Greg wrote:I'm adopting 'Taurandir' as a given surname. It's a common habit in Midle-earth, it seems...Beleg Strongbow, Turin Turambar, Gandalf Greyhame, etc. I'm having a darned difficult time settling on a first name I can stomach. Tirathon is a good approximation of the meaning of 'Gregory', so that fits well mechanically, but it's a bit of a mouthful. If I'm gonna be stuck saying it, I'd better like it, you know?
I know the photos at the top of this are broken...still working on fixing that, trying to remedy it today...but I have an update in regards to naming conventions.
Tirathon, being a mouthful, still irks me. Tirathon, being the best approximation for my real-world given name, still is the best fit that I have.
SO.
I've been thinking.
Aragorn never revealed his true name to the majority of the folk he encountered. "'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly." He was given a name as a frequent flyer at the Pony who wouldn't provide them with anything else to go on. Similarly in other historical fiction, characters with a limited understanding of a protagonist have been known to give nicknames or mispronounce names due to cultural differences.
Take The 13th Warrior, for example. In the film, Banderas' character, Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, is attempting to introduce himself to someone who doesn't speak the same language. In his culture, names are largely used to tell who your father is, and who his father is, ad infinitum. He says "My name is Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, Ibn another guy, Ibn still someone else, Ibn again..." (I'm paraphrasing, can you tell?). The person he is addressing only hears him saying "Ibn" over and over, and latches onto that, calling him "Eabin" for the remainder of their time together.
Fast-forward to Middle-earth (or rewind, maybe?). Now, I don't have a degree in linguistics, but my impression of Bree is that multi-linguals and geniuses don't make up the bulk of the population. Definitely not a slew of Elvish-speaking high-educated types.
SO.
If one were to come in and give the innkeeper a name to go off of (not Tirathon, since that'd be a bit personal and might need to remain unknown) like a benign surname such as Taurandir (which can't really be traced to anything or anyone), it'd be a mouthful and a half for old Barliman to wrap his tongue around. This line of thinking (and what was done with Strider) suggests to me that local accents and lack of knowledge of elvish could result in a simplified, truncated, and somewhat mispronounced form of the word, and a 'nickname' as a result.
Taurandir, pronounced (I believe) TAO-ran-DEER, could be shortened to Tauran, and then simplified from the formal pronunciation to a more phonetically friendly
TOW-rin or
TOW-run. This gives my persona an extra authentic bent, in that he could be counted among the number of "mysterious wanderers" around Bree who frequent the inn enough to have been given a name for familiarity, and would lends me more to fit into the description we have that Rangers would be willing to share a "rare tale" when I'm of a mind to. Familiarity is an important and oft-overlooked part of that passage, I think. Secret doesn't necessarily mean unknown, and we're given that permission right from the professor's own hand here.
Tauran. Much more palatable.
