ANSTHRLD - Translations (fwd)

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

SCA Heralds: We have principality mutterings going on down hyar.

May I impose on all y'all to help with this question?  I'll save up
any replies and send 'em on to him and/or the Southern Ansteorran
list.

Let me also ask for volunteers to help with a heraldry committee for
the southern principality effort.  Salary to be two groats per
indiction (payable annually, rounded down to the nearest dandiprat).
It works out to double my salary as Bordure Herald.

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 22:23:22 -0500
    From: Brian & Pam Martin <twinoak at shield.com>
    To: tmcd at crl.com
    Cc: Brian at Work <bmartin at origin.ea.com>
    Subject: Translations

    Daniel, [Daniel's comments are in brackets, like this]

    Okay, it occured to me not long ago that none of the place names
that people have suggested for the southern region have really grabbed
me because, quite frankly, they don't sound like real places. Cibolo
and Coerleonis are the two closest, but one sounds like a disease adn
the other a crime family.  [Hey!  What about Campoleone?!  It's even a
real place!]  As for the others, well, real places have names like
Tuscany, Bavaria, Sussex, Canada, etc., they don't have names like
Pays de Lion. As much as I love the while lion thing, it just doesn't
ring true. So I got this book about place names (imagine that, reading
a book!) and learned a little bit about how many such names came
about.

    To cut to the chase, places tend to have either names that the
indiginous people gave them, or a monicker stuck on them by someone
else.  Believe me, there's a big difference in the types of names that
people give their own land vs. outsiders naming the place. Since we
are the indiginous people of the southern region, I think that its
only logical that we choose the indiginous people route.

    Having come to that conclusion, I thought about the kinds of names
that indiginous people have, over time, named their countries
(kingdoms, territories, whatever). By in large, these people have
given their lands names like "our land" or "the land" or
"home". Pretty creative, huh?

    So here's the deal: I'm looking for someone who can translate a
few names such as "our land", "homeland", "the land" [An Tir!], and/or
"southern land" and "land of the southern people" into languages such
as Saxon, French (preferable medieval French), Latin, Greek and maybe
even German, although no one seems to like German except for
Deiterich. Now, I'm talking proper translations, here; not Bryn Glwad
or Calontir. (I love my barony but it is poorly named.)  [I'm told
"Bryn Gwlad" is ungrammatical.  His Calontir comment is based on my
recently saying that I thought it was also ungrammatical or meant
something like "Heart Made Of Dirt".  I invite correction.]

    You have been great as a filter for names that for whatever reason
won't work. That's good, we need that to weed out names that are not
viable as early as possible. You also sound like you have some
contacts in the heraldic world that know a lot about/are good at
translations. Can you come up with some translations, or do you know
someone who can come up with some of these translations? If so, I
think that it would really help us arrive at a name that sounds like a
real place name.

    One last thing to consider: a lot of names are somewhat
bastardized Greek and Roman. What may happen is that the Greek for
"Our Land" is "Terra Dubaikis" (a completely made up Greek-looking
word for the purpose of getting my point across), we may not like like
"Terra Dubaikis", but we may love "Terradube". I feel confident that
we could pass that bastardization as the atlas is chock full of just
such instances.  [I am not so confident!]

    So what do you think; care to see what you can come up with? Please
respond to this email at me work address (the one you see most often,
bmartin at origin.ea.com).

    Thanks,
    Pendaran

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.