Etymology Expeditions: Arthuriana

This week's theme is words associated with King Arthur and his knights of the round table, 'cause I kind of have that on the brain from my visit to Tintagel.

Let's start with the wizard himself, Merlin. It's funny; according to the Online Etymology dictionary, "merlin" had different origins than "Merlin." Let's start with the common noun. The word "merlin" comes from merilun, shortened form of Old French esmerillon, "merlin, small hawk." But then there's the name, Merlin, the one we're actually interested in. That comes from Old French form of  Welsh Myrddhin, probably from Old Celtic Mori-dunon (mori=sea, dunon=hill), "of the sea-hill."

Fits with that cave at Tintagel, doesn't it?

Speaking of Tintagel, the etymology of the name isn't completely clear. It is probably Norman French rather than of Cornish origin because of the soft 'g,' but if it is Cornish, then Din would mean "fort," and Tagell "throat, constricted." Dun + -tagell would mean "narrow place."

What about Arthur, then? Arthur comes from Medieval Latin Arthurus/Arturus, from Welsh arth "bear," Latin version ursus. Arthur's famous sword, Excalibur, also has an interesting etymology. It comes from Old French Escalibor,  corruption of Caliburn, from Welsh Caledvwlch, a corruption of the legendary Irish sword Caladbolg, meaning "hard-belly." To find out more about Caladbolg, click here.

Moving on to Arthur's legendary castle and court, Camelot comes from Latin Camuladonum, the Roman forerunner of Colcherter. Donum would mean gift, but I can't find out what the Camula part is. Camurus is hooked, bent, and camum is some kind of beer, but we'd probably need to ask someone who speaks Latin. Camula apparently means "woodworm," too, but, somehow I doubt that's it:)

Now to explore a few other key players in the legend: Lancelot is a double-diminutive of Frankish Lanzo, from "land", it later became associated with french lance, meaning "spear" or, indeed, "lance,"
and Guinevere comes from Welsh Gwenhwyvar, "white-cheeked."

Mordred comes from Welsh Medraut, "uncertain." That's about right.

Morgan Le Fay comes from Old Welsh Morgen, "sea-born." Le fay from French la Fée "the fairy." She might also be connected with morgens, which are Welsh or Breton water spirits that drown men. They lure men to death with their own beauty or with glimpses of underwater gardens of buildings of gold or crystal. According to Wikipedia, the drowning of Ys, a city in Brittany, was caused by the king's daughter Dahut, who becomes a sea morgen. In another tale a fisherman adopts an infant morgen only to lose her when she grows up and returns to her parents' underwater palace.

Avalon probably comes from Welsh Ynys Afallon, from ynys "isle" and afal meaning "apple." Magical life-giving or healing apples are ubiquitous in mythology. I wonder if the reader is meant to make this connection, too?

Names have power, don't they? From a world-building point of view this is really fascinating. It matters what you name things, it really does. See the kind of depth the right word can bring?

Sources:
http://www.etymonline.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintagel
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/camula
http://www.latin-dictionary.net/search/latin/camulodonum
http://www.behindthename.com/name/lance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon

Far Orbit Apogee News

We have a release date! Far Orbit Apogee will be available as an ebook and trade paperback on October 13, 2015!

The cover will be revealed on August 13, so stay tuned!

Here's a quote from the press release:

Looking for science-fiction stories like they used to write? Far Orbit Apogee takes all of the fun-to-read adventure, ingenuity, and heroism of mid-century pulp fiction and shapes it for a new generation of readers. Follow the adventures of heroic scientists, lunar detectives, space-dragons, robots, interstellar pirates, gun slingers, and other memorable characters as they wrestle with adversity beyond the borders of our small blue marble. Fun, engaging, pithy, and piquant, we've got it all. 

Featuring stories from Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, Dave Creek, Eric Del Carlo, Dominic Dulley, Nestor Delfino, Milo James Fowler, Julie Frost, Sam S. Kepfield, Keven R. Pittsinger, Wendy Sparrow, Anna Salonen, James Van Pelt, and Jay Werkheiser. 

Sounds fun, huh?

Adventures in England Part 2: Tintagel, Portsmouth, and Downton Abbey

Here's part two of my travel journal.  You can read part one here.

I've wanted to visit Tintagel Castle ever since I read Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. We has to take a train and two buses to get there, but it was worth it. This was the only sunny day of our trip, which made the day even more special. A word of warning: you need to climb a lot of stairs to get up to the castle, so take that into account if you're going. (Not a good place to go if you suffer from knee pain or arthritis. The only way down is those same stairs.)

There's not much left of the castle, but if you're like me, your imagination will fill in the rest.

Look at that view! The water was a gorgeous turquoise colour. 

This is Merlin's Cave, called that because of the stories that the sorcerer lived there once upon a time. It's not part of the official Tintagel site, so you can go see it for free if you don't want to climb up to the castle. It's mostly underwater at high tide, but you can walk through it at low tide. I got extra chills from this, because it reminded me of Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in her The Dark is Rising series, a favourite of mine when growing up. 

Here's Portsmouth, which we used as a base to explore the surrounding area. I loved the old Victorian buildings here. 

This is the marina, with a super creepy statue of a Deep One, or something. Shadow over Portsmouth, anyone?

This is Highclere Castle, or Downton Abbey, as it's better known to fans of the series. Arriving at the castle was a surreal experience, like we were stepping into the TV show. They didn't allow photography inside, but it was beautiful, exactly what you'd expect it to be, but the building was very much smaller than it looks on TV. 

There was an unexpected Egyptology exhibition in the cellars, because the 5th Earl of Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun with the famous egyptologist Howard Carter in 1922. They had recreated the tomb in there, so it was pretty cool. 

Here's a shot of the farm where Lady Edith goes to visit Marigold. We also visited the village where they filmed the church scenes and the Crawley house scenes, but this post is getting a bit picture-heavy, so I'll end with this one.

Terribleminds Challenge: X meets Y Pop Culture Challenge

Here's this week's Terribleminds challenge. As the title says, it's X meets Y, in my case My Little Pony meets The Walking Dead. Thank you, random number generator, this won't be disturbing at all... (Fans of the My Little Pony franchise, please don't hate me.)

My Little Zombies

When the pink pony bit my husband, things turned weird fast. I’ve never seen a pony like that, not in real life, I mean. At first I thought some crazy person had dyed a white pony pink, like one of those poodles you see on TV, but after what happened to Dave, I think it was the real deal, down to the pictures of cronuts on its flank.

It was gradual. At first Dave just baked a lot. He was pretty good at it, too; I gained three pounds in a week from the carrot cake alone. You might even say I encouraged him. Then the obsession with the color purple started.  He was worse than all of my kindergarten class put together: purple, purple, purple, everything had to be purple.  He looked like a giant grape, but I could deal with that, right up to the day I found him coloring his hair. All the hair on his body.

“Hi, honey! There’s cupcakes in the fridge,” he said, giving me the manic smile that seemed permanently plastered across his face nowadays.

Nobody could be that cheerful. Not without drugs. There was a crazy dilated-pupil thing going on in his eyes, too. I just couldn’t believe it. My Dave, the mild-mannered accountant, who had never so much as smoked a cigarette, getting stoned out of his head.

“That’s great, sweetie.” I paused. “Um . . . Are you feeling all right?”

There was that smile again. “Abso-FUN-tastic, jelly bean. Why?”

“Doctor Sterling hasn’t put you on any new medications, has he?” I knew I was grasping at straws. Or maybe Silly String.

“Nope.” He looked me up and down. “You look a bit under the weather. How about a little song to cheer you up? I have this great one about friendship. Miles and I sang it at work today.”

“Oh, no. That’s all right.” I could hear him humming as I made my retreat.

The next day I dragged Dave to Doctor Sterling’s office. At first he threw a temper tantrum, but agreed to come when I let him bake something for the doctor. Along we went, he balancing a tray of cupcakes with purple icing on his lap on the drive over.

The doctor took a long time with his examination. I paced the waiting room and stress-ate half the cupcakes while I waited. Some of the other patients looked peculiar, too. There was a girl in periwinkle-blue, drawing big stormclouds on the doctor’s office furniture, and an elderly man in bright yellow, holding a bucket of lemon ices. The gentleman at the far end of the room seemed to be sporting a rainbow-colored tail.

At last the doctor called me in.

“So, what is it?” I asked, giving Dave a sidelong look.

“Your husband is completely healthy, Mrs. Coolidge,” Doctor Sterling said and looked at me over his old-fashioned spectacles as he took a bite out of the cupcake in his hand. He wrinkled his white mustache, shaking loose globs of purple frosting. “We can’t go around locking people up for sheer exuberance, now can we?” He turned to my husband. “These cupcakes are excellent, Mr. Coolidge, bravo!”

So that was that.

Over the next few weeks I noticed that we weren’t alone. News reports started coming in from all over the world. Friendship Fever, they called it. The crisis in the Middle East was solved when both parties discovered their love of baking macaroons and the color mint-green. Terrorists painted smiley faces on their guns and helped people rebuild their homes. No one was starving anymore, thanks to the influx of food, mostly cookies, to areas suffering from famine.

Dave took to walking round on all fours. His hair had grown into an unruly purple mane, and a small tuft of a tail stuck out of his pants. I wasn’t sure, but his face seemed longer to me, and his eyes wider.

I locked myself into the bedroom and ate kale straight from the bag.

Then came the day when I woke to the sound of hooves clip-clapping outside my door.

“Open the door, honey,” he yelled in his high-pitched voice.

I wrapped the comforter around myself and shuddered. “No. Go away, Dave!”

He laughed, a tinkling sound like jingle bells. “My name’s not Dave. It’s Princess Glitter-Cupcake now. Come on, let me in.”

“No!”

“All righty. I’ll just have to kick the door in. I’m doing this out of love, sweetie. I just want you to be as happy as I am. Don’t you want to be happy?”

He hummed his friendship song as his hooves hit the door. The wood splintered, and I screamed. He looked at me through the hole and blinked his long lashes.  Velvety, purple hair covered his face.

“I’m coming for you, honey!” he called, and backed away, no doubt gathering momentum for another kick.

I ran for the window and yanked it open, praying that he wouldn’t see what I was doing. As the door broke I tumbled outside and banged my side on the garden gnomes he had painted bright purple. He poked his head out of the window and I saw that he had a glittering, purple horn growing out of his forehead now.

“What are you doing, honey?” he asked, a look of wide-eyed curiosity on his horsey face.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran.

The Websters’ basement was well equipped; it had food, water, and candles. I was safe here, until yesterday. That’s when they found me.

 The friendship song is growing louder and louder now. They’re almost through the door, taking turns kicking it in. But I have my chainsaw; I won’t go quietly.

I have to go.

They’re coming.

Need Writing Inspiration? Check Out the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford

This is the Oxford University Museum Natural History, which in itself is fairly interesting (Look at all the dinosaurs!), but the museum I'm talking about is the Pitt Rivers museum. It's tucked away at the back of the natural history museum, and you might miss it if you don't know it's there. Trust me. This one is worth seeing. And, best of all? It's completely free! Not in Oxford? There's a virtual tour you can check out.

When you enter Pitt Rivers, you see a gorgeous old Victorian hall full of glass cases holding all manner of strange and fascinating objects from shrunken skulls to Japanese Noh-theatre masks. This place is a treasure trove of story ideas. I took lots of photos of objects that set off that story tingle in my head, and here's a few of them. Enjoy.

     

A Russian moss figure.

Steampunky rifles, no clockwork, though. 

Gorgeous model ship. 

A bird mask from Columbia. They were used in rituals to get rid of disease, if I remember correctly. This reminds me of those medieval plague masks people stuffed with herbs to protect themselves from getting sick, and also the Songbird in Bioshock Infinite. (Cool game, seriously weird ending, btw.)

Etymology Expeditions: The London Underground

The London Underground is the world's first underground railway. When it opened in 1863 it used steam locomotives and the carriages were gas lit. Can you imagine? It must have been pretty spooky down there. *Takes a break and furiously scribbles half-a-dozen horror story ideas into notebook*

Aaanyway, to get back to the point, I thought I'd try to find out something about the history of the station names, which I find completely fascinating. Let's crack open the ol' Wikipedia, shall we?

Blackfriars goes back to 1317. The word comes from the French frère meaning 'brother', from the Dominican friars and their black robes. Their priory was located in the area that's called Blackfriars nowadays.

Elephant&Castle. This one was a bit of a bummer. The name is derived from an old coaching in of that name. I did stumble on a fun tidbit in the coaching inn article on Wikipedia: "The Cock" and "The Bull" were two famous coaching inns along the old Roman road, where many tired travellers had a few pints and told tall tales. Thus we get the term "cock-and-bull story." Another origin might be a reference to Aesop's fables, and then the inns could have taken their names from the expression, maybe to encourage people to tell tall tales in their establishments.

Marylebone. The name comes from a parish church dedicated to St Mary, which was built on the bank of a small stream or "bourne," called Tyburn or Tybourne. So no bones involved at all? Bah!

Ravenscourt got its name from a guy who bought the manor and estate in the area, Thomas Corbett, who named it that because he had ravens on his coat of arms. (Narcissistic much?) It's also a pun on his name, because corbeau is French for "raven."

Seven Sisters apparently originates from seven elm trees planted in a circle around a walnut tree in an area called Page Green. No one knows exactly why they were planted, but there's some speculation that the place might have been a sacred grove or a pagan place of worship. Nowadays the trees are hornbeam, planted in a ceremony led by five families of seven sisters. That's kind of cool, I think.

Hope you enjoyed that. Do you have a favourite underground station in London? Where does its name come from?


Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfriars,_London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaching_inn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marylebone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters,_London

Adventures in England Part 1: Oxford

I just got back from a trip to England, so I thought I'd share some of the highlights with you.

Our first stop was Oxford, one of my favourite places in the entire world. 

I love these lanterns. They had battle-axes on the pole under the lights. 

I thought this was a lovely, picturesque alleyway, and snapped a photo. Then my husband looked it up in our travel guide, and turns out this was where all the ladies of the evening plied their trade in the 1300s. Back then it was called Gropecunt Lane.

Yup.

Seriously.

I sure can pick 'em, right?

Here's the main reason I fell in love with Oxford: the Bodleian, one of the oldest libraries in Europe. We took the tour again, and it's worth it just to get into the old library. The smell of old books is intoxicating. Yes, I'd like to live there. Maybe pull a Phantom of the Opera, and move into the passages below the libraries:) Okay, okay, maybe I'll just write a story, or something. I'm so jealous of the university students, who actually get to use the library and study in the Radliffe Camera.   

We also took a picnic cruise on the river Thames, which went down a length of the Isis, too. Did you know that the name Thames means 'dark water'? The name 'Isis' has nothing to do with the Egyptian goddess, the Oxonians just didn't want the word 'dark' in the name, so they dropped the 'Tham' part. (Originally it was Tamesis, Celtic for dark one according to the online etymology dictionary.)

We also saw Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" performed by the Globe Theatre on tour in the Bodleian Library courtyard. This was kind of funny, because the guide on the tour said that Sir Thomas Bodley, the man who built the library, despised Shakespeare and thought his plays were vulgar and low-brow. (The walls didn't quake or fall down, if you're wondering.)

I found out another fun tidbit about the play. In addition to the pun about 'nothing' and 'noting' (as in gossip), apparently the word "nothing" also referred to a lady's private parts in the 1500s. Oh, Shakespeare, there you go again.

Maybe Sir Bodley had a point?  

Anyway, a wonderful performance, especially the actor playing Benedick was great. I saw the production with David Tennant and thought that no one could do a better job, but this guy came close.