Re: Top Ten Things

From: Martin Crim <MCrim_at_erols.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 17:24:13 -0500

Me:
>>Basically all the place names. What isn't fake Olde English (Swenstown),
>>fake Scandinavian (Jaranshold), or fake French (those Seshnelan areas) is
>>mundane (Barbarian Town), just plan silly (Nochet got its name when someone
>>asked if this city on the map had a name and Greg said "not yet"), out of
>>place (Christian's Bay), or plagiarized (mostly from Dr. Seuss—Prax,
>>Koromondol, though "Carmania" is a RW place name).
>>
>>Having nailed this thesis to the door, I stand prepared to defend it.

Eric Rowe:
>So, what you're really saying is that real world place names make
>sense. King of Prussia, PA, Lebanon, OR, Chevy Chase, MD, etc.
>
>I find Glorathan names no more silly than RW ones. Please defend your
>thesis now.

To reiterate:

1. Fake
2. Mundane
3. Silly
4. Out of place
5. Plagiarized

Mr. Rowe defends silliness on the grounds that Gloranthan names are no more silly than RW ones, and cites some not-particularly-silly RW place names to make his point. The allegedly silly place names, along with such truly silly place names as Truth or Consequences, N.M., Glen Canyon, or Greenland, are silly in a different sort of way: they are named within the world, by people here, for reasons which strike us as silly but which are intelligible in the world. The *level* of silliness, especially compared to American place names which are a mix of various sources, is irrelevant; what I'm attacking is the silliness of giving joke names to places in the world that don't make sense within that world.

Greg's naming a blob on the map "Nochet" is like Thomas Pynchon's character in "Mason-Dixon" named Dr. Cherrycoke; but without being witty.

Now, given that, do we:
a) rename places within a consistent and serious linguistic framework, a la David Dunham's Carmanian work,
b) give up Glorantha as a bad cause, or
c) live with it.

C is less work, but I vote for a).

• --Martin

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