[Dragaera] Vlad as an Earth name

[Eugene Zaretskiy]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 13 Jan 2010, Alexx Kay wrote:
>
>>>
>>>> There's a few new ones in Iorich and some of them are Earth names, too.
>>>>
>>>> I guess a good follow up question, if it hasn't been discussed before,
>>>> is WHY the Easterners have managed to keep their Earth names for so
>>>> long. The answer probably ties into the same reason they have kept
>>>> many other Earth-originating cultural aspects, such as knocking on
>>>> doors and Hungarian cooking. :)
>>>
>>> My personal theory on this is that contact with long-lived Dragaerans has
>>> encouraged humans to make efforts to preserve their own history and
>>> traditions to a greater extent.
>>>
>>> 250,000 years (at least) does seem like a long time to maintain some of
>>> these cultural aspects, otherwise.
>>
>> Given what we know about human history on Earth, that degree of continuity
>> over 250,000 years is not *remotely* plausible -- without some serious
>> mitigating factors.  Two that come to mind are "the gods" and "The Cycle".
>
>
> Well, there's the translator too.  Maybe Vlad -> Blad -> Blod -> ... ->
> Myxtlplyx but SKZB went back to the starting point for familiarity a la
> Tolkien.

Mind expanding on that Tolkien reference? I didn't realize Tolkien had
any such explanation for the names he uses... in fact, I thought he
codified the "language" used to some degree. I agree with your
explanation (I would have used Gene Wolfe as an example, however) but
it doesn't explain the cultural examples, like knocking on doors or
Hungarian cooking.

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-- 
Eugene Z
http://blog.eugenez.net