[ANSTHRLD] Loch Soilleir

[Tim McDaniel]

[Emma, willing to stick this into some Ansteorran Gazette or another?
The important stuff is the spelling info in the first three
paragraphs, though the pronunciation is useful too -- please let me
know if you want to trim. - DdL]

Loch Soilleir has gathered an amazing number of creative misspellings
since 1985.  There were two typos on their own second submission form.
Laurel has misspelled it at least 14 times in two decades.

The Armorial has a different spelling than "Soilleir".  The Armorial
is wrong.  (Laurel mentioned that in the November 1991 LoAR, but it
wasn't fixed.)  The August 1980 LoAR on the Laurel Web site was wrong
-- Mari looked at the copy in the Laurel files.

Loch Soilleir's Web page is correct.

Eight letters.  Starts with "soil".  Two 'l's.  "-eir" ending, not the
usual "-ier".  One mnemonic I've heard is "soil-lei-r", 'Hawaiian
farmer', but please do NOT make fighting tabards based on that.
Eldrich suggests "'i' before 'e', except after 'c's and lochs."
"Fruitbat", from Lochac, suggests "Spelling Old Irish Leads
Lexicographers to Egregiously Inaccurate Results".

Effrick, a Gaelic expert, writes, "[Pronounced] 'LOCH SOHL-yair', with
'LOCH' being the Scottish pronunciation of <loch>, of course (using a
rasping \kh\ sound like the <ch> in German <ach> and <Bach>) and
'yair' rhyming with English <hair>, the 'y' being like the <y> in
English <yes>. The stress goes on the capitalized syllables."

She adds that it's a translation of 'Clear Lake', a real-world name
for the location of the group.  It seems relatively plausible for
Gaelic, which is miraculous in a registration from 1980.  She has an
undated example of a stream being described as "soilleir", and while
she has no place names with "soilleir", "Relatively concrete physical
appearance descriptions of lakes do show up in Gaelic place names".

Learn by this, o heralds that consult with new groups.

Lesson 1: Don't choose fanciful names like "land of the dream" or "sea
of dwarves".  Concrete names like "ox ford" or "linden grove" or "big
river" or "clear lake" are far more likely to be plausible.

Lesson 2: Please avoid choosing a name that people can't spell
reliably.  Play-test the name if needed.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel (home); Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com; work is tmcd at us.ibm.com.