Thank the Lord for small mercies.

[Actually I can't tell which of you really believe what they're saying & who's just taking the p*** here, so at the risk of making a fool of meself and/or being even more boring than usual, I've done that googling-to back-up-what-I-thought-I-knew thing and here goes...]

Whatever the pun, it all comes from the same root word anyway.

Brian Cant and Immanuel Kant’s mutual surname (see below) originated in the medieval period, from the Old French or Latin word for song or singer.

But from the 12th century onwards, before people even knew what a surname was, never mind how to spell it, the same church-Latin word for chant/song, “cantus”, had come into Olde English as “cant”, used as a pejorative term for dogma, pointless or hypocritical rhetoric, obscure jargon, words you say but you don’t really understand (like when you were chanting the Latin mass) or don’t really mean, etc. and there it has stayed. We get “chant” from the French and “cant” from the Latin word it would seem.

As Big Sammy Johnson said to one of his mates:
“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in society: but don’t think foolishly.”

What you need a bloody good dictionary, better than Johnson’s, to find out is that it was and still is also an adjective, meaning “of, or having the nature of, cant.” Webster’s 1913 edition gave us a quote from Jonny Swift:
“To introduce and multiply cant words is the most
ruinous corruption in any language.”

This is a song featuring militants, socialists, etc. In political debates, especially involving socialist ideas, etc., it really is quite commonly used, though maybe not as common as when I were a lad, to dismiss dogma as “a load of old cant”, or even occasionally as an adjective “that’s just cant old Trotskyist nonsense”, “cant Thatcherite rhetoric” etc. Believe me, I was there. It’s a very angry and dismissive word, which is why it made such a superb pun in this setting – Trumpton – where Brian Cant was the narrator.

The surnames Cant and Kant come from the same root. They were probably descended somewhere along the line from church singers/chanters. I cannot see what this song can possibly have to do with Immanuel Kant, but in a way that doesn’t matter – Kant is already wrapped up in the pun anyway, because Brian and Immanuel may even be descended from the same roots, unlikely as it seems. Apparently a whole load of Cants came from Flanders to Scotland in late medieval times. Immanuel’s grandad was a Scottish Cant but emigrated to East Prussia late C17th, and even Kant’s dad still spelt it “Cant” before it was Germanised.

Meanwhile all I know about Brian’s roots is that his dad was an engineer in Ipswich, where Brian grew up (and that his mum’s dad was a roller skater in the music halls I kid you not) and it may just be that in lots of parts of England choristers got the “cant/chant/chantry” surname, independently of the Flanders Scottish Cants that Kant descended from…

But having seen far too many episodes of the act-ors and actresses tracing their roots in the horribly fascinating “Who Do You Think You Are…?” series – well, you never know, do you?

I won’t give references. You can google.