Q&A: What’s in a Name? Everything! [Books/Series/Character/Language]

Now that the draft for S3B2: The Dog in the Dark is off to our ed­i­tor, and the raf­fles have been fin­ished off (for now), it’s time to get back to some Q&As.

Over the months since we moved our two web sites to the Blog­ger.com sys­tem (No­bleDead.com be­came No­bleDead.org, Barb­Hendee.com be­came Barb­Hendee.org), a num­ber of read­ers asked what hap­pened to the “Glos­sary” from the old site. This usu­ally came up in con­junc­tion with “How do I pro­nounce such’n’such’s name?”

The old No­bleDead.com site had server-side ASP/data­base ser­vices; the new site at No­bleDead.org doesn’t have such. We’re in­ves­ti­gat­ing ways to em­u­late data­base op­er­a­tions through AJAX, JQuery, and XML data, but as yet we haven’t found a so­lu­tion. We’re de­ter­mined to suc­ceed, so please be pa­tient. As to pro­nun­ci­a­tion of names…

They don’t all fol­low the sim­pli­fied, four-di­a­crit­i­cal shared sys­tem we use for lan­guages. You can still find the Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide at No­bleDead.org under “Books.” But per­haps we can help out a lit­tle with names, though it might not be as sim­ple as you’d as­sume. We won­der (with a wink) how many of you are would-be “sages” who’ve caught lit­tle de­tails along the way and ac­tu­ally pieced them to­gether, be­cause a few of those have to do with names…

First, how­ever you pro­nounce char­ac­ter names is fine for read­ing — se­ri­ously. We even have our own slang pro­nun­ci­a­tions around the house that don’t match the stan­dard in the books. Partly be­cause we don’t ac­tu­ally speak those lan­guages, as no fan­tasy writer re­ally does, but it’s also be­cause stan­dards of pro­nun­ci­a­tion vary. Con­fused now?

Think about it. If you’re for­tu­nate to have learned a sec­ond lan­guage, then is a name of stan­dard spelling pro­nounced the same way in all lanu­gages? No, cer­tainly not. Now add in cul­tural and di­alec­tic vari­a­tions even within one lan­guage. Well, it’s no dif­fer­ent in the world of the Noble Dead saga.

From its very be­gin­ning in S1B2: Dham­pir,  the saga was set in a world much larger than the Far­lands. Yes, there were hints in there right from the start; a few were hid­den in some of the names. Let’s start with one name you all know, even if you’ve read only a cou­ple of the books. It’s not an ob­vi­ous one, and to ex­pand on this, we’ll link pro­nun­ci­a­tion to cul­ture/lan­guage of ori­gin for the par­tic­u­lar pro­nun­ci­a­tion (rather than just the char­ac­ter).

Name	Origin	Sounds Like
Leesil	Stravinan	LEE-sill

What… Leesil is from Strav­ina? No, the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of his hu­man­ized name is in­flu­enced by that cul­ture. Read­ers are cer­tainly not going to catch this, as there’s very lit­tle Strav­inan spoke in the book, though there are some place names. With­out cre­at­ing too many spoil­ers for new read­ers, think about where Leesil was born. (You can find that in al­most any of the saga’s books.) Now what coun­try is clos­est to that melt­ing pot re­gion of his youth? Take a look at a map of the Far­lands in some of the early books.

Yes, “Leesil” is a human pro­nun­ci­a­tion of his Elvish (an’Cróan) name, given by his mother. But which hu­mans is the real ques­tion. That re-pro­nun­ci­a­tion didn’t come from our world, not the writ­ers or the read­ers. It came from within Leesil’s world! That’s the way Magiere learned to pro­nounce it as well. Speak­ing of Magiere…

Name	Origin	Sounds Like
Magiere	Droevinkan / Numanese	muh-GEAR

Okay, now we’ve got you going again. What in world is “Nu­manese” doing listed as a joint ori­gin for Magiere’s name? The Numan Lands are half a world away from the Far­lands. Time for you to be sages again and do some re­search. The an­swer is in the fam­ily re­mem­brances of Wel­stiel Mass­ing, which you can find a bit of in S1B2: Thief of Lives and more in S1B3: Sis­ter of the Dead. See if you can put the pieces to­gether.

We won’t go fur­ther than that, as again it might cre­ate spoil­ers for new read­ers. Yes, “Magiere” could be a de­riva­tion of her mother’s name, but if you look at the name “Magelia” and that of her aunt “Bieja,” then “Magiere” doesn’t fully fit the fla­vor of the few ex­am­ples of Droevinkan in the early books.

So for the as­tute reader there were hints from the very be­gin­ning (aside from some for­eign sages show­ing up) that this “saga” would range far and wide. Of course there is also one name that is a straight out nick­name you all know.

Name	Origin	Sounds Like
Chap	[none]	{come on now!}

It was Barb’s call on this one, as every­one knows “dogs” can get some of the sil­li­est but af­fec­tion­ate nick­names. His name bounces into all sorts of strange things in the lan­guages of the re­gion from which Leesil orig­i­nates, and that just wasn’t going to work well for use in the books. Not to men­tion that majay-hì don’t have names… well, spo­ken ones, that is. But you knew that, right?

And now, a few name pro­nun­ci­a­tions many have asked about… and a few of them might sur­prise you. We didn’t have time to put in dic­tio­nary based pho­netic spellings, but hope­fully you’ll get some­thing work­able out of the fol­low­ing.

SPOLIER ALERT!

If you haven’t fin­ished at least the first se­ries, you might not want to read fur­ther. Some names and their ori­gins might pro­duce small spoil­ers.

This fol­low­ing list is mostly for names that ap­pear in S3B1: Be­tween Their Worlds, but many of these names have been seen many times in many of the ear­lier books. Hence the spoiler warn­ing.

If we missed a name of im­por­tance, just drop us a note and we’ll try to get into an­other Q&A until the Glos­sary is back on­line.

Anmaglâhk

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] Sounds like: AWN-muh-GLAYK.

Aoishenis-Ahâre

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] Sounds like: Ow~i-SHEN-is—ah-HAIR-eh.

Bäalâle Seatt

[Dwarvish, Ancient]  Sounds like: BAW-uh-LAY-leh SEAT-T .

Brot’ân’duivé / Brot’an

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] Sounds similar to: Braut-AIN-dwee-VEY / BRAUT-an or Broe-TAN.

Chane Andraso

[Stravinan, Old] Chane an-DRA-so.  Sounds like: Chain an-DRAW-zoe.

Chuillyon

[Elvish, New (Lhoin’na)] CHUIL-ly~on.  Sounds similar to: CHEWL-lee~yawn.

Covârleasa

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] Sounds like: COE-vair-LAY-suh.

Cuirin’nên’a / Nein'a

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] Sounds similar to: Queer~in-NEEN-uh / NAIN-uh or NINE-uh.

Dänvârfij

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds similar to: Dawn-VAIR-fizh.

Eillean

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds like: AIL-lay~awn.

Én’nish

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds like: enn-NISH.

Eywodan

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds like: AY-woo-dawn.

Fréthfâre; Fréth

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds like: Freyth-FAIR~reh /  FRETH.

Frideswida Hawes

[Numanese (Malourné)]  Sounds like: FRI~des~SWEY-duh Hauz.

Ghassan il'Sänke

[Sumanese (Modern, Western)] Sounds similar to: GAS-san il-SAWN-kay.

Gleannéohkân'thva / Gleann

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds like: Glay~AN-nay~oh-cain-th’vau / Glay-AN.

Greimasg’äh

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] Grei-MASG-ah.  Sounds similar to: Greey-MASG-awe.

Leanâlhâm

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)]  Sounds similar to: Ley-ANN-ail~haim.

Lhoin'na

[Elvish, New (Lhoin’na)] LHO~IN~Na.  Sounds like: LOW~IN~nuh.

Malourné

[Numanese, Old] Ma-lour-NE.  Sounds like: MAH-loor-NAY.

Reine Faunier-Âreskynna

[Numanese (Faunier / Malourné)]  Sounds like: RAIN-eh FAW~near—AY-res-KEEN-nuh.

Rhysís

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)] RHY-sis.  Sounds like: RHEE-sis.

Sau’ilahk

[Sumanese, Ancient].  Sounds similar to: Saw-EEY-lack.

Sgäilsheilleache / Sgäile

[Elvish, Old (an’Cróan)].  Sounds like: SGAWL-shale-LEY-chey / SGAW-ley.

Shyldfälches

[Numanese, Old (Malourné)]  Sounds similar to: SHIELD-fall-chess.

Siweard Rodian

[Numanese (Malourné)]  Sounds like: SI-weird ROW-dee-an.  NOTE: the second syllable of the first name is between “weird” and “word”; “weard” is a very obscure alternate for “wyrd” meaning “innately fated.”

Taln Lúcan

[Numanese (Malourné)].  Sounds like: TALN LOO-can.

Tärtgyth Sykion

[Numanese (Faunier)]  Sounds like: TART-gith SEE-key~on.

Welstiel Massing

[Numanese]  Sounds like: WELL-steel MASS-ing.

Wynn Hygeorht

[Numanese, Old (Malourné)]  Sounds like: WIN HIH~gee~yort.

That's likely more than most peo­ple could mem­o­rize. Hope­fully you found that one char­ac­ter name you were cu­ri­ous about and got a hint of how best to pro­nounce it. Maybe you even picked up other hints hid­den in its ori­gin that could spark a re­al­iza­tion from the saga’s past books... or fu­ture ones.