> Swenstown should be named Swenstown for a reason understandable to
> a resident of Swenstown.
"Swenstown" is the town that was founded by Swen. The story of Swen Leapfoot (what there is of it) is printed in "King of Sartar", p.135, para. 4. The previous page has the story of Hauberk Jon, founder of Jonstown. And a page before that has the story of Wilms, founder of Wilmskirk.
> This isn't a call for linguistic purity; surely the Sartarite
> word for 'town' isn't identical to the English word for 'town',
> and a name translation (similar to Parisians calling the United
> States L'Etats Unis (or whatever)) is fine; preferable, actually,
> since it preserves flavor.
I agree completely. This is the kind of argument Tolkien used in presenting the names from "Lord of the Rings" not as authentically-reconstructed Westron (or whatever) but in appropriate English-resonant equivalents.
Interestingly, in a late draft of "King of Sartar", the "Colymar Book" section was referred to internally as "Kolymarsbok", a mock-Norse construction dropped from the published book. (You'd see scars from this late edit, among others, if you closely read my review in Tales #9).
> You might say that that there was a chap named Swen who was
> important to this town early in its history; that might even
> become (contradiction in terms alert) Official Gloranthan Canon.
Er, both these things have happened in "Official Gloranthan Canon". If it helps, the "History of Sartar" material printed in KoS existed in manuscript form over a decade earlier. Throughout the Eighties, one could have learned (by asking Greg) who Swen and Jon and Wilms "were".
> That is just a rationalization, not a reason, and someone who
> knows the *real* reason for the town's naming won't be fooled...
> That isn't the reason, it's a rationalization, and players are
> usually smart enough to catch on.
Glorantha is undoubtedly a bad world to play in if you simply can't take this kind of thing. The silliness and weirdness combine to make it irritating to players who are *annoyed* when they "catch on". BUT -- and it's a big but -- is it remotely sensible *today* to whine on about changing place-names that have been stable (well, more-or-less stable in the case of Wilmskirk / Wilm's Church) since Glorantha's first ever venture into print?
I'll drift into Tolkien again, rather than risk annoying Martin Crim by joining him in attempting to distort John Hughes' "four levels" analytical construct into an elitist paradigm for self-selecting gamers.
I liked "The Hobbit" when I first read it, and still do. I liked "Lord of the Rings", but not as much as I liked the Hobbit; it did grow on me, however. I didn't like "The Silmarillion" much, and I still don't.
"The Silmarillion" ignored the all things I'd liked about Middle-Earth from "The Hobbit", and went off down some arty-farty high-fantasy genealogical linguistic high-falutin' mock-mythery of its own. Fair enough, I can safely ignore all that guff -- just as you don't need to read the Bible to understand the motivations of the Wicked Bishop in a Robin Hood movie, you needn't read the Silmarillion to know that there's a lot of (doubtless beautiful and tragic) history behind the Elves in LotR.
But if someone tried to lay down the law that (because they were silly, and whimsical, and an early creation, and a barrier to entry for latecomers wanting to get to grips with the Real Middle-Earth) there ARE NO HOBBITS, or they had to be called "Halflings" and taken Very Seriously, and the Shire was renamed with some godawful Westron name, and familiar names like "Bilbo" and "Frodo" had to be edited into their Linguistically Accurate forms, and Humour was Right Out, and all their mock-Englishness ("jarring the characters' sense of reality") was Banned...
See you in Swenstown,
:::: Email: <mailto:Nick_Brooke_at_btinternet.com>
Nick
:::: Website: <http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/>
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