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Renaming Europe

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Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 3, 2006, 10:09:37 PM2/3/06
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I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history background,
for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic, and
I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
"Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands," "Spain,"
and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul" and
"Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to get
away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
anybody?

Patricia C. Wrede


Joer...@yahoo.de

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Feb 3, 2006, 10:27:58 PM2/3/06
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Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history background,
> for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,

Different for having magic - or is there also an important historical
difference, like alternative origins of the first European settlers?


and
> I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
> "Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands," "Spain,"
> and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
> haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
> some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul" and
> "Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to get
> away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
> anybody?
>
> Patricia C. Wrede

(Pseudo-) Classical? Britannia or Anglia, Gallia, Batavia, Iberia,
Germania or Alemannia?
Or you might take the names of (sometime) important provinces and
expand them over the whole area, just like "Holland" came to mean all
of the Seven Priovinces in common usage. Of course *you* should have at
least a vague concept why "Wessex", "Neustria" "Friesland" and
"Castile" became so important.

As a reader, I would vastly prefer names I can recognize as historical
or plausible developed from historical ones. Implausible renaming tends
to annoy me a lot.


BTW - given that for central European countires, the English languaghe
tends to use the Latin name (Bohemia, Moravia, Lithuania, Latvia etc.)
I wondered what the German name of the country called "Ruritania" in
English might have been - the one with the capital of Strelsau.

Jörg

David Friedman

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Feb 3, 2006, 10:33:52 PM2/3/06
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In article <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>,

You might think about Arabic names for European countries. "al-Andalus"
is the obvious one. Western Europeans in general get referred to as
Franks--"Ferangi" is I think the usual transliteration. I don't know
about other terms, but they surely exist.

Or Latin and Greek terms for the relevant geographical locations.

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

Rich Weyand

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Feb 3, 2006, 11:02:38 PM2/3/06
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In article <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:

For Spain, how about Iberia or a variation thereof?
For France, Aragon, Provence or one of the other old province names.

One suggestion is to look up the names of the countries in other languages,
like Allemagne for Germany, Pays Bas or Niederland for Holland, Angleterre for
England, etc.

To get these translations (and anything else for that matter) use:
http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

I just typed in the country name in English, then selected from English, and
to: whichever language I wanted.

I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa (the
English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos, King of
Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her off. There is no
cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put in the Roman
variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long time.

Rich Weyand
Working title "Message Received" complete
WIP: untitled sequel

Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 3, 2006, 11:36:51 PM2/3/06
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<Joer...@yahoo.de> wrote in message
news:1139023678.8...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

>Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>> I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history
>> background,
>> for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,

>Different for having magic - or is there also an important historical
>difference, like alternative origins of the first European settlers?

The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that the
various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful;
thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or Native
Americans of any sort. Up to that point, I expect differences in Europe,
Africa, and Asia will be due mainly to this world having magic, and I expect
to wiggle things so that things are moderately close to Real Life history.
The absence of an indiginous population in the Americas is obviously going
to have a significant impact on the way things develop during the
exploration and colonization period, and I'm still feeling my way through
how I'm going to finagle that to get to where I want.

Which is, basically: A North America in which the threat of Indians was
replaced by the threat of un-extinct megafauna, both magical and non-magical
in nature (mammoths, wooly rhinocerouses, terror birds, dire wolves, dragons
[what else would prey on mammoths and wooly rhinos?]). The U.S. was settled
and had a successful revolution and a civil war, but the westward expansion
has been slower and stalled for a while at the Mississippi for various
reasons. Nobody has yet mapped all the way to the Pacific (I'm thinking of
making California an island, the way it was depicted on early maps, but I
haven't decided yet); the Lewis and White expedition never came back (no
Sacajawea, plus did I mention that the Rockies are a favorite nesting ground
for dragons?) East of the Mississippi, the megafauna have mostly been
cleared out, especially in settled areas, though the backwoods parts of the
country are still pretty dangerous. (Suggestions for place names that can
substitute for Indian-language-origin names like Ohio, Chicago, Mississippi,
Michigan, etc. are also welcome...)

I know the "feel" I'm after; now I need to work out some plausible backstory
to get me there.

>(Pseudo-) Classical? Britannia or Anglia, Gallia, Batavia, Iberia,
>Germania or Alemannia?

Britannia is a bit too close to Britain, I think, but it might do if I can't
come up with something better. I'd forgotten about Iberia--that will work
nicely.

>Or you might take the names of (sometime) important provinces and
>expand them over the whole area, just like "Holland" came to mean all
>of the Seven Priovinces in common usage. Of course *you* should have at
>least a vague concept why "Wessex", "Neustria" "Friesland" and
>"Castile" became so important.

That gives me some useful ideas, too; thank you.

>As a reader, I would vastly prefer names I can recognize as historical
>or plausible developed from historical ones. Implausible renaming tends
>to annoy me a lot.

Well, that's why I'm asking. :)

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 3, 2006, 11:42:34 PM2/3/06
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"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-DA7AA3.1...@news.isp.giganews.com...

> In article <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history
>> background,
>> for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,
>> and
>> I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
>> "Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands,"
>> "Spain,"
>> and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
>> haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
>> some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul"
>> and
>> "Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to
>> get
>> away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
>> anybody?
>
> You might think about Arabic names for European countries. "al-Andalus"
> is the obvious one. Western Europeans in general get referred to as
> Franks--"Ferangi" is I think the usual transliteration. I don't know
> about other terms, but they surely exist.

Ferangi is too close to the Star Trek guys, I think. I like the idea of
using Arabic names, but coming up with a justification for why the
place-names in this time-line are of Arabic origin seems to me to be
difficult without making more changes to pre-1492 history than I'd like.
Post-1492...things could get very interesting indeed.

> Or Latin and Greek terms for the relevant geographical locations.

I'll add that to my list of possible sources.

Patricia C. Wrede

SAMK

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Feb 3, 2006, 11:47:17 PM2/3/06
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David Friedman wrote:
> You might think about Arabic names for European countries. "al-Andalus"
> is the obvious one. Western Europeans in general get referred to as
> Franks--"Ferangi" is I think the usual transliteration. I don't know
> about other terms, but they surely exist.
>
> Or Latin and Greek terms for the relevant geographical locations.
>
But don't, I beg you, use Ferangi.

SAMK

James Nicoll

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Feb 3, 2006, 11:56:22 PM2/3/06
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In article <11u8c5k...@corp.supernews.com>,

Did the Mongols have a collective term for Europe, aside
from "westernmost speedbump"?
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

James Nicoll

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:01:33 AM2/4/06
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In article <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>,
Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:

>I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa (the
>English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos, King of
>Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her off. There is no
>cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put in the Roman
>variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long time.
>

What do Europe's neighbors call it? The Turks and such?

Bill Swears

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:14:35 AM2/4/06
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James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>,
> Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa (the
>>English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos, King of
>>Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her off. There is no
>>cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put in the Roman
>>variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long time.
>>
>
> What do Europe's neighbors call it? The Turks and such?

According to http://www.hazar.com/ , which claims to be a free online
english/turkish dictionary, Avrupa.

Bill


--
Bill Swears

Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic! How cool is that?

David Friedman

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:17:26 AM2/4/06
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In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>,

"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:

> Which is, basically: A North America in which the threat of Indians was
> replaced by the threat of un-extinct megafauna, both magical and non-magical
> in nature (mammoths, wooly rhinocerouses, terror birds, dire wolves, dragons
> [what else would prey on mammoths and wooly rhinos?]).

Have you read _1491_? I gather it's about current views of human
activity in the New World before Columbus.

I've seen it argued that the settling of the East Coast was made much
easier because the Indians had cleared the land--and then mostly died
from Old World diseases brought by early explorers.

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

Alma Hromic Deckert

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:18:38 AM2/4/06
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On Fri, 03 Feb 2006 20:14:35 -0900, Bill Swears <wsw...@gci.net>
wrote:

>James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>,
>> Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa (the
>>>English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos, King of
>>>Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her off. There is no
>>>cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put in the Roman
>>>variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long time.
>>>
>>
>> What do Europe's neighbors call it? The Turks and such?
>
>According to http://www.hazar.com/ , which claims to be a free online
>english/turkish dictionary, Avrupa.
>

I rather like THAT. It gives a sense of foreignness without being
alien.

Dorothy J Heydt

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:46:11 AM2/4/06
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In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>,
Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:

>(Suggestions for place names that can
>substitute for Indian-language-origin names like Ohio, Chicago, Mississippi,
>Michigan, etc. are also welcome...)

For Chicago, keep in mind that the word means "skunk-cabbage."
French spelling of a Central Algonkian word something like
shka:k-wa, cognate with Eastern Algonkian ska:nk-wa, "skunk."
(-wa is a nominalizing suffix, you find it all through the
language.) In what language you're going to find a word for
"stinky plants" (I don't even know what skunk-cabbage looks
like), I leave up to you.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com

Bill Swears

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Feb 4, 2006, 1:41:24 AM2/4/06
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How about New Geneva, since it's a city on a huge lake? It seems like
there should be more new Avropa names, if there weren't pseudo native
American names to use.

Rich Weyand

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Feb 4, 2006, 3:02:53 AM2/4/06
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In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>(Suggestions for place names that can
>substitute for Indian-language-origin names like Ohio, Chicago, Mississippi,
>Michigan, etc. are also welcome...)

Look at the non-Indian place names: Detroit, Ft. Wayne, Superior, Marseilles,
Des Plaines, Joliet, Peru, LaSalle, South Bend, Lafayette, Little Rock, Big
Rock, Hinkley, Bloomington, Normal, Springfield, Sandwich, Ames, Davenport,
Rock Island, West Bend, Des Moines....

What you get is a lot of French cities, words and phrases, lots of English
cities, words and phrases, and some German, Swedish, Polish... ones as well.

Rich Weyand

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Feb 4, 2006, 3:08:45 AM2/4/06
to
In article <Iu5E...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

>For Chicago, keep in mind that the word means "skunk-cabbage."
>French spelling of a Central Algonkian word something like
>shka:k-wa, cognate with Eastern Algonkian ska:nk-wa, "skunk."
>(-wa is a nominalizing suffix, you find it all through the
>language.) In what language you're going to find a word for
>"stinky plants" (I don't even know what skunk-cabbage looks
>like), I leave up to you.

Ooo, I like this game. In French, skunk cabbage is chou de mouffette, while
smelly cabbage is chou malodorant.

Probably be spelled Choumalodorant and pronounced choo MAL duh rant.

(Note that Des Plaines is dez PLAINZ, Bourbonnais is bur buh NAZE, and
Marseilles is mar SALES)

Irina Rempt

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Feb 4, 2006, 8:40:45 AM2/4/06
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Joer...@yahoo.de wrote:

> BTW - given that for central European countires, the English languaghe
> tends to use the Latin name (Bohemia, Moravia, Lithuania, Latvia etc.)
> I wondered what the German name of the country called "Ruritania" in
> English might have been - the one with the capital of Strelsau.

Something like "Rauthern"?

Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 06-Jan-2005

Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 4, 2006, 9:14:23 AM2/4/06
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"Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:iZidnYX3SMc2wnne...@wideopenwest.com...

> In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"
> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>>(Suggestions for place names that can
>>substitute for Indian-language-origin names like Ohio, Chicago,
>>Mississippi,
>>Michigan, etc. are also welcome...)
>
> Look at the non-Indian place names: Detroit, Ft. Wayne, Superior,
> Marseilles,
> Des Plaines, Joliet, Peru, LaSalle, South Bend, Lafayette, Little Rock,
> Big
> Rock, Hinkley, Bloomington, Normal, Springfield, Sandwich, Ames,
> Davenport,
> Rock Island, West Bend, Des Moines....
>
> What you get is a lot of French cities, words and phrases, lots of English
> cities, words and phrases, and some German, Swedish, Polish... ones as
> well.

I'm expecting to use a bunch more French names. I've also been looking at
the kinds of what-happened-here names that quite a few towns in the West got
called. My current favorite is the town of Lost Chicken, but Dead Mule is a
close second. And that appears to be a universal system, not limited to
English -- the aforementioned "Skunk Cabbage," for instance, and the Grand
Tetons, and Aux Claire, Mille Lacs, and assorted other place-names.

The trick, I'm finding, is coming up with names that are sufficiently
different, but that don't cause a sort of cognitive dissonance when combined
in the same story with names that *would*, very likely, be the same, like
Washington and Virginia and Carolina. Of course, I can change those, too,
but then I really start to lose the feel I want. It's a delicate balancing
act.

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 4, 2006, 9:18:55 AM2/4/06
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"Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:AtCdnVTSuvO...@wideopenwest.com...

> In article <Iu5E...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> wrote:
>>For Chicago, keep in mind that the word means "skunk-cabbage."
>>French spelling of a Central Algonkian word something like
>>shka:k-wa, cognate with Eastern Algonkian ska:nk-wa, "skunk."
>>(-wa is a nominalizing suffix, you find it all through the
>>language.) In what language you're going to find a word for
>>"stinky plants" (I don't even know what skunk-cabbage looks
>>like), I leave up to you.
>
> Ooo, I like this game. In French, skunk cabbage is chou de mouffette,
> while
> smelly cabbage is chou malodorant.

What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book, I
think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that in
English.

Having grown up in the Chicago suburbs, I'm rather fond of the idea of
continuing to call the city after skunk-cabbage.

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 4, 2006, 9:16:27 AM2/4/06
to

"Bill Swears" <wsw...@gci.net> wrote in message
news:11u8e1l...@corp.supernews.com...

> James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>,
>> Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa
>>>(the English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of
>>>Minos, King of Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her
>>>off. There is no cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put
>>>in the Roman variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long
>>>time.
>>>
>>
>> What do Europe's neighbors call it? The Turks and such?
>
> According to http://www.hazar.com/ , which claims to be a free online
> english/turkish dictionary, Avrupa.

That has distinct possibilites -- it's close enough to be recognizeable,
with some effort, but different enough to have the sort of alternate-history
feel I'm looking for.

Patricia C. Wrede


Erol K. Bayburt

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Feb 4, 2006, 10:21:49 AM2/4/06
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On Sat, 04 Feb 2006 04:02:38 GMT, wey...@rcn.com (Rich Weyand) wrote:


>
>I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa (the
>English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos, King of
>Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her off. There is no
>cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put in the Roman
>variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long time.

Maybe leave "Europe" as the one unchanged name.

I was going to suggest cribbing from Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe"
novels for alternative European nation names (while noting that this
wasn't necessarily a *good* suggestion), and IIRC he left the name
"Europe" unchanged.

[checking] Yes, at one point one of the characters from the alternate
world makes the distinction: "Our Europe, not the grimworld Europe."


--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com

Dorothy J Heydt

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Feb 4, 2006, 10:51:51 AM2/4/06
to
In article <d6h9u1d56p4ekrq4d...@4ax.com>,

Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>I was going to suggest cribbing from Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe"
>novels for alternative European nation names (while noting that this
>wasn't necessarily a *good* suggestion), and IIRC he left the name
>"Europe" unchanged.
>
>[checking] Yes, at one point one of the characters from the alternate
>world makes the distinction: "Our Europe, not the grimworld Europe."

Hm. But they way you tell it, "Europe" is still the name the
thisworlders give it. What do the grimworlders call it?

Keep in mind that throughout the Middle Ages and at least into
the beginning of the Renaissance, there was a word for "Europe."
It was "Christendom." Whether that would fit into Patricia's
world setup, only she can tell us.

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

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Feb 4, 2006, 11:14:29 AM2/4/06
to

Recognizability will go down, but you could name the realms after some
of the tribes that used to live there.

I tend to translate place names into modern equivalents in my alternate
history setting (e.g. York instead of Jorvik), though, same way I tend
to translate amounts of money into pounds of silver instead of bothering
the reader with the various arcane non-decimal currency systems.

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 4, 2006, 10:09:00 AM2/4/06
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wey...@rcn.com (Rich Weyand) wrote on 04.02.06 in <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>:

> I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa
> (the English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos,

I can't parse the parenthetical.

> King of Crete, by Zeus, who, in the form of a bull, carried her off. There
> is no cognate in Latin/Roman mythology, so you can't just put in the Roman
> variation. And it has been called Europa for a long long time.

What I never figured out is *why* it was called Europa. That certainly
wasn't the case during the time when the classical Greek and Roman
cultures were dominant - certainly not before Byzantium.

Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

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Feb 4, 2006, 11:15:49 AM2/4/06
to
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> Britannia is a bit too close to Britain, I think, but it might do if I can't
> come up with something better. I'd forgotten about Iberia--that will work
> nicely.

Prydain?

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

John F. Eldredge

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Feb 4, 2006, 11:37:33 AM2/4/06
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On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 05:46:11 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

>In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>,

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/veg/plants/skunkcabbage.htm

--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

Rich Weyand

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:52:58 PM2/4/06
to
In article <11u9dug...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>I'm expecting to use a bunch more French names. I've also been looking at
>the kinds of what-happened-here names that quite a few towns in the West got
>called. My current favorite is the town of Lost Chicken, but Dead Mule is a
>close second. And that appears to be a universal system, not limited to
>English -- the aforementioned "Skunk Cabbage," for instance, and the Grand
>Tetons, and Aux Claire, Mille Lacs, and assorted other place-names.

And don't forget the ones related to animals. Things like Whitehorse or
Deerfield or Elkhorn. And since you still have the megafauna around, you can
have some fun with it as well. Dragonhorn, Mammothfield, etc.

BTW, I really like the megafauna. Adds a whole new dimension to a visit to
Mammoth Cave.

David Friedman

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:58:59 PM2/4/06
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In article <43e4d335$0$67260$157c...@dreader2.cybercity.dk>,

"Peter Knutsen (usenet)" <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:

> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> > Britannia is a bit too close to Britain, I think, but it might do if I
> > can't
> > come up with something better. I'd forgotten about Iberia--that will work
> > nicely.
>
> Prydain?

Is Albion too close too?

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

Rich Weyand

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 12:59:17 PM2/4/06
to
In article <11u9duh...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
>Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book, I
>think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that in
>English.

grand fleuve boueux

Probably be anglicized into adj-adj-noun order grand boueux fleuve, and then
mangled:

Granbowflud.

Of course, Big Muddy is grand boueux, and there's no reason to include 'river'
twice (grand boueux fleuve river is big muddy river river). In which case it
would probably be something like:

Granbow River.

David Friedman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:00:07 PM2/4/06
to
In article <43e4d2e5$0$67260$157c...@dreader2.cybercity.dk>,

"Peter Knutsen (usenet)" <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:

As you may know, the original pound, in the Carolingian monetary system,
was a unit of account for a pound of silver pennies.

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

David Friedman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:01:53 PM2/4/06
to
In article <Iu66q...@kithrup.com>,

djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

> Keep in mind that throughout the Middle Ages and at least into
> the beginning of the Renaissance, there was a word for "Europe."
> It was "Christendom." Whether that would fit into Patricia's
> world setup, only she can tell us.

I don't think Christendom would have included Muslim Spain. Would it
have included Outremer? What about Abyssinia?

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

Cally Soukup

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 12:35:11 PM2/4/06
to
Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>:

> The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that the
> various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful;
> thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or Native
> Americans of any sort. Up to that point, I expect differences in Europe,

No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a site with a
picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of modern corn:

http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html

--
"I disapprove of what you have to say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall

Cally Soukup sou...@two14.net

Rich Weyand

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:03:47 PM2/4/06
to
In article <9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de>, kaih=9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
>wey...@rcn.com (Rich Weyand) wrote on 04.02.06 in
> <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>:
>
>> I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa
>> (the English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos,
>
>I can't parse the parenthetical.

Sorry -- extreme shorthand. Too extreme.

The name is in all languages pronounced Europa. The English version, Europe,
is the only one without three syllables, because it is the German spelling --
Europe -- which is pronounced as three syllables in German, but in English the
last e is silent. Every other language you look it up in, it's pronounced
Europa, even something as far afield as Turkish, which someone has supplied as
Avrupa, is still very close.

Alma Hromic Deckert

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:30:42 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 17:35:11 +0000 (UTC), Cally Soukup
<sou...@pobox.com> wrote:

>Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>:
>
>> The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that the
>> various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful;
>> thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or Native
>> Americans of any sort. Up to that point, I expect differences in Europe,
>
>No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
>thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
>teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a site with a
>picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of modern corn:
>
>http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html

Ooo, that's neat.


A.

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:31:12 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 04 Feb 2006 18:03:47 GMT, Rich Weyand
<wey...@rcn.com> wrote in
<news:Ob-dnfCedeMdcXne...@wideopenwest.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

> In article <9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> kaih=9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)
> wrote:

>>wey...@rcn.com (Rich Weyand) wrote on 04.02.06 in
>> <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>:

>>> I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa
>>> (the English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of Minos,

>>I can't parse the parenthetical.

> Sorry -- extreme shorthand. Too extreme.

> The name is in all languages pronounced Europa. The
> English version, Europe, is the only one without three
> syllables, because it is the German spelling -- Europe
> -- which is pronounced as three syllables in German, but
> in English the last e is silent.

Except that the German spelling is <Europa>, not <Europe> --
which presumably is why Kai was confused.

[...]

Brian

Suzanne A Blom

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:33:57 PM2/4/06
to

Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:11u9duh...@corp.supernews.com...

>
> "Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
> news:AtCdnVTSuvO...@wideopenwest.com...
> > In article <Iu5E...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt)
> > wrote:
> >>For Chicago, keep in mind that the word means "skunk-cabbage."
> >>French spelling of a Central Algonkian word something like
> >>shka:k-wa, cognate with Eastern Algonkian ska:nk-wa, "skunk."
> >>(-wa is a nominalizing suffix, you find it all through the
> >>language.) In what language you're going to find a word for
> >>"stinky plants" (I don't even know what skunk-cabbage looks
> >>like), I leave up to you.
> >
> > Ooo, I like this game. In French, skunk cabbage is chou de mouffette,
> > while
> > smelly cabbage is chou malodorant.
>
> What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
> Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book,
I
> think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that
in
> English.
>
I thought the Missouri was Muddy Water & the Mississippi Big Water.


Glenda P

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:34:37 PM2/4/06
to
David Friedman wrote:

> In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Which is, basically: A North America in which the threat of Indians was
>> replaced by the threat of un-extinct megafauna, both magical and non-magical
>> in nature (mammoths, wooly rhinocerouses, terror birds, dire wolves, dragons
>> [what else would prey on mammoths and wooly rhinos?]).
>
> Have you read _1491_? I gather it's about current views of human
> activity in the New World before Columbus.
>
Have you read _The Eternal Frontier_? The subtitle is An Ecological
History of North America and Its Peoples. It covers quite a lot on
conditions prior to the arrival of humans, and how humans affected the
ecology.

--
Glenda P

Brian M. Scott

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Feb 4, 2006, 1:34:44 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 04 Feb 2006 04:02:38 GMT, Rich Weyand
<wey...@rcn.com> wrote in
<news:PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

[...]

> I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all
> languages Europa (the English version is the German
> spelling).

No, <Europa> is the German spelling; English borrowed the
word from French, which also has <Europe>.

[...]

Brian

Suzanne A Blom

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 1:41:30 PM2/4/06
to

Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:11u8c5k...@corp.supernews.com...
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-DA7AA3.1...@news.isp.giganews.com...
> > In article <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>,

> > "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history
> >> background,
> >> for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s
U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,
> >> and
> >> I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
> >> "Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands,"
> >> "Spain,"
> >> and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones
that
> >> haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at
least
> >> some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul"
> >> and
> >> "Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to
> >> get
> >> away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
> >> anybody?
> >
> > You might think about Arabic names for European countries. "al-Andalus"
> > is the obvious one. Western Europeans in general get referred to as
> > Franks--"Ferangi" is I think the usual transliteration. I don't know
> > about other terms, but they surely exist.
>
> Ferangi is too close to the Star Trek guys, I think. I like the idea of
> using Arabic names, but coming up with a justification for why the
> place-names in this time-line are of Arabic origin seems to me to be
> difficult without making more changes to pre-1492 history than I'd like.
>
Actually, Arabic was one of the learned languages of Europe in our timeline.
That's how we ended up with all those star names like Algol along with
algebra, alogrithm & like that. I don't think it would take much tweaking
to have some European place names come up Arabic, maybe something in Italy
where the--damn I can't remember the name of the college--turn of the
millenium schools were oft multilingual with Arabic one of the languages.
Spain, of course, is another place with strong Arabic influence.


Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:00:05 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 12:41:30 -0600, Suzanne A Blom
<sue...@execpc.com> wrote in
<news:11u9t8j...@corp.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:11u8c5k...@corp.supernews.com...

[...]

>> I like the idea of using Arabic names, but coming up with
>> a justification for why the place-names in this
>> time-line are of Arabic origin seems to me to be
>> difficult without making more changes to pre-1492
>> history than I'd like.

> Actually, Arabic was one of the learned languages of
> Europe in our timeline. That's how we ended up with all
> those star names like Algol along with algebra, alogrithm
> & like that.

I think that calling it one of the learned languages of
Europe goes a bit too far. It was the language through
which a fair bit of learning reached Europe, but largely
thanks to the efforts of translators (e.g., at Toledo).
What happened is that a number of technical terms were
borrowed along with the associated technology/learning.

> I don't think it would take much tweaking to have some
> European place names come up Arabic, maybe something in
> Italy where the--damn I can't remember the name of the
> college--turn of the millenium schools were oft
> multilingual with Arabic one of the languages. Spain, of
> course, is another place with strong Arabic influence.

Indeed, Spain has a large number of place-names of Arabic
origin; I've a whole book devoted to the subject (M.A.
Palacios, Toponimia Árabe de España).

Brian

Michael R N Dolbear

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:07:09 PM2/4/06
to

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote
[...]

> Keep in mind that throughout the Middle Ages and at least into
> the beginning of the Renaissance, there was a word for "Europe."
> It was "Christendom." Whether that would fit into Patricia's
> world setup, only she can tell us.

But Christendom was always politically rather than geographically
defined and was never co-extensive with Europe.

Thus Ceuta was included but not, before 995, Norway. Moreover what
about Jerusalem and Alexandria ? I don't think anyone would ever have
said "Jerusalem and Alexandria were never part of Christendom."

--
Mike D

Catja Pafort

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:18:10 PM2/4/06
to
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:

> I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history background,
> for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic, and
> I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
> "Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands," "Spain,"
> and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
> haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
> some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul" and
> "Hispania").

How would you feel about Loegre?

If you nudge history just a little bit in the right place, you'd still
have an Angevin Empire. I'd also recommend Friesland. All situated, of
course, in Occidentia.

(personally, I'm not keen on Neustria. Partly because it's floating in
my mind and I couldn't *quite* pinpoint it on a map in space and time.
[Austria survives to this day, of course])


And of course, if you want the other side of the world, there's always
Ulimaroa.

Catja

Patricia C. Wrede

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:22:23 PM2/4/06
to

"Cally Soukup" <sou...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:ds2okf$3tv$1...@wheel2.two14.net...

> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article
> <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>:
>
>> The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that
>> the
>> various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful;
>> thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or
>> Native
>> Americans of any sort. Up to that point, I expect differences in Europe,
>
> No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
> thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
> teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a site with a
> picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of modern corn:
>
> http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html

Potatoes, too -- I don't think they were subject to quite so much artificial
breeding, but the wild version isn't the massively-useful, easy-to-grow crop
that ended up being over-cultivated and crashing in the Irish Potato Blight.

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 4, 2006, 2:25:48 PM2/4/06
to

"Peter Knutsen (usenet)" <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote in message
news:43e4d335$0$67260$157c...@dreader2.cybercity.dk...

> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>> Britannia is a bit too close to Britain, I think, but it might do if I
>> can't come up with something better. I'd forgotten about Iberia--that
>> will work nicely.
>
> Prydain?

So far, I'm liking Angleterre for England, Iberia for Spain, Lusitania for
Portugal, and either Avrupa or Europe, depending on how the feel in the text
goes.

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:29:26 PM2/4/06
to

"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-464E24.2...@news.isp.giganews.com...

> In article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Which is, basically: A North America in which the threat of Indians was
>> replaced by the threat of un-extinct megafauna, both magical and
>> non-magical
>> in nature (mammoths, wooly rhinocerouses, terror birds, dire wolves,
>> dragons
>> [what else would prey on mammoths and wooly rhinos?]).
>
> Have you read _1491_? I gather it's about current views of human
> activity in the New World before Columbus.
>
> I've seen it argued that the settling of the East Coast was made much
> easier because the Indians had cleared the land--and then mostly died
> from Old World diseases brought by early explorers.

Haven't read that particular book, but I'm familiar with the theory.
Figuring out a plausible, appropriate time-line between 1492 and the end of
the Secession War (aka Civil War in real life) is going to be tricky. I'm
probably going to have to spend more time on it that I really want to,
because while it's mostly "deep background" for the story, it's the sort of
thing where a casual throwaway reference that hasn't been properly thought
through could bring the whole suspension-of-disbelief thing crashing down in
an untidy heap.

Oh, well, if it's interesting enough maybe I can get another book or two out
of the same setting...

Patricia C. Wrede


Logan Kearsley

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:32:38 PM2/4/06
to
"Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com...
> In article <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"

<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> >I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history
background,
> >for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,
and
> >I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
> >"Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands,"
"Spain,"
> >and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
> >haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
> >some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul"
and
> >"Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to
get
> >away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
> >anybody?
>
> For Spain, how about Iberia or a variation thereof?
> For France, Aragon, Provence or one of the other old province names.

Trouble with calling France 'Provence' is that Provence was a separate
country for some time. I can only see that working out if Provence manages
to conquer the rest of France, rather than the other way around.

-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.


Patricia C. Wrede

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:35:31 PM2/4/06
to

"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-4654F9.0...@news.isp.giganews.com...

> In article <43e4d335$0$67260$157c...@dreader2.cybercity.dk>,
> "Peter Knutsen (usenet)" <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>> > Britannia is a bit too close to Britain, I think, but it might do if I
>> > can't
>> > come up with something better. I'd forgotten about Iberia--that will
>> > work
>> > nicely.
>>
>> Prydain?
>
> Is Albion too close too?

Albion would be perfect, except it's already been used too many times for
alternate-Englands for me to be comfortable with it.

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:38:55 PM2/4/06
to

"Catja Pafort" <use...@greenknight.org.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:1ha8kjx.1ay31fn1aongaeN%use...@greenknight.org.uk.invalid...

> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>
>> I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history
>> background,
>> for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,
>> and
>> I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
>> "Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands,"
>> "Spain,"
>> and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
>> haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
>> some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul"
>> and
>> "Hispania").
>
> How would you feel about Loegre?

Hadn't thought about going in that direction.

> If you nudge history just a little bit in the right place, you'd still
> have an Angevin Empire.

I don't want to have to nudge European history until 1492. It's going to be
enough trouble to figure out four centuries of alternate history; backing up
*another* 500 years or so is more than I really want to do.

Patricia C. Wrede


Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:43:33 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 19:18:10 +0000, Catja Pafort
<use...@greenknight.org.uk.invalid> wrote in
<news:1ha8kjx.1ay31fn1aongaeN%use...@greenknight.org.uk.invalid>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:

[...]

> (personally, I'm not keen on Neustria. Partly because it's floating in
> my mind and I couldn't *quite* pinpoint it on a map in space and time.
> [Austria survives to this day, of course])

I've a bit of a weakness for it, thanks to Leslie
Barringer's Neustria cycle (_Gerfalcon_, _Joris of the
Rock_, and the wonderful _Shy Leopardess_) -- non-magical
fantasy set in a medieval Europe that isn't quite the one we
know.

[...]

Brian

Dorothy J Heydt

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Feb 4, 2006, 2:51:36 PM2/4/06
to
In article <lsl9u19ti9hsr9ls5...@4ax.com>,

John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:

>>In what language you're going to find a word for
>>"stinky plants" (I don't even know what skunk-cabbage looks
>>like), I leave up to you.
>>
>
>http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/veg/plants/skunkcabbage.htm

Thanks. Oooh, it's a thermogene!

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 2:54:43 PM2/4/06
to
In article <ds2okf$3tv$1...@wheel2.two14.net>,

Cally Soukup <sou...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>:
>
>> The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that the
>> various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful;
>> thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or Native
>> Americans of any sort. Up to that point, I expect differences in Europe,
>
>No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
>thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
>teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a site with a
>picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of modern corn:
>
>http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html

No potatoes, then, either; they were also IIRC bred up from
little nubbly things. There should be all kinds of beans though.
I'm not sure what about tomatoes.

Patricia C. Wrede

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:01:49 PM2/4/06
to

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:ymb1vl1jt7ay.15...@40tude.net...

It's been a while since I re-read them, but I am *very* fond of those books
also. Though I'm not so sure about the "non-magical" -- a *lot* of what the
witches did was pretty clearly hallucination, but I thought there were one
or two spells that were at least arguable. Gosh, maybe I should read them
again and check... <goes off humming>

Patricia C. Wrede


John F. Eldredge

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:32:15 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 19:54:43 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

>In article <ds2okf$3tv$1...@wheel2.two14.net>,

You would probably have cherry tomatoes, since a first cousin to the
tomato plant, the deadly nightshade, produces cherry-tomato-like
fruit. I don't know if the tomato fruit is naturally non-toxic, or
whether artificial selection was needed. In most of the other
Solanacea, the fruit are poisonous, as is all of the tomato plant
except the fruit.

--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:33:21 PM2/4/06
to
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:

>
> "Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message

> news:iZidnYX3SMc2wnne...@wideopenwest.com... >In
> article <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"
> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> > > (Suggestions for place names that can
> > > substitute for Indian-language-origin names like Ohio, Chicago,
> > > Mississippi, Michigan, etc. are also welcome...)
> >
> > Look at the non-Indian place names: Detroit, Ft. Wayne, Superior,
> > Marseilles, Des Plaines, Joliet, Peru, LaSalle, South Bend,
> > Lafayette, Little Rock, Big Rock, Hinkley, Bloomington, Normal,
> > Springfield, Sandwich, Ames, Davenport, Rock Island, West Bend,
> > Des Moines....
> >
> > What you get is a lot of French cities, words and phrases, lots of
> > English cities, words and phrases, and some German, Swedish,
> > Polish... ones as well.
>
> I'm expecting to use a bunch more French names. I've also been
> looking at the kinds of what-happened-here names that quite a few
> towns in the West got called. My current favorite is the town of
> Lost Chicken, but Dead Mule is a close second. And that appears to
> be a universal system, not limited to English -- the aforementioned
> "Skunk Cabbage," for instance, and the Grand Tetons, and Aux Claire,
> Mille Lacs, and assorted other place-names.
>
> The trick, I'm finding, is coming up with names that are sufficiently
> different, but that don't cause a sort of cognitive dissonance when
> combined in the same story with names that would, very likely, be the
> same, like Washington and Virginia and Carolina. Of course, I can
> change those, too, but then I really start to lose the feel I want.
> It's a delicate balancing act.

Have you thought of using dialects which could have become standard
languages?

"A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" ['A language is a
dialect with an army and a navy.']

--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://community.livejournal.com/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:37:40 PM2/4/06
to
Rich Weyand wrote:

> kaih=9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
> > wey...@rcn.com (Rich Weyand) wrote on 04.02.06 in

> >> I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages


> Europa >> (the English version is the German spelling). She was the
> mother of Minos,
> >
> > I can't parse the parenthetical.
>
> Sorry -- extreme shorthand. Too extreme.
>
> The name is in all languages pronounced Europa. The English version,
> Europe, is the only one without three syllables, because it is the
> German spelling -- Europe -- which is pronounced as three syllables
> in German, but in English the last e is silent. Every other language
> you look it up in, it's pronounced Europa, even something as far
> afield as Turkish, which someone has supplied as Avrupa, is still
> very close.

Here's what the Online Etymological Dictionary (http://etymonline.com)
says: 1603, from L. Europa "Europe," from Gk. Europe, often
explained as "broad face," from eurys "wide" + ops "face." Klein
suggests a possible Sem. origin in Akkad. erebu "to go down, set" (in
reference to the sun) which would parallel orient (q.v.).

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:42:55 PM2/4/06
to
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > I was going to suggest cribbing from Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe"
> > novels for alternative European nation names (while noting that this
> > wasn't necessarily a good suggestion), and IIRC he left the name
> > "Europe" unchanged.
> >
> > [checking] Yes, at one point one of the characters from the
> > alternate world makes the distinction: "Our Europe, not the
> > grimworld Europe."
>
> Hm. But they way you tell it, "Europe" is still the name the
> thisworlders give it. What do the grimworlders call it?


>
> Keep in mind that throughout the Middle Ages and at least into
> the beginning of the Renaissance, there was a word for "Europe."
> It was "Christendom." Whether that would fit into Patricia's
> world setup, only she can tell us.

I would say that "Christendom" referred to all Christian countries,
with the assumption that the center was Western Europe.

Then: "Europe" -- which took a while to be expanded east to the Urals.

Then: "The West" -- Western Europe, the US, and perhaps whatever that
small country north of the US is called.

"The West" now seems to include Japan. I wonder if it will expand to
include South Korea and India?

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:45:16 PM2/4/06
to
Cally Soukup wrote:

> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article
> <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>:
>
> > The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be
> > that the various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas
> > were unsuccessful; thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi
> > Valley civilization, or Native Americans of any sort. Up to that
> > point, I expect differences in Europe,
>
> No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
> thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
> teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a site with a
> picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of modern corn:
>
> http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1
> .html

Also no potatoes, no chili peppers (or green peppers, if I recall
correctly), and various other crops.

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 3:48:06 PM2/4/06
to
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:

>
> "Cally Soukup" <sou...@pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:ds2okf$3tv$1...@wheel2.two14.net... >Patricia C. Wrede
> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article
> >

> > > The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be
> > > that the various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas
> > > were unsuccessful; thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi
> > > Valley civilization, or Native Americans of any sort. Up to
> > > that point, I expect differences in Europe,

Remember the Aleuts and Eskimoes; something presumably happened
differently in Siberia.



> > No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection)
> > for thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally,
> > it was teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a
> > site with a picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of
> > modern corn:
> >
> > http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/close
> > r1.html
>
> Potatoes, too -- I don't think they were subject to quite so much
> artificial breeding, but the wild version isn't the massively-useful,
> easy-to-grow crop that ended up being over-cultivated and crashing in
> the Irish Potato Blight.

There were various other strains of potatoes, and if more than one had
been grown in Europe, the potato blight wouldn't have wiped them all
out.

Patricia C. Wrede

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:12:29 PM2/4/06
to
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in message
news:43e50f92$0$13707$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net...

> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>> The trick, I'm finding, is coming up with names that are sufficiently
>> different, but that don't cause a sort of cognitive dissonance when
>> combined in the same story with names that would, very likely, be the
>> same, like Washington and Virginia and Carolina. Of course, I can
>> change those, too, but then I really start to lose the feel I want.
>> It's a delicate balancing act.
>
> Have you thought of using dialects which could have become standard
> languages?
>
> "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" ['A language is a
> dialect with an army and a navy.']

That would be extremely cool, but I have *no* linguistic background, and I
really don't think I could pull it off.

Patricia C. Wrede


Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:22:50 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 14:01:49 -0600, "Patricia C. Wrede"
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote in
<news:11ua214...@corp.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

>> [...]

I did hesitate a bit before writing that. Perhaps
'basically non-magical', which is also how I'd describe
Sutcliff's _Sword at Sunset_.

> Gosh, maybe I should read them again and check... <goes
> off humming>

<g>

Brian

Brian M. Scott

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:38:58 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 13:25:48 -0600, "Patricia C. Wrede"
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote in
<news:11u9vtj...@corp.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

[...]

> So far, I'm liking Angleterre for England, Iberia for
> Spain, Lusitania for Portugal, and either Avrupa or
> Europe, depending on how the feel in the text goes.

<Angleterre> implies a fairly significant pre-1492
difference in European history, though, in the form of a
*much* bigger French influence on post-Conquest England.
How about moving the difference back to a much murkier
period and making it <Saxland>? For completeness I'll note
that <Mercia> is also a nice possibility, but I think that
it implies a bit more of a change in the history of
Anglo-Saxon England.

Brian

Zeborah

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:56:34 PM2/4/06
to
Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:

> In article <11u9duh...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"
> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> >What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
> >Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book, I
> >think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that in
> >English.
>
> grand fleuve boueux

But I don't think 'fleuve' gets used in placenames. "rivie`re" might
(feminine: grande rivie`re boueuse) but altogether more common, I
think, is just the plain name, "La Grande Boueuse". And I'm as tempted
to call it "La Grande Boue" (big mud)

> Probably be anglicized into adj-adj-noun order grand boueux fleuve, and then
> mangled:
>
> Granbowflud.

The "n" would be pronounced "m" due to influence from the following "b".
Same thing with starting from the feminine: Grande + bow -> Gramb + bow
-> Grambow. But I suspect it'd keep the "oo" sound: spelt Grandeboue,
pronounced Gramboo.

> Of course, Big Muddy is grand boueux, and there's no reason to include 'river'
> twice (grand boueux fleuve river is big muddy river river). In which case it
> would probably be something like:
>
> Granbow River.

English has a *tradition* of including "river" (and mountain etc etc)
twice or more. See nashi pears, Mount Fujiyama, Akaroa Harbour,
Torpenhow Hill. But I don't think it would start with it in this case.

Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/

Zeborah

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:56:35 PM2/4/06
to
Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:

> So far, I'm liking Angleterre for England, Iberia for Spain, Lusitania for
> Portugal, and either Avrupa or Europe, depending on how the feel in the text
> goes.

That starts feeling a bit funny for me, that the French get to name
England but not the rest of the countries. Angleland would be another
matter, if I could figure out a decent spelling of it, since I suspect
Angland isn't different enough. Saxonland/Saxland?

<looks at stamps> Helvetia for Switzerland, Norge for Norway.

I do keep thinking Gaule for France. Or Languedoui (> Langdoui?
something, anyway).

Do you want these names to be anglicised? What language is mainly
spoken in your book?

Zeborah

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:56:36 PM2/4/06
to
Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:

> Cally Soukup wrote:
>
> > No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
> > thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
> > teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head.

<snip>


>
> Also no potatoes, no chili peppers (or green peppers, if I recall
> correctly), and various other crops.

Bananas? I can't remember if they grow naturally through the Pacific.

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:44:50 PM2/4/06
to
In article <11ua65k...@corp.supernews.com>,

Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:

Rec.arts.sf.fandom is replete with people who speak Yiddish; you
could easily acquire there all the Yiddishisms you needed.

For other languages nonstandard in OTL, hm, there's always the
Huddersfield dialect of English (it's somewhere in northern
England, I'm not sure where) from which Tolkien acquired not only
the name Baggins, but also one of the final scenes in _The
Hobbit_, where Bilbo comes home to find Bag End in an uproar and
his property being auctioned off. The word "auction" in
Huddersfield has a secondary meaning, as in the quoted remark
"She's nowt but a slut; her house is a fair auction!" meaning, a
right mess. Bilbo finds that not only are people selling off his
goods, they're tracking mud into the place, which becomes an
auction in both senses. Googling "Huddersfield dialect" yields
several sites; you could try with other regional forms of English
too.

I suggest this because I remember the mention, on MacNiel's _The
Story of English,_ of how a whole lot of regional Warwickshire
forms got into standard English via Shakespeare, who came from
there. All you need is one intrepid explorer of North America
who came from Huddersfield and named a lot of places in the
region he explored in his native dialect. Other dialects could
be mined for other regions. What's more, you could have settlers
from a given part of England settling in a given part of North
America and keeping a lot of their regionalisms; this happened in
OTL also. (Something else you could read is David Hackett
Fischer's _Albion's Seed_, which describes the process in the
Eastern US.) So you could postulate, e.g., that a lot of
Yorkshiremen settled in New England, and borrow a Yorkshire
accent from _The Secret Garden_ or _Lady Chatterley's Lover_,
tone it down a bit, and have the other speakers recognize it as a
New England accent.

*IF* you want to get that detailed.

Landlady: "You're a long way from home, aren't you, Mr.
Carpenter?"

Klaatu (who blew in from Outer Space a few days ago, but played
by Michael Rennie, who was from Yorkshire): "How do you know
that?"

Landlady: "Oh, I can tell a New England accent a mile away."

Dorothy J Heydt

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 4:46:52 PM2/4/06
to
In article <108vslpk2w236.1...@40tude.net>,

Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
><Angleterre> implies a fairly significant pre-1492
>difference in European history, though, in the form of a
>*much* bigger French influence on post-Conquest England.
>How about moving the difference back to a much murkier
>period and making it <Saxland>? For completeness I'll note
>that <Mercia> is also a nice possibility, but I think that
>it implies a bit more of a change in the history of
>Anglo-Saxon England.

Maybe just a tiny difference in sound-changes, and call it
Angland?

Rich Weyand

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 6:42:12 PM2/4/06
to
In article <yxtlili6au52$.1br7lka57rbta$.d...@40tude.net>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
wrote:
>Except that the German spelling is <Europa>, not <Europe> --
>which presumably is why Kai was confused.

Oops. The benefit of a classical education that includes multiple languages
is sometimes over-relied on by people who haven't kept in practice in the
language -- people like me. Haven't been back to Germany in half-a-dozen
years, and it shows. Sorry, all.

In any case, English remains the two-syllable exception to the three-syllable
rule for Europe.

Rich Weyand
Working title "Message Received" complete
WIP: untitled sequel

Suzanne A Blom

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 6:49:50 PM2/4/06
to

Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in message
news:43e51307$0$10889$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net...
Yeah, but all varieties ultimately come from Native Americans breeding weedy
Solanums with tubers into something worth eating. Also tomatoes, sunflower
seeds, red yellow & green peppers both sweet & hot (tho the original hot
pepper would have been out there in the Amazon jungle & environs), vanilla,
avocados, &, worst of all, no chocolate.
Also no guinea pigs or chinchillas or llamas or alpacas.


Jacey Bedford

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 6:33:12 PM2/4/06
to
In message <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>, Patricia C. Wrede
<pwred...@aol.com> writes

>I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history background,
>for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic, and
>I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
>"Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands," "Spain,"
>and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
>haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
>some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul" and
>"Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to get
>away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
>anybody?
>
>Patricia C. Wrede
>
>

I like Albion for England, too, but by the year 1000 Scotland is
labelled Alba on the European map and England is already England.

Erin for Ireland

Caledonia (or Caledon) Scotland
Kernow for Cornwall
The Disputed Isles for the Channel Isles

If you get stuck for Wales I have a couple of Welsh friends I could ask
for something appropriate. At one time much of it was Dyfed, though
that's only a small part of it now and at another time it was all
Gwynnedd (though again, that's a smaller county now.)


Basically once the Roman empire receded Europe split itself into smaller
and ever changing countries (at first just regions where the different
tribes lived) then actual countries with delightful names such as
Moldavia, Moravia, Bohemia, Savoy, Tyrol and Brabant.

Many of those names have survived as regions, but places like Burgundy,
Provence and Navarre were separate kingdoms.

The Holy Roman Empire united it all again , but when that split asunder,
the small kingdoms were back - but different.

Split Germany back into its constituent parts (Hesse, Prussia, Saxony,
Brandenburg, Micklenburg etc.) See
http://www.euratlas.com/big/big1500.htm for a map of Europe in 1500.

Friesland (the northern part of Holland) once applied to the whole of
the Netherlands, too.
The Danemark or Danelaw for Denmark
The Low Lands for Holland/the Netherlands

Would you split Brittany from Gaul?

Maybe Castile and Aragon for the two halves of Spain.

Sorry, some of this is really just off the top of my head and some
gleaned from
http://www.euratlas.com

You could just go and look at Europe in all its time periods and see
what you fancy. I got sidetracked on to the site for the best part of an
hour! It's wonderful. Maps of Europe every century for the last two
thousand years.

The year 600 is quite interesting, with the Roman empire diminished and
the Kingdoms of Neustria (northern France) and Austrasia (eastern
France/Belgium) Aquitaine and Burgndy. (With Spain labelled the
Visigothic Kingdom!)

From 1600 or 1700 things start to look familiar in the Western part of
Europe, though Germany didn't get united until Bismark in 1870 IIRC.
It's only as late as 1900 that most of what we know today is starting to
be recognisable but even then there have been big changes between 1900
and 2000, especially in Eastern Europe.

You don't tend to think of boundaries as being so - fluid. But it shows
just how much of a state of flux Europe has always been in. Maybe we're
being optimistic if we think the changes have finished completely!
:-)

Jacey

--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com

Dan Goodman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 7:00:04 PM2/4/06
to
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> What's more, you could have settlers
> from a given part of England settling in a given part of North
> America and keeping a lot of their regionalisms; this happened in
> OTL also. (Something else you could read is David Hackett
> Fischer's _Albion's Seed_, which describes the process in the
> Eastern US.)

I have reservations about that book. Item: Among places which Fischer
says were outside his pattern are New York City, the Hudson Valley (up
as far as the Hudson was navigable), and the coast of South Carolina.
Item: He says that all four of his regions tried to secede from the
US, but the one he gives for Pennsylvania sounds like a very minor
incident.

But it's worth reading.

Rich Weyand

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 7:04:20 PM2/4/06
to
In article <125u1yk563vns$.1ojjagwi2p1rr$.d...@40tude.net>,
DELETECAP...@satx.rr.DELETECAPS.com wrote:
>Have you read _The Eternal Frontier_? The subtitle is An Ecological
>History of North America and Its Peoples. It covers quite a lot on
>conditions prior to the arrival of humans, and how humans affected the
>ecology.

Another good resource in this regard is Colin Tudge _The Time Before History_.

In Chapter 8 on page 283, he lists 45 genera of large animals that existed in
North America before the arrival of man on the continent, many of which died
out soon after. This list is very enticing in the context of your story:

Four genera of giant sloths, spectacled bears, short-faced bears, sabertooth
and scimitartooth cats, cheetahs, giant beavers, capybaras, several species of
horses and asses, tapirs, two genera of paccaries, camels, llamas,
short-legged llamas, fugitive deers, stag mooses, pronghorns, saiga antelopes,
shrub oxen, two genera of woodland musk ox, yaks, and three proboscideans --
mastodonts, gomphotheres, and mammoths.

Way cool.

Bill Swears

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 7:11:41 PM2/4/06
to
Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote
> [...]

>
>>Keep in mind that throughout the Middle Ages and at least into
>>the beginning of the Renaissance, there was a word for "Europe."
>>It was "Christendom." Whether that would fit into Patricia's
>>world setup, only she can tell us.
>
>
> But Christendom was always politically rather than geographically
> defined and was never co-extensive with Europe.
>
> Thus Ceuta was included but not, before 995, Norway. Moreover what
> about Jerusalem and Alexandria ? I don't think anyone would ever have
> said "Jerusalem and Alexandria were never part of Christendom."
>
I'd have to say that Europe and Asia look like political distinctions of
one primary landmass.

--
Bill Swears

Ever Inappropriate, always contrite, and now... Ironic! How cool is that?

Bill Swears

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 7:14:39 PM2/4/06
to
Logan Kearsley wrote:
> "Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
> news:PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com...
>
>>In article <11u86na...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"

>
> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>>I'm currently in the middle of developing some alternate-history
>
> background,
>
>>>for a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic,
>
> and
>
>>>I find myself wanting very much to have plausible alternative names for
>>>"Europe," "England/Britain," "France," "Holland/The Netherlands,"
>
> "Spain,"
>
>>>and possibly a few other major European countries, preferrably ones that
>>>haven't been over-used already (like "Albion" for England), but at least
>>>some of which are more-or-less recognizeable (like "Albion" and "Gaul"
>
> and
>
>>>"Hispania"). I don't have enough linguistic or historical background to
>
> get
>
>>>away from the really obvious myself, so...suggestions? Brian, Zeborah,
>>>anybody?
>>
>>For Spain, how about Iberia or a variation thereof?
>>For France, Aragon, Provence or one of the other old province names.
>
>
> Trouble with calling France 'Provence' is that Provence was a separate
> country for some time. I can only see that working out if Provence manages
> to conquer the rest of France, rather than the other way around.
>
> -l.
> ------------------------------------
> My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.
>
>
Knowing absolutely nothing of the relevant history, my impression of the
French is that they could be given a history where they conquered a
nation in order to steal its name, and most of us would swallow the story.

bill

David Friedman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 8:08:17 PM2/4/06
to
In article <43e5125d$0$10889$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net>,
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:

> Cally Soukup wrote:
>
> > Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in article
> > <11u8c5j...@corp.supernews.com>:
> >
> > > The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be
> > > that the various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas
> > > were unsuccessful; thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi
> > > Valley civilization, or Native Americans of any sort. Up to that
> > > point, I expect differences in Europe,
> >
> > No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
> > thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
> > teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head. I found a site with a
> > picture of teosinte next to a (very small) ear of modern corn:
> >
> > http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1
> > .html
>
> Also no potatoes, no chili peppers (or green peppers, if I recall
> correctly), and various other crops.

potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, squash, pumpkin, vanilla, maize, manioc,
cocoa, and many of our familiar beans, are all New World. The question
is which were the result of deliberate breeding programs. Maize was, as
mentioned, and I believe potatoes involved extensive breeding from
something that was poisonous until processed. I don't know about the
others.

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

David Friedman

unread,
Feb 4, 2006, 8:08:35 PM2/4/06
to
In article <1haa8d9.1ns4zr01yql51xN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:

> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
> > Cally Soukup wrote:
> >
> > > No maize. It was genetically engineered (by artificial selection) for
> > > thousands of years to become the corn we know now. Originally, it was
> > > teocinte, which has a much, much smaller head.
> <snip>
> >
> > Also no potatoes, no chili peppers (or green peppers, if I recall
> > correctly), and various other crops.
>
> Bananas? I can't remember if they grow naturally through the Pacific.

Bananas are Old World.

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

David Friedman

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Feb 4, 2006, 8:12:47 PM2/4/06
to
In article <1haa7so.3do2b1bklaypN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:

> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > So far, I'm liking Angleterre for England, Iberia for Spain, Lusitania for
> > Portugal, and either Avrupa or Europe, depending on how the feel in the text
> > goes.
>
> That starts feeling a bit funny for me, that the French get to name
> England but not the rest of the countries.

Given the close relations between England and Scandinavia
pre-conquest--Canute, for instance--perhaps you could use a Norse name
for England? If you want to be fancier, have William land first, get
defeated by Harold, and then the exhausted Saxon army is beaten by
Harald and Tostig.

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

cohen...@gmail.com

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Feb 4, 2006, 8:13:25 PM2/4/06
to
Sicily, Greece and Crete
==================

Arms and the Man

In "John Donne and the Anthropomorphic Map," Noam Flinker wrote:

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as-sa/ASSA-No8/NF3.html
>> Renaissance commonplaces about the connections between
the microcosm and the macrocosm take on greater relevance when
read in the context of what Gandelman called "The Mediterranean
as a Sea of Sin" in light of an anthropomorphic map by Opicinus
de Canistris. He explains: "One sees 'the woman', mulier, whose
head and nose constitute the coastline of North Africa (present
Morocco and the Cape of Tanger), thrusting her nose toward the
ear of 'the man', vir, whose head is constituted by Spain and
whose armed hands correspond to the Italian peninsula and
Greece. ... <<

The drawing at
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/230A.html
includes a map that is very similar to the one described above.

SICILY / TRINACRIA

Sicily was colonized by both the Greeks and Phoenicians
at about the same time. There is a history of Sicily at
http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/613_Trinacria.html
but it does not mention the fact that Sicily was previously
named Trinacria.

I think Trinacria is a Greco-Phoenician term: Greek treìs = 3
+ Semitic nun-kuf-resh NiKa:R = to jab, poke, pierce.
Therefore, the weapon in his right hand is a trident,
the business end of which is the triangular Sicily.

Legs and the Woman

The symbol of Sicily is the Triskele, a strange figure composed
of a head of woman from which three human legs are folded at
the knee. Its possible origins (Greek, Phoenician, Minoan) are
mentioned at
http://www.csssstrinakria.org/tringlis.htm
Also see
http://home.iprimus.com.au/o8ty/proto-aeolic.htm

A Sinister Reversal

It seems that names associated with the left side of the body
are reversed to differentiate them from names associated with
the right side of the body.

GREECE

Southern Greece is a "network of islands". Greece, a toponym
the Greeks themselves do not use, is a reversal of Semitic
samekh-resh-gimel SaRaG = knitted. Therefore, he has a
(weighted) net in his left hand.

>> Kreten dikte means net. [Note the N to R exchange in knit = kret.]

CRETE

Crete is a reversal of TaR[K]is = a small shield. This word was
borrowed into Talmudic Hebrew from Greek as taf-resh-yod-samekh
TaR[K]iS = shield. This word evolved into English target, perhaps
from the practice of hanging a shield from the branch of a tree and
shooting arrows at it?

Tetragrammaton

For the equivalence of Hebrew yod, Greek K, and Latin CR, see
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ABOUT-WORDS/2004-03/1080368844

Retarius

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/warriorchallenge/print/print_gladiators_profile.
html

The Retarius ... would use his lead-weighted net to ensare an opponent
and then move in for the kill with his trident. ... If his cast missed
its object, the Retarius could retrieve it via an attached cord.

To see a picture of a gladiator with trident, net and shield, go to
http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~snlrc/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/retiarius.html

Needless to say, Poseidon/Neptune was a very important god around
the Mediterranean basin. He customarily held a trident in his right
hand.

>> Poseidon was an Arkadian god born in Mantineia.

Fatherland to Motherland: An ancient sex-change operation

OK. I must admit that treating a female Europa as a Retiarius
complete with trident, net and shield is very uncomfortable. So,
let's assume that "she" really was Neptune and reverse his name:
nePtuNe => eNutPen => euRoPa, changing the N to R, dropping
the t that cannot be easily pronounced before a P, and dropping
the (now) final n.

English does not tolerate a TP combination except in concatenated
words like breastplate, bulletproof, dustpan, footprint, marketplace,
nitpick, outpatient, rustproof, and saltpeter.

ciao,
izzy

Israel "izzy" Cohen, BPMaps moderator
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps

David Friedman

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Feb 4, 2006, 8:13:41 PM2/4/06
to
In article <11uafgn...@corp.supernews.com>,

"Suzanne A Blom" <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:

> Yeah, but all varieties ultimately come from Native Americans breeding weedy
> Solanums with tubers into something worth eating. Also tomatoes, sunflower
> seeds, red yellow & green peppers both sweet & hot (tho the original hot
> pepper would have been out there in the Amazon jungle & environs), vanilla,
> avocados, &, worst of all, no chocolate.

Avocadoes. How could I forget avocadoes?

--
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

Zeborah

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Feb 4, 2006, 8:24:51 PM2/4/06
to
Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:

> In any case, English remains the two-syllable exception to the three-syllable
> rule for Europe.

Apart from French.

Jacey Bedford

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Feb 4, 2006, 9:05:22 PM2/4/06
to
In message <11u9vtj...@corp.supernews.com>, Patricia C. Wrede
<pwred...@aol.com> writes
>
>"Peter Knutsen (usenet)" <pe...@sagatafl.invalid> wrote in message
>news:43e4d335$0$67260$157c...@dreader2.cybercity.dk...
>> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>>> Britannia is a bit too close to Britain, I think, but it might do if I
>>> can't come up with something better. I'd forgotten about Iberia--that
>>> will work nicely.
>>
>> Prydain?

>
>So far, I'm liking Angleterre for England,

Aaaargh...

You see the English have this thing about the French, so using the
French name for England would be... _not very British!_

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:52:00 PM2/4/06
to
ir...@valdyas.org (Irina Rempt) wrote on 04.02.06 in <43e4ae5c$0$11063$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl>:

> Joer...@yahoo.de wrote:
>
> > BTW - given that for central European countires, the English languaghe
> > tends to use the Latin name (Bohemia, Moravia, Lithuania, Latvia etc.)
> > I wondered what the German name of the country called "Ruritania" in
> > English might have been - the one with the capital of Strelsau.
>
> Something like "Rauthern"?

Well, it's usually just called "Ruritanien". (A.k.a. "Operettenstaat".)
Sorry.

Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:39:00 PM2/4/06
to
pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C. Wrede) wrote on 04.02.06 in <11u9duh...@corp.supernews.com>:

> "Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message

> news:AtCdnVTSuvO...@wideopenwest.com...
> > In article <Iu5E...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> > wrote:
> >>For Chicago, keep in mind that the word means "skunk-cabbage."
> >>French spelling of a Central Algonkian word something like
> >>shka:k-wa, cognate with Eastern Algonkian ska:nk-wa, "skunk."
> >>(-wa is a nominalizing suffix, you find it all through the
> >>language.) In what language you're going to find a word for
> >>"stinky plants" (I don't even know what skunk-cabbage looks
> >>like), I leave up to you.
> >
> > Ooo, I like this game. In French, skunk cabbage is chou de mouffette,
> > while
> > smelly cabbage is chou malodorant.


>
> What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
> Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book, I
> think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that in
> English.

Well, you can always pull a Buenos Aires and call it Clearbrook.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 4, 2006, 12:54:00 PM2/4/06
to
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote on 04.02.06 in <Iu66q...@kithrup.com>:

> In article <d6h9u1d56p4ekrq4d...@4ax.com>,
> Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >I was going to suggest cribbing from Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe"
> >novels for alternative European nation names (while noting that this
> >wasn't necessarily a *good* suggestion), and IIRC he left the name
> >"Europe" unchanged.
> >
> >[checking] Yes, at one point one of the characters from the alternate
> >world makes the distinction: "Our Europe, not the grimworld Europe."
>
> Hm. But they way you tell it, "Europe" is still the name the
> thisworlders give it. What do the grimworlders call it?

*We* are the grimworlders, so Europe.

Kai Henningsen

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Feb 4, 2006, 1:18:00 PM2/4/06
to
wey...@rcn.com (Rich Weyand) wrote on 04.02.06 in <Ob-dnfCedeMdcXne...@wideopenwest.com>:

> In article <9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de>,
> >kaih=9nF2x...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote: wey...@rcn.com
> > (Rich Weyand) wrote on 04.02.06 in
> > <PfmdnR7CO5L...@wideopenwest.com>:
> >
> >> I think Europe is going to be the hardest. It is in all languages Europa
> >> (the English version is the German spelling). She was the mother of
> >> Minos,
> >
> >I can't parse the parenthetical.
>
> Sorry -- extreme shorthand. Too extreme.
>
> The name is in all languages pronounced Europa. The English version,
> Europe, is the only one without three syllables, because it is the German
> spelling -- Europe -- which is pronounced as three syllables in German, but

... except the German spelling is Europ_a_. (Otherwise, we'd pronounce it
ending with an e instead of an a - we're literal that way. We come close
to that with Europäer (European, as in someone from there, not as in
belonging to - that would be europäisch).

Of course, the English pronounce it you-rope, whereas we pronounce it
oiroppa ... for that matter, don't the French pronounce it örop (I don't
think that sound's in English), another two-syllable variant?

> in English the last e is silent. Every other language you look it up in,
> it's pronounced Europa, even something as far afield as Turkish, which
> someone has supplied as Avrupa, is still very close.

Far afield? They're neighbours of Greece, and the former capital of the
Eastern Roman Empire is the current capital of Turkey. In that sense,
they're about as close as Italy, with the former capital of the Western
Roman Empire, if not closer, because they spoke Old Greek in the ERE.

Dorothy J Heydt

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Feb 4, 2006, 9:52:43 PM2/4/06
to
In article <1139102005.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,

<cohen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>SICILY / TRINACRIA
>
>Sicily was colonized by both the Greeks and Phoenicians
>at about the same time. There is a history of Sicily at
>http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/613_Trinacria.html
>but it does not mention the fact that Sicily was previously
>named Trinacria.
>
>I think Trinacria is a Greco-Phoenician term: Greek tre=ECs =3D 3
>+ Semitic nun-kuf-resh NiKa:R =3D to jab, poke, pierce.

>Therefore, the weapon in his right hand is a trident,
>the business end of which is the triangular Sicily.

I thought it was simply Greek for "three-cornered." Sicily is
definitely triangular in shape. Brian?

Dan Goodman

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Feb 4, 2006, 11:25:52 PM2/4/06
to
Jacey Bedford wrote:

> Sorry, some of this is really just off the top of my head and some
> gleaned from http://www.euratlas.com
>
> You could just go and look at Europe in all its time periods and see
> what you fancy. I got sidetracked on to the site for the best part of
> an hour! It's wonderful. Maps of Europe every century for the last
> two thousand years.
>
> The year 600 is quite interesting, with the Roman empire diminished
> and the Kingdoms of Neustria (northern France) and Austrasia (eastern
> France/Belgium) Aquitaine and Burgndy. (With Spain labelled the
> Visigothic Kingdom!)
>
> From 1600 or 1700 things start to look familiar in the Western part
> of Europe, though Germany didn't get united until Bismark in 1870
> IIRC. It's only as late as 1900 that most of what we know today is
> starting to be recognisable but even then there have been big changes
> between 1900 and 2000, especially in Eastern Europe.

My maternal grandfather was born in the Ukraine; his birthplace is now
in Belarus, I believe. (Note: "Ukraine" and "the Ukraine" do not have
quite the same boundaries.)



> You don't tend to think of boundaries as being so - fluid. But it
> shows just how much of a state of flux Europe has always been in.
> Maybe we're being optimistic if we think the changes have finished
> completely! :-)

In Western Europe, the only change I expect is one which won't show up
on the maps for a century or two: Irish unification for all practical
purposes. Eastern Europe: I expect the Russian Federation to break up
within the next fifty years, at most.

Erol K. Bayburt

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Feb 4, 2006, 11:43:30 PM2/4/06
to
On Sat, 4 Feb 2006 15:51:51 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

>In article <d6h9u1d56p4ekrq4d...@4ax.com>,
>Erol K. Bayburt <Ero...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>I was going to suggest cribbing from Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe"
>>novels for alternative European nation names (while noting that this
>>wasn't necessarily a *good* suggestion), and IIRC he left the name
>>"Europe" unchanged.
>>
>>[checking] Yes, at one point one of the characters from the alternate
>>world makes the distinction: "Our Europe, not the grimworld Europe."
>
>Hm. But they way you tell it, "Europe" is still the name the
>thisworlders give it. What do the grimworlders call it?

Europe :)

(In the Doc Sidhe two-worlds setup, this world is the grim world, and
the other world is the fair world. Both worlds call their respective
Europes "Europe." So in the quote above, the eamon from the fair world
was refering to "our [the fair world's] Europe, not the grimworld
[this world's] Europe." Clear as mud?)

--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com

Julian Flood

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Feb 5, 2006, 1:09:07 AM2/5/06
to

> >
> > Remember the Aleuts and Eskimoes; something presumably happened
> > differently in Siberia.

I saw a programme recently tracing the Clovis people to.. France, I
think, or maybe northern Spain. Skin boats, Inuit technology, they
would find the Atlantic no problem. Stone Age people were pretty
impressive.

JF

Daniel R. Reitman

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Feb 5, 2006, 2:53:12 AM2/5/06
to
On Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:17:26 -0800, David Friedman
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:

>. . . .

>I've seen it argued that the settling of the East Coast was made much
>easier because the Indians had cleared the land--and then mostly died
>from Old World diseases brought by early explorers.

Certainly, if the scene every shifts to the West, the Willamette
Valley would look much different from what it did in the 1840's. By
that time, it had been substantially modified by Indians, generally by
repeated burning. (OTOH, the piscine megafauna would be _very_
interesting.)

Dan, ad nauseam

Daniel R. Reitman

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Feb 5, 2006, 3:22:09 AM2/5/06
to
On 04 Feb 2006 20:18:00 +0200, kaih=9nChx...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai
Henningsen) wrote:

>. . . ..

>Far afield? They're neighbours of Greece, and the former capital of the

>Eastern Roman Empire is the current capital of Turkey. . . .

Ankara?

Meanwhile, in S.D. Goitien's study of the Cairo Geniza documents, he
notes that until about the late 12th century, the Moslem term for
non-Moslem territories was "al-Rum," from which "al-Ifranj" was
distinguished as Europe beginning in the late 12th century. I don't
think either of these would quite work.

Dan, ad nauseam

Joer...@yahoo.de

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Feb 5, 2006, 8:54:28 AM2/5/06
to

Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> "Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
> news:AtCdnVTSuvO...@wideopenwest.com...
> > In article <Iu5E...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> > wrote:

> What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
> Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book, I
> think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that in
> English.
>

> Having grown up in the Chicago suburbs, I'm rather fond of the idea of
> continuing to call the city after skunk-cabbage.
>
> Patricia C. Wrede

Not an answer to your question, but what about a pseudo-classical
comparison with the Nile, ie an early explorer putting
classical-Egypt-related names all over the map?
New Egypt for the whole Louisiana territory, a place called Memphis, a
Thebes, perhaps Alexandria in NOrleans, Elephantine (where he first
encountered mammoths), Crocodilopolis etc.
Alas, there wont we any Natchez nor mounds to really base an Egypt
comparison on.

OTOH, assuming that the Euro settlers still import african slaves, then
I can imagine some explicitly Exodus-from-Egypt related gospel lyrics.

Jörg

E. Liddell

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Feb 4, 2006, 8:53:55 PM2/4/06
to
On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 10:56:34 +1300, Zeborah wrote:

> Rich Weyand <wey...@rcn.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <11u9duh...@corp.supernews.com>, "Patricia C. Wrede"

>> <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >What's French for "Big Muddy River"? That's the obvious thing to call the
>> >Mississippi, which is going to be a fairly important feature in this book, I
>> >think, but I can't quite bring myself to be so obvious as to call it that in
>> >English.
>>

>> grand fleuve boueux
>
> But I don't think 'fleuve' gets used in placenames.

I can think of one instance--"Le fleuve St. Laurent"--
but to my knowledge, it's unique, and anyway, Canadian
usage does not always necessarily match standard French.

Joer...@yahoo.de

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Feb 5, 2006, 9:22:33 AM2/5/06
to

Kai Henningsen wrote:
> ir...@valdyas.org (Irina Rempt) wrote on 04.02.06 in <43e4ae5c$0$11063$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl>:
>
> > Joer...@yahoo.de wrote:
> >
> > > BTW - given that for central European countires, the English languaghe
> > > tends to use the Latin name (Bohemia, Moravia, Lithuania, Latvia etc.)
> > > I wondered what the German name of the country called "Ruritania" in
> > > English might have been - the one with the capital of Strelsau.
> >
> > Something like "Rauthern"?
>
> Well, it's usually just called "Ruritanien". (A.k.a. "Operettenstaat".)
> Sorry.
>
> Kai


In German translations of and references to the Hope novel, yes, of
course.

But IMO it is highly unlikely that a real 19th century German kingdom
would have been called Ruritanien, just as no one used Lithuanien,
Saxonien, Bavarien etc. The same time, it is very plausible that
Ruritania would be the common English-language term [1].
So, I am trying to figure out what might be the "real" common
German-language name of the country whose original Slavic name [2]
became latinized as "Ruritania".

"Rauthern" has a nice sound, but I have trouble witht the consonant
sequence r-t-r-n compared to Ruritania, r-r-t-n. *Raurethen would be
closer, but really does not sound as good or convincing. OTOH, it
*does* suspiciously like an East Prussian village.

Jörg

[1] ... and probably also a student corporation referring to R would
have had a pseudo-classical name like "Ruritania Strelsau", for
example.
[2] As is heavily indicated by names like Strelsau and Strofzin (and
probably Luzau and Hentzau) that R is commonly reached from the UK via
Dresden

John W. Kennedy

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Feb 5, 2006, 9:24:48 AM2/5/06
to
Kai Henningsen wrote:
> ir...@valdyas.org (Irina Rempt) wrote on 04.02.06 in <43e4ae5c$0$11063$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl>:
>
>> Joer...@yahoo.de wrote:
>>
>>> BTW - given that for central European countires, the English languaghe
>>> tends to use the Latin name (Bohemia, Moravia, Lithuania, Latvia etc.)
>>> I wondered what the German name of the country called "Ruritania" in
>>> English might have been - the one with the capital of Strelsau.
>> Something like "Rauthern"?
>
> Well, it's usually just called "Ruritanien". (A.k.a. "Operettenstaat".)
> Sorry.

As in "Sylvarien" ("Die Herzogin von Chicago").

"Die Lustige Witwe", on the other hand, has "Pontevedro".

--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"

Joer...@yahoo.de

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Feb 5, 2006, 10:18:04 AM2/5/06
to

Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> I don't want to have to nudge European history until 1492. It's going to be
> enough trouble to figure out four centuries of alternate history; backing up
> *another* 500 years or so is more than I really want to do.

OK, going at it sytematically:
In 1492, we have in the British Island:
England
Scotland
Ireland
Any different form of Union between two or three of them might lead to
a different (from Our History) new name, but a revival of Anglo-Saxon
heptarchy names looks very improbable. Unless they are revived in a
literary way first - like Shakespeare writing a huge piece about
Wessex, Mercia etc. I like the Arthurian Logres, hut con´t see how it
might fit in.
Hm - assuming neither Britain notr Britannia catches on, what about a
combination name like Anglia-Scotia or
Angloscotia.

Yes, I know the last one is incorrect technically, as it would probably
rather refer to the Anglophone part of Scotland, but a) common language
is not necessarily "technically correct" and b) if you still have
Stuart kings of Englandsometime in your timeline, it sounds quite
fitting.

France in 1492 is France and (barring very extraordinary circumstances)
will be France, the Kingdom of the Franks, until *1789, at least. After
a revolution, there might be a new name like Gallic Republic. AFAIK, in
the 1790s there was the popular political legend that the Germanic
aristocrats were finally deposed and at last the (Romano-)Gaulish
common population restored to power. IIRC, it was Napoleon who (as a
fan of Charlemagne) ended that idea in official and semi-official
publications.
So, Gaul or Gallia might work fine.

In 1492, "Spain" was a rathzer new term for Castile and Aragon
combined. Especially after the comparably short-lived inclusion of
Portugal (~1580s to 1640s), an even-more-encompassing Iberia sounds
historically plausible.
An independent Portugal might feel that its name, referring to the
county of Porto City, sounds "too smallish" and adopt the use of
Lusitania.

In 1492, the Netherlands were Burgundian and bound to become Spanish.
If you are ready to have their war of independence differ a bit/a lot,
the BeNeLux area of today might still be known as Burgundy, more
formally, as Lower Burgundy. AFAIK for many Spaniards, the people of
.nl and .be were commonly known as Flemings, so a (technically
incorrect) use of *Great Flanders sounds very possible.

I am afraid that after 1492, not much can happen to make Denmark,
Norway and Sweden change their name. Unless pseudo-classical names like
Suecia and Dacia (yes, like Roman Romania) are used or Scandinavia
becomes the name of an united kingdom.

For another potential seafaring nation, the Guelph territories in Lower
Saxony/Hanover might have a different history after 1492 and become a
minor player overseas. Originally, Lower Saxony was more a cultural or
geographical term than a political/dynasitcal one, and Hanover was just
a smallish residence city. The part it was in was named Calenberg and
the technical term for the whole Duchy, later Electorate was
Brunswick-(Lunenburg-)something, depending on the branch residence.

A good map showing the names and borders in Europe apperas at:

http://www.euratlas.com/big/big1500.htm

Concerning "America", that name is highly coincidentally and basically
depends on one mapmaker deciding to honor Vespucci. A (perhaps
misleading) option might even be Atlantis, as many (including Bacon)
thought that the Americas were what Plato had described.

Concerning "Europe" .- what about The Occident? If North America is
mostly colonized by Europeans, it might become the Far Occident opposed
to the Near Occident east of the Atlantic. Or, even more exotic
sounding, Hither Occident (Europe) and Farther Occident (Americas).

Jörg

Dorothy J Heydt

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Feb 5, 2006, 10:16:21 AM2/5/06
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In article <1139149353.3...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,

<Joer...@yahoo.de> wrote:
>
>"Rauthern" has a nice sound, but I have trouble witht the consonant
>sequence r-t-r-n compared to Ruritania, r-r-t-n.

Except, when I was a linguistics major back in the Dark Ages, it
was pointed out to me that "in the environment of [r] or [l] you
get metathesis all over the place." My professor had gone so far
as to name it, jokingly, after himself and call it Pitkin's Law.
You've got two [r]s there, either of which could trigger a
metathesis from r-t-r-n to r-r-t-n.

Dorothy J Heydt

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Feb 5, 2006, 10:18:33 AM2/5/06
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In article <21dbu1l0vvbrm3dcg...@4ax.com>,

Daniel R. Reitman <drei...@spiritone.com> wrote:
>On 04 Feb 2006 20:18:00 +0200, kaih=9nChx...@khms.westfalen.de (Kai
>Henningsen) wrote:
>
>>. . . ..
>
>>Far afield? They're neighbours of Greece, and the former capital of the
>>Eastern Roman Empire is the current capital of Turkey. . . .
>
>Ankara?

I think he was thinking Istanbul, aka Constantinopolis, which is
not the current capital of Turkey but is still a large and
important city.

Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 5, 2006, 10:32:24 AM2/5/06
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"Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1haa7so.3do2b1bklaypN%zeb...@gmail.com...

> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> So far, I'm liking Angleterre for England, Iberia for Spain, Lusitania
>> for
>> Portugal, and either Avrupa or Europe, depending on how the feel in the
>> text
>> goes.
>
> That starts feeling a bit funny for me, that the French get to name
> England but not the rest of the countries. Angleland would be another
> matter, if I could figure out a decent spelling of it, since I suspect
> Angland isn't different enough. Saxonland/Saxland?
>
> <looks at stamps> Helvetia for Switzerland, Norge for Norway.
>
> I do keep thinking Gaule for France. Or Languedoui (> Langdoui?
> something, anyway).
>
> Do you want these names to be anglicised? What language is mainly
> spoken in your book?

English, so yes, pretty much anglicised. The *plan* is for it to be a
"settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate
both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of
book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to
be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the
problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not
looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I
won't get the right feel. Not that it'll be all that similar anyway; no
writing plan survives contact with the characters, and it's already starting
to morph.

I don't have to change *all* the European names, but I really, really,
really want an alternative to "England." There are already too many people
who want to force the Mairelon books and the Kate and Cecy books and even
Caroline's "College of Magics" books to be in the same universe, and I'm
*not* going to make it easy for them to stick this book in the same pile.
Though I expect some of them will try anyway.

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 5, 2006, 10:56:26 AM2/5/06
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"Rich Weyand" <wey...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:O5SdncfwBMOc3Hje...@wideopenwest.com...
> In article <125u1yk563vns$.1ojjagwi2p1rr$.d...@40tude.net>,
> DELETECAP...@satx.rr.DELETECAPS.com wrote:
>>Have you read _The Eternal Frontier_? The subtitle is An Ecological
>>History of North America and Its Peoples. It covers quite a lot on
>>conditions prior to the arrival of humans, and how humans affected the
>>ecology.
>
> Another good resource in this regard is Colin Tudge _The Time Before
> History_.
>
> In Chapter 8 on page 283, he lists 45 genera of large animals that existed
> in
> North America before the arrival of man on the continent, many of which
> died
> out soon after. This list is very enticing in the context of your story:
>
> Four genera of giant sloths, spectacled bears, short-faced bears,
> sabertooth
> and scimitartooth cats, cheetahs, giant beavers, capybaras, several
> species of
> horses and asses, tapirs, two genera of paccaries, camels, llamas,
> short-legged llamas, fugitive deers, stag mooses, pronghorns, saiga
> antelopes,
> shrub oxen, two genera of woodland musk ox, yaks, and three
> proboscideans --
> mastodonts, gomphotheres, and mammoths.

I'll put that one on the list. I'm currently reading one Dan Goodman
recommended, "After the Ice Age," by E. C. Pielou, subtitled "The return of
life to glaciated North Amercia," which pretty much says it all. (Thanks,
Dan.)

Patricia C. Wrede


Patricia C. Wrede

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Feb 5, 2006, 10:44:37 AM2/5/06
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"Julian Flood" <j...@floodsoopsclimbers.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ds44qn$qoo$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...

That's why I abandoned my original idea, which was just to have had no land
bridge. There are too many other possible settlement routes for that to
account for *no* human presence in the Americas prior to 1492.

The current plan is to beef up the nastiness of some of the megafauna, to
the point where all previous colonization attempts up to and including the
Viking "Vinland" settlement failed because they got trampled or eaten or
something. (From my research so far, this won't be all that tough to do...)
By 1492+, the combination of magic and technology (i.e., guns) is good
enough that people can make headway, though it's still not exactly easy. I
may slow down technological development just a tad, on the grounds of that
being a side-effect of having magic to do certain things (though I think I
could just as easily use that as a justification for speeding up
technological advances, if I wanted to. But for this story, I don't want
to).

Patricia C. Wrede


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