What’s A Crozet?
My father, brother, and son are named Crozet (pronounced: cro ZAY). Crozet was the maiden name of my father’s paternal grandmother. There’s a town in Virginia named Crozet, a town in France, and an island chain in the Indian Ocean south of Madagascar. The town in Virginia is named after one of our ancestors, Claudius Crozet, who built railroads, taught at West Point, and (to our family’s everlasting shame) invented the blackboard.
A croze (derived from the French word for cross) is the notch at the top and bottom of a wine barrel stave, and the tool used for making it. A crozet is, presumably, a small such notch or tool. (Claudius’ father was a wholesale wine merchant.) I recently discovered that crozet is also a kind of pasta.
Note to movie fans: A wine barrel, even empty, is extraordinarily heavy. (I know. I make my own wine and have two barrels on a shelf in my garage. Getting them up there by myself was no mean feat.) Arnold Schwarzenegger might be able to lift one over his head, but no normal man could; and even Arnie could not lift a full one. Bear that in mind the next time you watch a Zorro movie and see actors tossing them at each other like beach balls.
