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Re: Origins of Fremen Names

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 18:49
by MrFlibble
What about Ghadean al-Fali from Children? I'm especially intrigued with how his name could be pronounced... Is it a diphthong in the second syllable, or a single vowel? Two vowels? (I assume that the name is Arabic, but of course I have no solid facts to prove that :))

Re: Origins of Fremen Names

Posted: 05 Jun 2010 04:37
by SandChigger
Hadn't gotten round to him yet. :P

There appears to be a real personal name Ghaidan, and a real surname al-Fâlî. No luck yet in pinning down meanings, but I have a feeling the later is derived from a place (city or district) or tribe with a name something like Fâl.

FH wasn't above switching letters/sounds around when he felt like it. Ghaidan > Ghadian > Ghadean doesn't seem like so much of a stretch. ;)

I'll keep looking!


(Oh, yeah: I thought at one point it might be an Arabic form of Gideon, but it turns out that's more like Jâd`un.)

Re: Origins of Fremen Names

Posted: 22 Feb 2019 21:43
by istaivan
Ziarenka and Ziarenko appear to be following indo-European suffix rules for female names ending in -a and male names ending in -o.
And apparently Ziarenka in Polish means grain (like a speck of grain), and so it's tempting to think Frank was thinking of a grain of sand.

Re: Origins of Fremen Names

Posted: 22 Feb 2019 21:59
by istaivan
This might fall under 'Crackpot Theories' on the list of Freakzilla's no-no's for posting, but on the other hand the cross references are a spot on match.
Over on SlothMUD we just released the Lower Planes (which included the nine planes of Hell) and so I have been swimming in devil and arch-devil names for the last week (as we run around in the new content and play-test it).

What on earth does this have to do with Dune?

What this did was..cause me to go read the Wikipedia for the Lesser Key of Solomon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Ke ... Two_Demons


Whereupon i started to notice some names on the Devils, Arch-Devils list that were either Fremen surnames or given names in Children of Dune.
Buer (Duke of Hell) and Agares (without the v of Agarves) for Buer Agarves.
Valefor is on the devils list and it's Zia's surname.
Paimon for Essas Paymon, the fellow who tries to bribe Alia.
Paymon is listed in the Wikipedia article as a variant spelling in a different edition of the Lesser Key.
Beleth for Behaleth may be a bit more of a stretch

Re: Origins of Fremen Names

Posted: 25 Feb 2019 12:58
by georgiedenbro
Wow, interesting! Can you glean what purpose there may be behind these namings?