Re: CHAT: Patronymics (was CHAT: Yitzik's name.)

On Jan 24, 2005, at 10:50 AM, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> However, on topic, what about patronymics in conlangs?  Senyecan as
> the patronymic "ßoon," child of.  "iißoon" is "daughter of"
> and "o/ßoon" is "son of."  Has anyone else created a patronymic in
> his or her conlang?  What about names in general.  How are people in
> your conculture named?
> P.S. "o/" is supposed to be the Norwegian o-slash representing /9/ in
> Senyecan.  I couldn't get Alt+ to make it even though it made the "ß."
> Charlie
> http://wiki.frath.net/User:Caeruleancentaur
Rokbeigalmki has patro- and matro-nymics:
"son of" = _bre'_
"daughter of" = _bra'_

When you arrange your parentonymics after your name, you put your
opposite-gendered parent first:
examples from my ElendorMUSH characters:
Stíígiyus bre'Flurázha bre'Dayaghút
(Stygius, son of Flurazha and Dayaghut)
Urgámn bre'Herévya bre'Gámnoosolg
(Elnar, son of Herevya and Lingil)

Rokbeigalmki names seem to be somehow gender-specific, even though they
don't include (usually) the male-gender and female-gender prefixes
themselves - _o-_ and _i-_, respectively.
Since the names are gender-specific, and you can somehow tell who's
male and female from their names, the ordering makes clear that you're
talking about one person's two parents instead of a chain of ancestry.
Let's say Stygius had a son named Sihráák;  _Sihráák bre'Stíígiyus
bre'Dayaghút_ would be a chain of ancestry, since you can say "Sihraak
son of Stygius son of Dayaghut".  Since, however, "Stygius son of
Flurazha son of Dayaghut" makes no sense since Flurazha is female, it
has to be understood as "Stygius son of Flurazha and son of Dayaghut".

The 'atronymic prefixes are unusual.  You'd expect them to be:
male: _ô-bar^(name)_
female: _î-bar^(name)_
Those would be the transparent construct forms for "son of..." and
"daughter of...".

It seems that the proto-form of the Rokbeigalmki 'atronymic prefixes
was something like the unisex */b@r@/, some kind of worn-down form of
*/baro/ "child of", which was then split genderwise with different
vowels when Rokbeigalmki lost its phonemic /@/s.  In Rokbeigalmki's
sibling-language, Drughukî, where /@/ merged into /u/, */b@r@/ seems to
have become */buru/ before dissimilating into /buri/, as in
Ghân-buri-Ghân. (proto-RD */Ga:n b@r@ Ga:n/, Rokbeigalmki _Ghaan
bre'Ghaan_).

(note: all statements made here about the language of Ghan-buri-Ghan
are my own inventions, completely unattested in Prof. Tolkien's
writings)


-Stephen (Steg)
  "i defend myself, therefore i exist."
      ~ herbert pagani

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