tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 14 16:34:04 1995
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Re: trefoil not! caltrop is!
On Thu, 11 May 1995, Steve Weaver wrote:
> So'wI' chu'Ha'lu'
>
> I know there IS a klingon "name" for it, I remember reading it, but I
> cannot recall it or the source right now.
Okrand refers to it simply as {tlhIngan wo' Degh} (the symbol of the Klingon
Empire). It's from the trading card SP1.
> The Klingon Emblem (yay!) is NOT a trefoil (an ornament or symbol in the
> form of a stylized trifoliolate leaf), but a heraldric caltrop (a device
> with four metal points so arranged that when ant three are on the ground
> the fourth projects upward as a hazard to the hoofs of horses or pneumatic
> tires).
This isn't canon, but in Klingonaase, it called the "Komerex stela".
The word "komerex" means "the structure which grows" and is also the
word for "empire" since the Klingons (in John Ford's novels) believe that an
empire must continually grow to survive. Therefore the symbol apparently
represents a "growing structure", a symbolic representation of the Empire.
Personally, I always thought it looked like a sylized rocket.
> Steve Weaver [email protected]
yoDtargh