tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 08 10:47:38 1996
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Re: Does this sound right?
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>Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 11:30:50 -0700
>From: [email protected]
>>Putting grammar aside; a sentence as a name?
>>DloraH
>My husband's name in Klingon is qu'vaj. It means "the warrior is fierce".
>That's a sentence used for a name.
>wIghbe'
It's not uncommon in other languages and times... Look at Biblical names:
"Isaac" (yitzchaq)/"He will laugh"; "Ishmael" (yishma`el)/"God will hear";
"Abimelech" (avimelech)/"My father is king" (actually, that's not quite
what it means; the "avi" here is not the possessive form "my father"; it
just happens to sound the same. It really means something more like
"king-father." But it sounds like "my father is king"); "Dan"/"he
judged"; "Tzurishaddai"/"Shaddai(God) is my rock." I could go on for a
while; this is fun. But I've already spoken too long on a tangent.
To bring it back to Klingon a little: What we've seen of Klingon names
mostly mean nothing (as is true of English names, at least in English),
with a few exceptions (matlh, qeng). It's also worth noting that Klingons
are generally named by scriptwriters who bring in a character (hence the
disregard for Klingon phonology sometimes evident), so if we want to think
in terms of the language there's not much to be gleaned from the names. It
would seem that Klingon names are like English names in that many don't
have meaning directly in Klingon (side-note: It seems that in English more
female names are meaningful English words than male names. There seem to
be more flower/gemstone names (physical objects) used for women: Pearl,
Rose, Heather, Ruby...). There are a fair number of monosyllables (Kang,
Pok, Torgh, Kor, Maltz) but also polysyllabic ones (Kahless, Mara, Valkris,
Koloth).
I suppose the best you can say for a name is "Pick what works for you." I
tend to like names that don't break Klingon phonology (only Klingon sounds,
no consonant-clusters at the beginnings of syllables, only attested ones
(-w', -y', -rgh) at the ends of syllables, no consecutive vowels, no
initial vowels, etc), but of course it's your name; it can be anything.
Meaning isn't all that important to me; I use Seqram on the MUSH, which
"means" either "seismic fault of the night" or "trivial seismic
fault"---essentially no sensible meaning, which suits me fine (at least it
doesn't mean "boneheaded jerk") (the story behind the name, for those that
have missed it: We had and still have several Mark's on this list,
including Mark Mandel, who started calling himself marqem, presumably by
spelling "Mark M." in Klingon fashion. I liked that, came up with "marqeS"
from my name, and spelled it backwards so as not to look too much like a
copycat).
~mark
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