southern grandma said that in 1990, that means that she got isakaied from a fantasy world.
The phrase obviously works just fine in the real world, evidenced by the fact that real people, many of whom have not watched Game of Thrones, use and understand the phrase regularly, despite living in the real world and not the ASOIAF universe. Summer is associated with comfort, bliss and innocence. It was historically the time of the harvest. In many Western countries being outside in summer is relatively pleasant and being outside in winter is less so. So a sweet summer child is a child who is innocent, comfortable and blissful. As if their entire life is like summer. It is a very simple and intuitive metaphor which is what allowed it to spread so quickly.
People understand the intent behind the idiom, but that doesn't mean they understand it literally. Most idioms don't make any kind of sense, we just accept them anyway
@@ninjalectualx This is true of old idioms which have fully engrained themselves into the cultural lexicon, but not of new idioms which require being easy to intuit with contemporaneous cultural knowledge in order to spread in the first place. The idiom “run of the mill” might still be used by us even if we cannot intuit its meaning from its words, but the people who originally created and spread the idiom would have had the cultural knowledge to intuit its meaning. If “run of the mill” never existed as an idiom and somebody tried to popularise it today, they would obviously fail because very few would have the cultural knowledge to inuit its meaning. So its fairly safe to say, combined with summer’s common cultural associations which I laid out, that the reason sweet summer child is spreading is that its meaning is fairly easy to intuit.
There’s also the fact that terms of endearment for children are often turned into insults implying naivete and ignorance. “Oh sweetheart/baby/darling/honey” can all be used in effectively the same way as “my sweet summer child.”
@@merlinaeron3326
e.g., "Well, it's summer time, and the livin' is easy."
I have no idea what the central theme of your channel is…but I love them! I could listen to you talk all day. Keep up the good work!
He says it at 14:45! It's about digging around in old newspapers 'n' stuff
This right here is a prime example of why i love your content. Thorough af.
personally, living in texas with southern grandmas, i never heard this phrase. like, it totally makes SENSE as a phrase that COULD HAVE happened (child born into the summer who has an easier start at life and hasnt experienced many hardships, theyve been sheilded from a lotta stuff), its a good metaphor, but like. i never heard it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Great video! Now for a bit of a long winded reply. First off, One thing that I think is critical to remember is that the TV show came out in 2011 while the book came out in 1996. During that 15 years a lot happened. The internet became ubiquitous and meme culture came to the fore. I wonder how much of people saying that they used it "before" game of thrones are simply thinking about the fact that it was used before the show. A lot less people had read the books prior to the show coming out.
I also think his use of the phrase is so clearly rooted in his storytelling that the meaning of it is distinct. In the first book, he clearly sets an expectation on the reader that this will not follow standard fantasy tropes. The reader is in essence, the "sweet summer child" in addition to the character Bran. The author is warning the reader that they are a sweet summer child and are not ready for what is about to come their way.
Sorry for the long response, but I love those books and I love this video. Keep up the good work
This is exactly the kind of commentary I come to RUclips for
I do love that uncovering the beginnings of sweet summer child used to be endearing and sometimes used in mourning, adds a sense of irony to Bran being his mother's sweet summer child. That old woman in the meme isn't his mom, just the households wet-nurse and nanny named Old Nan. For those who do not care to be spoiled on part of a plot began in the late 90s and blossomed in popularity in the 2010s, Catelyn dies believing that Bran (and the youngest but often forgotten son, Rickon) to have died with no other, elder family around in the family castle. Bran specifically had been in a coma for a while when Catelyn left to do family business in book one of the series and the beginnings of winter have only started to occur in book five, to the best of Catelyn's knowledge her youngest boys lived and died sweet summer children.
A minor consideration, it might be worthwhile to see if the phrase "Summer Child" or a variation of such was ever popular in Medieval Latin. Given his background and the inspirations for his writing, it might be that he is referencing a much older phrase. Babies who are born in Winter and early Spring tend to be healthier due to a higher caloric intake historically, so it might be that something similar to summer child was used to denote excess and being sheltered, someone who is able to live as though it is summer all the time.
This doesn't solve the issue of people remembering having heard "Sweet Summer Child", but I have a mundane possible explanation, it is common to refer to a baby born in a given season as a baby in regards to that season, like a Spring Baby, a Summer Baby, a Fall Baby, or a Winter Baby. It isn't a stretch to think people may have used Summer Baby and Summer Child interchangeably, and thus the phrase became extremely familiar but underrepresented in literary works.
Amazing video. I clicked on it thinking "why is this video so long?" And intended on only watching a little bit, but you kept me engaged
Excellent research. You really are one of the best diggers and youtube historians out there.
I'd further argue that sweet summer child didn't even take off until after the show aired in 2011 and it was featured in Facebook memes
I'm sure that this will be picked up by the algorithm. I hope they get routed to the rest of your videos! Your regular stuff is the best videos on RUclips
Always love his story telling. In depth research makes it so much fun!
Being someone who is positive to a fault doesn’t seem like that far of a stretch to get from Frederika’s definition to the modern definition without GOT but I was really surprised you couldn’t find evidence of it. Thanks for your hard work!
It’s funny you bring up Chewbacca because it’s speculated that the appearance of Chewbacca was inspired by the art from George RR Martin’s Sci fi story “And Seven Times Never Kill Man”. The characters even both carry crossbow like weapons.
There’s a lot of other unexpected little things he’s contributed to sci-fi and fantasy over the years indirectly.
The thing with this argument is that the phrase being used to call someone naive only works with the context of the song of ice and fire universe
The Star Wars' wookiees are inspired by the Jaenshi, a race of humanoids that appear in the George R.R. Martin's 1975 novelette "And Seven Times Never Kill Man!".
It's a little-known fact that the working title of 'Sweet Child O' Mine' was 'Sweet Summer Child O' Mine'. 😉😄
This was genuinely so much fun and so interesting to watch! Also love how you're sitting outside, gives a different (and better, in my opinion) feeling to the whole video :) I'm looking forward to watching your others as well!
The discovery of Fredrica Bremer potentially creating the phrase "summer child" is so cool!! Since no one explicitly states it necessarily, but the pieces all line up perfectly.... It's also pretty funny that her usage of summer child is the opposite of the game of thrones & modern usage of sweet summer child.
Personally I find the phrase hard to connect to anything in our world before it's used in game of thrones because... The game of thrones explanation for it just makes so much sense. It's part of the worldbuilding, and I can't think of another instance in our world that would warrant the phrase being used in such a specific context as it is in the books/show.
Maybe people have said "sweet child" in a similar way - referring to naivety - in the past, and people have since attached the common pop culture sweet summer child phrase to it and gotten confused? I feel like I've heard people say "my sweet, sweet child" in the same way, maybe the alliteration throws people off?
It also makes a ton of sense for a person of swedish origin to invent the term summer child. The winters are harsh in sweden and the summers have very long days and very pleasant climate. It would be interesting to know wether there is an older swedish usage of the term "summer child".
One consistent meaning is the light heartedness of the summer child. The twist in meaning towards naivity as you excellently layed out definetely seems to come from Game of Thrones.
I have missed you so much!!! Thank you for sharing your insights, humility and humor.
I think this particular case is a perfect example of the Mandela Effect, where the phrase feels so perfect or obvious in its use that it must have always been in use this way.
Love this deep dive. Please stumble into more!!
I mean I was born in 1970 and my Mom called me "sweet summer child" when I was good and "serpent's tooth" when bad (but also I was born in July, and she was very much into Victorian lit)
Yes, but that's not the meaning of "Sweet Summer Child" as most people use it now. That comes from A Game Of Thrones.
Great video, I really enjoyed watching! I also noticed you've jumped up in subscribers, I'm happy to see that.
Amazing video, as usual!!! commenting for algorithm boost and for Fredrica Bremer
I suspect many people swearing they heard this expression growing up are actually thinking of “bless your heart”. It essentially means the same thing - it’s a superficially endearing but deeply condescending accusation of naïvety, used by the same demographic in the same scenario
"Bless your heart" also usually does not mean what the Internet thinks it means. Rarely has it been used with the same kind of condescension as "sweet Summer's child" is used in ASOIAF, but because Internet we have a lot of Generation Xers who remember hearing these expressions and are now seriously wondering if Gran was calling them "simple."
So what I’m hearing is that it was invented by an author in the 1840s to refer to a joyful and carefree child. Then, after it had been in the zeitgeist for a century and a half, George R.R. Martin used the phrase (or something close to it) in an ironic way to refer to a naively joyful and carefree child, which caught on in an even bigger way than the original meaning.
It’d be neat to get Martin’s take on where he got the phrase from, to see if he thought it was original or just a play on a common phrase.
And yeah, he definitely invented the exact phrasing of “sweet summer child” instead of “summer child”.
I agree. I also think it was an ironic coment meaning the original meaning twisting it into opsite meaning by using irony. The sweet is just comon way to underline the irony. So maybe people used it from time to time in an ironic maner but the GoT popularized it.
I think it may be possible that george created the phrase independently just from his world building, the concept of a child (older than one) having only experienced summer is unique to his world
I think any connection berween Martin's use and the 1840's use is pretty tenuous. In his book the phrase isn't used as a canned phrase or a metaphor, it is a very literal description, a child who literally has only existed in summer. The concept comes so directly and easily from the fantasy worldbuilding concept of years long seasons that it doesn't seem necessary for him to have heard the phrase before.
Zeitgeist implies that it was a common phrase in the public consciousness. A dozen (if that) obscure literary mentions of a similar phrase in the 1800s is an extremely tenuous way to make that case. Just pull up any phrase like "bless your heart" (which he shows in the video) and "sweet summer child" on the same google ngram graph (you can do this by typing in both phrases with a comma between them) and its completely definitive that "sweet summer child" just did not exist, perhaps outside of coincidence, between those few stories/poems in the 1800s and the release of Game of Thrones
@@Beefbarsyeah for all the people who swear it was common use, there's zero examples of the sardonic version of the term. Compared to equivalent phrases that show up everywhere across different mediums
I'm a southerner. I know phrases like "bless your heart" and I know that we invent phrases like "well that's just a rotten peach" at the drop of a hat. (Fellow southerners: I just made up "well that's just a rotten peach" but I bet you are all immediately aching to use it; we all already know what it means. Don't explain it to the yankees.)
I'm pretty sure I adopted "sweet summer child" from George RR Martin, and the fact that we know who originated that term is actually really fascinating because most of the time those kinds of phrases are anonymous, but we pick them up as a matter of habit.
no hate to southerners but you guys need to stop explaining the concept of idioms like you invented them
@@ohno5559 oh they're part of every variety of English - but that fact doesn't conflict with the fact that they get adopted more quickly and invented more fluidly in some regional varieties than others. London makes rhyming wordplay, Australia doesn't make a lot of backwards pronunciations anymore but they sure did a hundred years ago, and the southeastern US isn't alone in making up these kinds of idioms but we do it a lot more than people from other regions.
Considering how big poetry used to be, I’d guess you can find almost any combinations of words in some old timey poem.
That was kind of the whole thing with the poetry fashion, arranging words in beautiful or interesting ways
What are the odds im rewatching the postcard video and a new one pops up. Always love the content 🎉
Imagine if you were that journalist in the Arizona Daily Star who put "chewbacca" in that article for a laugh then you go to watch that new film everyone's been hollering about later in life...
Also I just recently found dime store and you rock! I been telling all my friends. Actual facts
I think you hit the nail on the head with the punctuation marks. I was wondering why quotations around “summer child” but not “sweet.” That would certainly explain it. It also makes me think about that nursery rhyme from the 1830s called Monday’s Child. The line at the end goes: “the child born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.” The Sabbath Day being Sunday. Anything relating to children and the sun in the 1800s seems to result in a radiant little darling.
This is the highest quality youtube channel I have stumbled across in my 30 years
Wow I love your original historical research. It's so depressing to see people uncritically reposting whatever the first result of Google incorrectly claims... I would be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of that in the past. Man, I need to do better.
Please keep this going man, proper research is so important.
Great video👍 one of my favorite channels. I've never heard of this lol
Cool video, as always! Quick comment on the Chewbacca thing: the way it was used in the 1924 article was referring to chewing tobacco. So it would be pronounced as chew-back-ah. Like chew, and tobacco combined, but tobacco pronounced with an a on the end. Which was not uncommon. Still not uncommon in some places. Anyway, great video! I'm excited for the next one!
Absolutely awesome work, as always.
damn you're going to give GoT the classic Dime Store Adventure bump!
Thank you for this. I've done my own rabbit hole research on this, and came to the same conclusions you did.
The best conclusion from this wonderful review is that George R.R. Martin did NOT invent the phrase, but DID give the phrase a new nuance to suit his fictional world, which has now become the primary usage. As Dime Store points out, Bremer's usage of "summer child" was adapted to "sweet summer child" by a number of other writers long before 1996, so it's likely that Martin was also adapting Bremer's usage, but with a more profound implication in the context of a world with years' long summers. The character it's applied to does seem to be a "summer child" in Bremer's sense, but Martin added in the implication of naivete as well by using the phrase in the context of a conversation about his world's extended seasons.
So...do people actually remember hearing others use this phrase before 1996? I suspect a lot of this is some form of Mandela effect, perhaps in this case real memories of similar phrases with the details altered in their minds after the fact. But given that several writers did use the exact phrase "sweet summer child" in Bremer's complementary sense over the course of about a hundred years, it's entirely possible that some people do remember hearing the phrase before 1996, albeit probably not with the 21st century implication of naivete attached.
this reminds me of how looney toons redefined "nimrod" from a biblical(?) hunter to a synonym for moron. grrm probably was calling back to the positive connotation of the phrase and using it ironically, but because its an archaic term it was then repopularized in a new way
As others have pointed out, they wouldn't describe "sweet summer child" being used in an ironic sense to be the "invention" of the phrase, similar to how "nimrod" went from a great biblical hunter to "dumb person" because of looney tunes or how you seem to only hear the phrase "spring chicken" to say that someone *isn't* one (meaning they are young) and instead imply that their age is getting to them.
This is like the most soothing channel on RUclips. You seem like a very chill guy. Also, it doesn't really apply to this video, but I have to say, the way you share the stories of ordinary people who have been forgotten or "done dirty" by history is really admirable. You're doing God's work and it's great to watch.
It’s 100% the Mandela affect with these people who think they remembered it and GRRM invented the phrase for his world
Or people just tell themselves they remember hearing it because they don't like to admit how easily they are influenced by pop culture, and like to feel like the phrase they use to sound super condescending to people, isn't some new trendy stupid thing, but rather some old school classic thing. Doesn't need to be the mandela effect when it could just be cognitive dissonance. Also, I met Mandela once. Not that it matters, just interesting.
@@davidgreenwood6029I'm always surprised about the Mandela example being the one used to name the effect. How the hell do people think Mandela died in prison? I mean if they're dumb kids in America in the 80s I guess so. But that's no reason to make it everyone else's problem😂😂 everyone else knows he survived and lived until his victory over legal apartheid
@@FlameQwertthere was another famous anti apartheid leader who famously died around the 80s, cant remember his name, but him bring confused with Mandela likely started it.
@@FlameQwert You're just a native to this dimension bro, they swapped over
From what you conveyed, it seems like Martin may have used the phrase 'sweet summer child' in a sarcastic sense or tone.
Also, things like this is why etymology can be so fascinating!
I have recently befriended a Russian woman and have been helping her with her (already super great) English. This phrase came up early in our conversations and I have been wondering about its origin ever since. Thank you so much for solving my question for me!
'anything else you want to be wrong about? ill just be in my lawn chair sipping river water!'
Now I have Guns N Roses stuck in my head for some reason…
When you book a hotel with a time machine: Oh my suite Sumer child
This seems to be a cool example of the Mandela Effect - widespread false memories that large numbers of people or a group of individuals believe.
Or people just tell themselves they remember hearing it because they don't like to admit how easily they are influenced by pop culture, and like to feel like the phrase they use to sound super condescending to people, isn't some new trendy stupid thing, but rather some old school classic thing.
@@davidgreenwood6029 Underrated comment
Thank you! Was sure this doll heard it before ASOIAF was well-known, let alone Game of Thrones the TV series coming out, but had a hard time finding conclusive evidence one way or another. (And it can’t rule out, if it happened, the person was already familiar with ASOIAF) This is the best evidence it’s found.
I think you’re underestimating the power of the Mandela effect. In the context we’re discussing, the phrase “Oh, my sweet summer child,” was indeed coined by George RR Martin in 1996, and went viral and into the vernacular from there. Your search for other usage in the same context prior to 1996 will continue to be in vain. There can never be “too many people” when it comes to the Mandela effect. People just remember shit wrong. And for many, if not most people, the simple pointing out of the actual truth just makes them double down on the lie because they can’t handle ever being wrong about something, and they weren’t trained for critical thinking. Peeps be dumb. Straight up.
I think it's so cool that the world mechanics of a fantasy series has embedded and melded itself into our own lingo. I know this happens all the time where literature creates new language for us to use but it's even cooler when it comes from a straight up alternate dragon world haha
This was so interesting, I love your videos
This is some top journalism
Cool! Now do “bucket list”.
I hate the "boom argument over - I won" people.
great video bro
I wonder how many people get it mixed up with the old GnR song 'Sweet Child O' Mine' and that's why they're thinking they've heard the term 'sweet summer child' before GoT. Every time you mentioned it in this video, that song popped up in my head.
I heard that before watching game of thrones
I think this is a case of a Mandela effect type thing, where people are remembering similar phrases and then getting it confused with sweet Summer child. Stuff like bless your heart you sweet child or something like that.
It's all about context... in GOT, a child born in Summer would not know of the harsh Winters. It's as simple as that.
How weird, but very interesting, is the fact the one person would spark a debate on said phrase "Sweet Summer Child." I also kept hearing "Sweet Child of Mine" hahaha😊 I also have never heard that phrase before. It's an interesting phrase, to be honest!
Very interesting video. I was totally expecting to hear that it was actually in use well before the books, so I'm surprised and glad to hear somebody finally put in some effort into finding out what's up with this phrase. As for any contrary evidence, one's best bet would looking close to the release of the book. From what you establishes, it seems clear that it wasn't some old timey expression that George R R Martin just put in. It was either his invention and it's a coincidence (which is possible considering the context of the fantasy world), or it began to be used right around the time he wrote the book and it was simply the first usage of the expression that got famous. Or maybe he had the Frederika Bremer sense in mind and Old Nan just used it because she felt that Bran was the perfect child and used it as a term of endearment but in the context of summer/winter in the book's world the meaning twisted a little.
Either way, it's interesting and you did some great work here. If someone does find a smoking gun like you said, it'll be near the book's publication.
Since I haven't watched GoT I've never heard the phrase in that original context, so I've always thought it meant the same as just "summer child", and that the naive meaning of it was just people using it sarcastically.
Also, as someone from Sweden, if the term has it's roots in swedish it certainly hasn't survived to today.
Maybe we can find the original swedish version of the play to compare. How close is the translation for this phrase
@RoyalKnightVIII
I couldn't find the exact phrase from "The Home" highlighted in the video but it did contain the word "sommarbarn", literally "summer child", in three other places. Which in Sweden would refer to a child at summer camp which were a pretty big thing in Sweden during the 1900s. Though I don't think it had that meaning when Fredrika first used it. Nowadays the word is pretty much never used.
do you read a script... how do you do it man... i love this format of content!!!!!!!!!!
You tell ‘em! 😂 Great video!
Oh, my sweet sweet meme child, we said that in the 1990s. Which makes sense now if you're saying the books came out in 1996.
I recall asking my mother why that term was used as a child maybe I was old enough that these books came out by then, I would have been 15/16.
She told me it was because a summer child was a sweet lovable child who was that way because they were well off and had things well in life, life was always summer to them, and so it was a pejorative to call someone that if used condescendingly as they were clearly not familiar with how hard life could be, but was a nice thing to say if you just mean the child was sweet and life treated them well.
Sorry.pwrhaps this is a sign of the begining of the change
the one time southern grandma's weren't shading their descendants is the one everyone assumes they were, all because of the tits and dragon show. people are amazing.
I remember my first time hearing this phrase as a child. It was in a Tumblr post in the early 2010s.
I hadn’t heard anyone say it before game of thrones but not really surprised people used it for many years before that
very gud video man 👍
You're about to blow up, deservedly so. Excellent storytelling and topic selection
Great research.
I would say that some of those early uses refer to, or evoke, innocence. Naivety and innocence often go hand in hand. I think because the phrase always worked well as a poetic version of innocence it could easily start to get used with condescension. That's why that usage caught on so well outside of the fandom. It's a slight twisting, not a wholesale reimagining. It just works because the phrase evokes innocence even without knowledge of the lore.
Maybe people who tink they've heard it before was called "summer child" (the old meaning) by an older relative when they were a kid, but just dont remember the context or understood the meaning since they were a child?