3rd Age Dunedain Ranger - Complete Functional Kit Breakdown

For all of the Talk that doesn't fit elsewhere.

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Cimrandir
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Re: 3rd Age Dunedain Ranger - Complete Functional Kit Breakdown

Post by Cimrandir »

Thanks Greg! Your kit looks awesome!
Persona : Cimrandir - late 3rd Age Dunedain
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Manveruon
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Re: 3rd Age Dunedain Ranger - Complete Functional Kit Breakdown

Post by Manveruon »

Greg wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 4:11 pm
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.
I meant to respond to this AGES ago but just totally forgot about it until I stumbled over it again today! I absolutely love this, and I have been keeping something like this running in the back of my own mind for quite a while regarding my own persona. Lately I’ve been wanting to do a little more in-depth persona-building to help improve my immersion when in costume and on outings, and my own thoughts have been largely in keeping with yours!

I have always felt “Manveruon” was an odd sounding name that didn’t really roll off the tongue (and technically I think it ought to be rendered as “Manveron,” or simply “Manveru,” but I don’t necessarily like those any better in terms of given names, and the other version I have found is “Eraisuithon” which is EVER MORE of a mouthful. (I think one of those may be Quenya and the other Sindarin, but I can’t quite recall which is which). Anyway, I came up with Manveruon almost two decades ago at this point, so it’s probably not going anywhere, but I really like the idea of adopting a simplified nickname, and perhaps a descriptive byname. I enjoy the idea of Rangers in Bree being sort of like Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name,” in that wherever they go the locals have some nickname or other for them without ever necessarily knowing their full true name. So now I’ve got to find some attribute or other that I want to be known by, and then translate it into Elvish (I tried “clumsy,” but didn’t have much luck with that translation :lol: )

Amusingly, I was thinking about this well before you posted this, and in doing so I happened upon this thread, which I thought you might enjoy, and might add a little something to the discussion of Dunedain naming conventions in general:

https://www.elfdict.com/discuss/5-gener ... f_the_west
Maerondir Perianseron, also called “Mickel,” Halfling Friend - Ranger of the Misty Mountains
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