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Position:Home>History> The Land of Svalbard?Question: The Land of Svalbard!? Svalbard is an island somewhere in an ocean !. !. !. and it sounds really cool, like a barbarian name!. In the story I am writing, there are barbarians, and I would have liked to give them a small island named Svalbard!. But my story is fantasy!. I thought I could add an "a" with two dots over it to substitute one of the other "a's!." Should I do this or is it a bad idea!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: You can, if you can alter the name a bit!. I mean, I've done that with a lot of my cities in my book!. You can add things to the name, it makes it sound really awesome *grins* By the way, you answered my Rand Al'Thor question, I have a response: I haven't read past the 9th book, I'm in the middle of it! And I'd just read something about it in one of many sentences *wink* It makes me mad!Www@QuestionHome@Com Bad idea!.!.!. You are going to look like you borrow stuff off Philip Pullman left and right (his book "The Golden Compass" and the movie based on it take place on Svalbard, among other places; also, since the book takes place in a parallel universe, he sometimes changes words to what they might have been, such as "xocolatl" instead of "chocolate")!. So your "Svalbaard" is going to look downright silly to a well-read audience (the members of which will include your agent, your publisher, and your editor)!. I think you have three options: (1) Consider something more authentic (get a map of Scandinavia and find something scary-sounding on it; bear in mind that it may not actually mean anything scary in the local language)!. (2) Look for suggestions in a Swedish or Norwegian dictionary, which may not be all that inspiring; many Nordic words share roots with English words (for example, the Norwegian word for "cruel" is "grusom"), some important words sound not nearly scary enough (for example, the Norwegian word for "island" is "?y", and "sea" is "hav"), and some plausible combinations may sound silly to a native speaker!. This said, I did come up with "Fjordstrand", which seems to be a legitimate word (and a moderately common family name) in Swedish and Danish!. (3) Just make something up, will ya!? It's a fantasy, for crying out loud!.!.!. :)Www@QuestionHome@Com Svalbard is the Scandinavian name for the island of Spitsbergen in the North Atlantic!. I think it belongs to Denmark, and suspect that, like Iceland and Greenland, was settled by Vikings!. See if you can locate names for Svalbard in other Nordic languages--you never know what you might end up with if you fool around with those dots! It could turn out to be something either insulting or profane!Www@QuestionHome@Com |