tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post6409782007987478728..comments2024-03-27T06:42:26.250-07:00Comments on Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: The Naming of Dark Lords (a Difficult Matter)Katherine Langrishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-75057455224000319422016-05-04T09:17:03.529-07:002016-05-04T09:17:03.529-07:00We are ruled by a County Council based in a Northu...We are ruled by a County Council based in a Northumberland town north east of here, and ever since the Peter Jackson films I have taken great pleasure in pronouncing it as Morrrpeth ...Tim Crrumpnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-10606896484269993352015-07-26T13:33:54.140-07:002015-07-26T13:33:54.140-07:00How foolish of me. Of course you are a fan.How foolish of me. Of course you are a fan.Georginahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13232154028235485600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-68458994645680492992015-07-22T10:28:40.763-07:002015-07-22T10:28:40.763-07:00Oh, I loved Noggin the Nog! Yes indeed! Oh, I loved Noggin the Nog! Yes indeed! Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-28881114924092661872015-07-22T10:10:12.285-07:002015-07-22T10:10:12.285-07:00Really enjoyed your post. What is it with unpronou...Really enjoyed your post. What is it with unpronounceable names? If I can get it wrong I will. Every time. And to be completely unserious, don't you think Nogbad the Bad is a top name for a scheming villainous would be usurper (in the Noggin the Nog cartoons)?Georginahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13232154028235485600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-40354584700125118302015-06-23T14:28:45.981-07:002015-06-23T14:28:45.981-07:00The Dark Lord, Claud? But of course! You should so...The Dark Lord, Claud? But of course! You should so write it, Sally! Sue, thanks! Katherine - heroic names tempt me towards the iconic hero of 'The Eye of Argon', *Grignr* - but maybe not.Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-85158453066064272182015-06-23T05:14:06.344-07:002015-06-23T05:14:06.344-07:00Really enjoyed this post!Really enjoyed this post!Sue Purkisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09084528571944803477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-39194415126644869362015-06-20T06:10:17.504-07:002015-06-20T06:10:17.504-07:00Fantasy names are fascinating! Dark Queens always ...Fantasy names are fascinating! Dark Queens always seem scarier than Dark Lords to me, maybe because they are often beautiful too?<br /><br />I wonder if you are doing a post on heroic names as well? I remember an editor rejecting an early submission of mine with the comment: "your fantasy names don't sound otherworldly and beautiful, just rather odd." (Rather odd... that was about 20 years ago, and I still wonder what he meant!)Katherine Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17196712319655603442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-46769032197427124902015-06-20T05:39:59.705-07:002015-06-20T05:39:59.705-07:00This is hilarious, learned and wise, Katherine. An...This is hilarious, learned and wise, Katherine. And what a brilliant question: at what age might immortal people stop growing older? There's enough to think about there for a whole series of books.<br /><br />By the way, has anyone written a book about a Dark Lord called Claud? Because I really think someone should.Sally Pruehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15999389456442530903noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-32603828529996834902015-06-17T22:29:48.351-07:002015-06-17T22:29:48.351-07:00Of course no one can be blamed for not being as go...Of course no one can be blamed for not being as good as Tolkien. I would love to have his gifts, but not at the price of living his life.Nick Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08191176209084540085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-64346791805473714372015-06-17T05:24:31.810-07:002015-06-17T05:24:31.810-07:00Sue, absolutely, and I'm glad I made you smile...Sue, absolutely, and I'm glad I made you smile - that was my hope! Nick - thankyou. And regarding George RR Martin, I read the first book so I'd know what it was about, but am not sufficiently interested to wade through the rest. I can see why he's become so popular, but - no, I agree. Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-46547232517123237532015-06-17T02:43:14.766-07:002015-06-17T02:43:14.766-07:00Excellent comparison between the way Tolkien creat...Excellent comparison between the way Tolkien created names, as opposed to Donaldson and indeed most other Tolkien imitators. The competition never really came close as regards the language, simply because they didn't have a clue what they were doing and Tolkien (as one of the world's foremost experts on the English language at the time) did.<br /><br />Many writers of fantasy assumed that inventing names was just about pulling letters out of a Scrabble bag until something came up. But you can drill down through any one of Tolkien's names, person or place, and find entire stories packed into their syllables like DNA into a cell nucleus. <br /><br />Tolkien was a perfect storm of circumstances that made him what he was. A brilliant philologist and lover of myths who also happened to fight in the most terrible of wars, for the practical experience side of things. Compare and contrast, say, George R R Martin. They're not on the same continent.Nick Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08191176209084540085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-66356826366831748362015-06-16T15:08:30.503-07:002015-06-16T15:08:30.503-07:00The thought of Dark Lords as teenage boys made me ...The thought of Dark Lords as teenage boys made me giggle. I hadn't realised that real world tyrants actually have lived in horrible places, but being human they would rightly fear assassins; Sauron wouldn't. It's the difference between a Dark Lord and a simple tyrant. If I were a Dark Lady(or evil Queen) I'd want to live somewhere nice or what's the point? Although Sauron has been defeated in the past and really can't afford to set up a nice house in the Shire or Gondor. <br /><br />I must admit I'm not much good at names, myself( the villain of my one novel to date is mostly just called the Baron). But Rowling is as careful of her names as Dickens. Voldemort means either "flight from death" or "steal from death", both appropriate for a man who wants to be immortal. <br /><br />Thanks for this post; it made me smile on my way to work.<br />Sue Bursztynskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09362273418897882971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-59382967757805998732015-06-16T13:20:50.170-07:002015-06-16T13:20:50.170-07:00Thankyou, John, for this! I confess I never made ...Thankyou, John, for this! I confess I never made it to the later Covenant books, and how interesting that SHE comes up yet again. With regard to Ceausescu and co. I have to agree; I mentioned to my husband in the course of writing this, that if you want to know what a real Dark Lord looks like, today's prime example would be Kim Jong Un. Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-68294257943430457932015-06-16T12:41:04.638-07:002015-06-16T12:41:04.638-07:00Tyrants living in oversized, drafty buildings in t...Tyrants living in oversized, drafty buildings in the midst of a wasteland? They wouldn't have to be teenagers, unless you see Mao, Ceausescu and fellow despots as perpetual teenagers. <br /><br />My punning tendency turns Foul's castle, Ridjeck Thome, into "Reject Home". Stephen Donaldson has confessed he's no good at making up names. I agree with you about Lord Foul, and in his heart of hearts he might too, I suspect. He solved the problem in his own lame way in the final sequence of Covenant novels by having a superpowerful spirit of destruction referred to as She Who Must Not Be Named. Needless to say, the way this is bandied about by the characters makes it just what it claims not to be: a name. Perhaps there's a handy idea for parents who can't agree on a decent name for their child: She Who Cannot Be Named. <br /><br />I too mispronounced Sauron when I first read the book, but the Appendices put me right long before Peter Jackson came along. My own minor problem with the name is that, as a lover of puns, I have allowed myself recently to play with the (entirely baseless) idea that Ronald Tolkien was writing about a bad-tempered alter ego, Sour Ron. <br /><br />We might chuckle to note that Tolkien and Donaldson effectively (and coincidentally) came up with the same name for their Dark Lords. According to Tolkien's 1930s "Etymologies" (not published until the 1980s), Sauron derives from a Quenya ("high-elven") word meaning "foul, evil-smelling, putrid". But Tolkien's wins for sonorousness and other factors (including the eye-pun on [dino-]saur). And Sauron's name fits him well as an embodiment of the physical corruption and waste that Tolkien encountered on the Somme.John Garthhttp://www.johngarth.co.uknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-34947413796202313652015-06-16T11:43:01.881-07:002015-06-16T11:43:01.881-07:00Thanks for your thoughts! And of course, I was bei...Thanks for your thoughts! And of course, I was being deliberately unfair. Though I never *quite* got on with the Covenant series... But it has its high points, and in its own way is as different from Tolkien as it resembled him.<br /><br />I like that you know all Earth Demons have short names. It figures! Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-3245718079959404802015-06-16T11:12:15.716-07:002015-06-16T11:12:15.716-07:00Marvelous theme! Thanks for such well researched t...Marvelous theme! Thanks for such well researched thoughts.<br />I gasped in horror to hear anything bad whispered about SRD's Covenant series. But you pitched a good argument and I... hear you. Personally, I think the name "Lord Foul" plus the epithets like Despiser, Render et al achieves multiple goals (did he mean to do this? who knows, but it worked for me):<br />1) It shows you very effectively that the races of the Land are separate and have their own traditions. Each developed a title for "him" that fits their own experience. So it's efficient world-building from that angle.<br />2) All of these words and names hint to me of someone who doesn't have a name of his own. Bad guys, like good guys, don't often refer to themselves in the third person (we had to wait for the NBA to be invented for that to happen). To have only a name which is a quality suggests an evil version of "I Am Who Am", something Biblical and deeply rooted. And ancient, because it's been translated into "Common". Nobody's running in fear from a villain named Herman Taylorson.<br />Great thoughts!<br />Full disclosure- my villains are a liche named Wolga Vrule and an Earth Demon (they all have short names) called Kog.Wm. L. Hahnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09918981970218130294noreply@blogger.com