The name
A word that has meant the return for three thousand years.
In the Iliad, Achilles is offered two fates: kleos, glory that never dies, or nostos, the return home. Spaceflight has always been measured by what goes up. Nostimere is measured by what comes home.
νόστος
Nostos · the return
The voyage home that the whole voyage was for.
τιμή
Timē · honour and worth
The honour a thing is held in, and the price it is held at. One word for both.
μέρος
Meros · the part
The share, the portion. The part that returns.
Homer’s word for the day a traveller comes home was νόστιμον ἦμαρ, the day of return. The house takes its name from it.
How it is said
Nostimere
No · sti · mere
νόστιμος · τιμή · μέρος
The same three syllables in English, French and Italian. Read two ways, both true: nostos and timē, the honoured return; or nostimos and meros, the part that returns.
The word Homer used
Three thousand years of meaning, and every one belongs to the House.
The first two syllables are already a word: νόστιμος, nostimos, which appears six times in the Odyssey, always in the same phrase. Over the centuries it kept its root and gathered meanings.
Homer · 8th century BC
Belonging to the return
Nostimon ēmar, the day of homecoming.
Of a person
Alive and safe
Able to return; likely to return.
Of a plant · Theophrastus
Productive
Yielding a high return, said of vines and fruit trees.
Of food and drink
Wholesome
Succulent, palatable, nourishing.
Of a text
The kernel
The substance of the thing, what is left when the rest is stripped away.
Modern Greek · today
Delicious
And, of a person or a thing: charming, elegant, attractive.
Sources: Liddell–Scott–Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, s.v. νόστιμος; Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary.
Glory or homecoming
The oldest choice in Western literature.
In the ninth book of the Iliad, Achilles says he carries two fates. If he stays and fights at Troy, his homecoming is lost but his glory, kleos, will never die. If he goes home, his glory is lost but he will live long.
Spaceflight has always been measured by what goes up. Nostimere takes the other fate: it is the house of the return.
“Nostimere is a house. It carries what the great houses make to orbit, and brings it home with the proof.”