[Dragaera] Vlad as an Earth name

[Martin Wohlert]

> Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:00:06 -0500
> From: eugene.zar at gmail.com
> To: philiph at slac.stanford.edu
> CC: dragaera at dragaera.info
> Subject: Re: [Dragaera] Vlad as an Earth name
> 
> 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.
> 

Somewhere in the appendices he mentions that a lot of the names (most hobbits and
dwarves, IIRC) are actually not the real names, but translated to fit with our cultural 
expectations (like names ending in a are female). 

/Martin
 		 	   		  
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