Kralorelan names:
Truls Parsson writes:
>Nils Weinander has japanised the Kralorelan names.
>
>Ming Tzu La (Metsyla), Ga Dong Ah (Godunya) etc.
>
>Explaining this by saying that he thinks the names we use have
>been europeanised. That should be God learnerised of course.
>When I first saw it I didn't think much of it, but I have looked
>a little in the Genertela book and found little to support Nils
>theory.
The story is this: looking at the names for Kralorelan places and people found in the Genertela book I found that they all looked pseudo-chinese, except for the names of the emperors, which look vaguely indian. I thought that was a bit weird. One theory I had was that the emperors might be culturally different from the rest of the people in Kralorela. At the RQCon 2 lore auction I asked for an explanation. Greg and Sandy concurred that the emperors are not in any way culturally different from the masses and Greg said that the emperors' names presented are god learner corruptions of the original Kralorelan names.
Then Sandy gave us the names T'hah Hanwuti and Mi Ka De and I followed suit and gave my suggestions for the rest of the bunch, just as I have sinified a number of deities' names before.
>I think it is bad to draw too highly on world
>parallells.
The fact that I give pseudo-chinese names to Kralorelans does _not_ mean that I try to equate them with real world chinese. If you have read my earlier postings on Kralorela you will find that I do include some real world stuff, but that I try hard to make my Kralorela _different_ from the real world.
>The lunars ain't the romans.
Of course not, but anyone can come up with a pseudo-roman or pseudo-chinese name. That I think is a good thing, since consistent naming provides a sense of understanding. If you see a pseudo-roman name in a Gloranthan context you think 'aha! a lunar'. Likewise, if you see a pseudo-chinese name you think 'aha! a kralorelan'. I can add pseudo-norse/celtic for Orlanthi, pseudo-persian for Carmanians etc. I think the principle is clear.
It is of course possible to create a consistent naming tradition which is not based on real world counterparts, but that's not the way it's done for for most parts of Glorantha. And if you create a completely new name tradition you always stand the risk of getting names like those in Tekumel, which are colourful and distinctive, but impossible to pronounce.
>If you look at Kralorelan names in the Genertela book you will find
>both names that are split up and those that are not.
That's an interesting distinction. I never though of these names as one word vs. split up. My take was consistent with the majority vs. not consistent.
>Why would the scribe put all other names together except for one?
>My suggestion is that the split of names was due to Shang Hsa and is
>thought of as wrong. Maybe this had something to do with his achivement?
That's a good idea. It doesn't fit well for me, but I'm just doing speculation for use in _my_ Kralorela. This would work equally well.
>The correct theyalan spelling of a few Gods follow below.
>Or Lan Ti (Ti = God,Lord)
>Um Ak Ti
>Ur Xi
>Ma Ta Kos
I guess that's how the Kralorelans would corrupt the names, in the same manner that the westerners corrupted the Kralorelan ones. In fact I'll steal the idea!
/Nils W
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