April 2, 2010

Nautical Articulations Of The Being



What lies in names of furtive random faces,
That often hint at meaning just right before the future coalesces?
Is it the souls of waves that are now fleeing
From Nautical Articulations of the Being?



The sea has always been part of human nature and even nowadays it is still part of quite a few people's lives. Sailing and Yachting are often exclusively taken up by civilization's privileged, the few who can afford the time for his expensive hobby.


Perusing through my copy of The Official Preppy Handbook has brought something I had forgotten about, back into view, something that has to do with both sailing and a privileged lifestyle: Nautical Monograms.




Nautical Monograms have been and probably still are one of the few secret alphabets that are not that well known and could be easily overlooked by the uninitiated. The Nautical Alphabet consists of 26 distinct flags that each have a letter and a meaning associated with it. This particularity of "Vexillolinguistics" as it might be called, affords for easily creating one's monogram and then using it for anything ranging from signing a message, displaying membership into an elite sailing club to discovering other Preps that are passionate about sailing.

Here are the Alphabet and Numbers Chart in the Nautical System, useful for quick reference:
























My Nautical Monogram for example would be the following:





One website that offers notecards with Nautical Monograms is Polygraphics.com

Enjoy being creative with your monograms in a new way!