tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 13 16:39:51 2001
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names (was Re: *Paramount* chaw')
[regarding proper names]
ja' QIS:
>But they *DO* mean something. When you say 'Worf' you are referring to
>a very specific thing and everyone on this list understands exactly what
>that word means.
That's probably true. However, there are actually two different people
that name can legitimately refer to. The "other" one (apparently the TV
Worf's grandfather) is more closely associated with "high-quality" Klingon,
having appeared in the movie which set off the Klingon Shakespeare
Restoration Project.
>When I say 'qoraQ' I am also referring to a very
>specific thing, but only a select few may instantly recognize what this
>word means. Others may be able to deduce from context what type of
>thing it refers to, but perhaps not which specific one. Perhaps a
>name's derivation is lost in the mists of time, but it still means
>something today.
As a name, its meaning is almost never what the "word" means. Cliff on
Cheers never had any connotation of a vertical rock face. None of the
people named Mark on the mailing list bring to mind a smudge or written
symbol. I almost never think of the "William the Conquerer" reference when
talking to or about charghwI', and it's only in a discussion like this that
I even notice that the name {QIS} is also a run-of-the-mill noun with a
general meaning.
Names are labels for specific people. They are not useful without first
establishing the correlation between person and name. Sometimes that
correlation is so pervasive as to be assumed; if I mentioned George
Washington or David Ben Gurion, I'd expect the majority of people to know
who I was talking about. In this forum, the same is true of qeylIS and
be'tor and mara. But if I were suddenly to say something about Isaac, it's
likely that not even his own father would realize who it was until I
identified him more explicitly.
Names can also be assigned to specific places or objects, and even to
larger classes of other things, but only rarely does that name turn into a
generic term. "Aspirin" is perhaps the most powerful example of a name
which is now a dictionary-approved noun in English. It's possible that
{toQDuj} is the same sort of thing in Klingon. But most of the time, a
name is just a label of convenience to avoid having to say something like
"my friend's sister's third child" every time the person is mentioned.
>Try writing a story without names.
Done, several times over. Unless the story involves someone else's
characters, I'd even go so far as to say it's a trivial undertaking.