Zany

Do you know someone called John or Jack who you would describe as zany?

This word meaning bizarre, way out or wacky comes from the Italian form of John, Giovanni.

The name John and its European counterparts such as Jean and Giovanni were very popular, they came to be used to denote the common man. Jack and Gianni were often used for the simple common man or fool!

Zanni, from the Venetian dialect, was the name of a character in a farce, a servant who imitates his master in a comical way.

Zanie appeared in the sixteenth century in English and can be found in Shakespeare’s Loves Labour’s Lost and Twelfth Night. It was a noun meaning a person who was a sidekick for a clown or a buffoon.

Zany was first used as an adjective in the seventeenth century meaning bizarre, clownish or crazy. It disappeared, only to reappear in the twentieth century with much the same meaning.