Names (Nomes?)

From: Frusetta James <JNF990_at_st.aubg.bg>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 16:14:55 +200

Silly names? Nothing beats Chicken, Alaska -- named because when the population decided to name the town after the state bird, they found no one knew how to spell "Ptarmigan," so they finally just wrote "Chicken" on the application and it stuck. Or "Nome," which (supposedly -- I'm suspicious about this) supposed was marked "Name" on a surveyor's map pending the name being penciled in, and was misread as "Nome."

And Martin Crim wrote:
> 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).

How about, "spurious yet serious lingustic framework based on joke names already established?" Really, how hard is it to come up with an origin for Wilm's Church -- or even Corflu, as Greg does?

Though how would you get the various fan-produced products, Greg, II products, etc., to adopt and use an existing standard -- If I have a year to kill, I'd *love* to figure out Darktongue. But I doubt anyone else would ever use it to generate names...

---