When I first read King of Sartar many years ago I was convinced that "argrath" is a title, not a personal name. It can be a personal name as well however: so the Harshax era had mutiple historical argraths known to them, just as our era has mutiple "Robin Hoods" portrayed and contenders for that title, or to use another analogy, probably closer, how different Biblical Scholars reinterpret the Jesus of the Gospels. I hate to use real world analogies on the list: but that is the kind of ambiguity KoS gave to me - a compiled collection of ancient sources, subject to Literary, Textual Form and Source Criticism -- in short "The Quest for the Historical Argrath"! In game terms I found this simply wonderfully liberating - Argrath could not be whoever i chose him to be, even one of our player characters.
My guess was "argrath" meant something like "liberator". There can be multiple argraths, just as in our world John Lydon that noted Biblical Scholar was perfectly correct to sing "I am an Antichrist" not the -- there are multiple antichrist, it's a title as I recall, in the Pauline Epistles at least. (Staying Biblical "lightbringer" is used as well to refer to both Satan and Jesus - because it's a title, and Cyrus the Great a pagan is referred to by the word for Messiah as I recall, because he was a liberator. I could go on. I usually do!)
So yeah: and the term could also be a personal name, adding to the confusion. The Great Argrath is the one who emerges from the plethora of liberators: but you don't have to be called argrath to be the Argrath, or even an argrath.
I may be totally wrong headed on this, and I realize it does not answer your question at all, but in a gaming sense of leaving the future open it works beautifully?
cj x
CJ's uneventful life is now blogged: http://jerome23.wordpress.com/
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