re: #418 LudwigVanQuixote

Courtesy of wiki:

Origin of the name

In Dreamer of Dune, Brian Herbert’s 2003 biography of his father, the younger Herbert speculates that the name “Gesserit” is supposed to suggest to the reader the word “Jesuit” and thus evoke undertones of a religious order. Like the Jesuits, the Bene Gesserit have been accused of using casuistry to obtain justifications for the unjustifiable. In his own book about Frank Herbert, William F. Touponce notes “Herbert’s early education at the hands of Jesuits” and writes that “Bene Gesserit means ‘that it may be borne or accomplished well,’ and is derived from the hortative subjunctive of the Latin verb gero, meaning ‘to bear or carry away’ in its root sense, but also ‘to conduct oneself in society.’[8]
In fact this above analysis is incorrect, as gesserit is in the active voice (“he does…”), not the passive (“it was done…”)[9], and may be taken either as a third person singular future perfect indicative active (in which case it would be “he/she shall have carried on [some activity] well,” or a third person singular perfect subjunctive active[9], which could not be a hortatory subjunctive (which must be in the first person) or a jussive subjunctive [10] but must be taken as either an optative or deliberative subjunctive (and hence must mean “he/she may have carried on [some activity] well,” or “he should have carried on [some activity] well”)[10].
It may be noted that the legal Latin phrase quamdiu se bene gesserit, taken as a third person future perfect indicative active, means “as long as he/she shall have conducted himself/herself well,”[11] meaning in that context that a judge (or an officer) cannot be removed from his office as long as he performs correctly his duty.