SR - Naming Conventions

[D.R. Hoffpauir]

greetings all,

Martin, Brian wrote:

>         Has anyone suggested that we try to translate "land of the
> southerners" or "south lands" .... or some other such
> descriptive name into Occitan or some other medieval language? Any
> thoughts on this?

    I've looked at Latin translations for most of the names suggested on the SR
web-page.  The biggest problem with Latin is that our modern language has many
Latin roots and usages.

    Off hand I don't recall the translation for 'land.'  South, southern,
southward, etc. is some variation of  'Australius.'  Of course, "Australian"
would be out of the question (yea right, "g'day rex").  'Australius populi' or
'Australius populus' would translate 'Southern-people.'  Unfortunately that's a
bit too close to 'Australopithecus' and that's out of period.

    There is one translation of 'southern' that I like.  It is 'Austral' which I
interpret to sound like 'Aus-trail' or closer to how we pronounce the 'strel'
part of Estrella.  'Austral solum' (Southern soil) or 'Leo austral' (lion of the
south/ southern lion), these sound pretty good and fit with some of the naming
proposals.

    As a side note I also ran across 'Natale solum' which means literally 'natal
soil,' figuratively it would mean 'place of birth' or 'where I am from.'  I'm
not sure of proper usage, but a conjugation of 'Australonatale' (southern birth/
born) at least rolls off the tongue (yes, it sounds Italian).

Vestigia nulla ret orsum
David St. David, Raven's Fort

P.S.  Don't shoot me if the usage isn't right.  I'm more familiar with taxonomic
naming conventions than true Latin.



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