And now I have another. My first “threem”, or “three-M”, for this bijou bloguette was the alliterative three-word Latin phrase Mathematica Magistra Mundi, meaning “Mathematics Mistress of the World”. I also use it in the form Mathematica Machina Mundi, which has a variety of translations. In both Latin phrases, the words have five, three and two syllables, respectively. That’s the first three prime numbers in reverse and also part of the Fibonacci sequence in reverse.

You can find the same alliteration in languages derived from Latin, like the French La Mathématique, Maîtresse du Monde, but you don’t get the same syllable-count. So how likely was it that everything – the same alliteration and the same syllable-count – would appear in a language unrelated to Latin? But it does. Here’s a Georgian translation of the threem:

მათემატიკა მსოფლიოს მეფე

Matemat’ik’a Msoplios Mepe

“Mathematics the World’s King”

Msoplios isn’t a typo: Georgian is famous for its exotic consonant clusters and მს- / ms- isn’t a particularly unusual example. But it’s one I particularly like.