KC's IRL Sources

[cristel-is-reading]

So, I'm starting this thread because I wanted to share a little investigation I made that I thought you would appreciate. I was going to post it in the TtS thread, but then I thought that maybe it would be good if we had a place to share this kind of thing.

KC has this way of basing everything off of things that actually exist, but she doesn't rub it in people's faces, so sometimes I find myself stumbling upon this legend, or this spell that previously existed and going "aaaaaaah, here's where she got it from!"

Hence the KC’s IRL Sources name.

This is a place to share our own discoveries, or maybe add to what other people found. I know I wouldn't mind if you helped me make more sense of what I found this time.

This is what happened: I'm writing this fanfic (that I may or may not publish because it has a high risk of becoming incompatible with future books), in which the action happens mostly in the Hell regions. I have the characters jumping from one world to another, and I needed names for everything from worlds to cities inside those worlds, and I had no idea how to do it. So I decided to make a little research on the names KC had already used, to see if I could find some sort of pattern I could imitate.

I started out with Kazallu, Rosier's world.

It wasn't difficult: A quick google search, and it turns out the name is based on an ancient city-state in Mesopotamia, near Babylon (in fact it conquered Babylon at some point). Interesting. So I could rip off ancient cities' names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazallu

The really interesting thing about this is that it was from this mythology that the first versions of incubi first showed up:

"One of the earliest mentions of an incubus comes from Mesopotamia on the Sumerian King List, ca. 2400 BC, where the hero Gilgamesh's father is listed as Lilu." (From the Wikipedia's article on incubi.)

So okay, on to the next thing. I went for Kazallu's capital city, Zarr Alim.

This one wasn't so easy, because KC didn't actually rip the name off from anywhere. Nooo, she had to go get creative with it.

When I googled it I came up with pretty much zilch, but it was enough to deduce that at least the two separate words hadn't been made up.

Alim was easy: Arabic for all-knowing.

Zarr was a little more difficult. At first the only thing I could find was that it was a last name, and when I finally managed to dredge up a meaning for it on one of those heritage archive sites (don't remember which one now), it said it was of Germanic origin, a nickname for an autocratic authority (read, king), and that the word tzar, was ultimately derived from it.

I thought it made sense for a capital city to make reference to some sort of all-knowing monarch, but I kept looking, just for the hell of it. And then I came across a much more interesting bit of information.

It was in a post in islamhelpline.com. Somebody was asking about the meaning of the name Abizar. One Burham guy wrote a lengthy explanation, among which was this: "The literal meaning of the term Abu is father of; and the term zarr literally means a small ant in Arabic."

I almost dismiss this. It made more sense in that both words would now be in the same language, but aside from that, I couldn't see what that had to do with anything. I kept going over it in my head, though, and suddenly it came to me: The way Zarr Alim was built, all carved in this huge mountain. It looked a great deal like an anthill, didn't it? If I was right, this new word would actually have something to do with the city itself.

So while I still don't know enough about Arabic grammar to make perfect sense out of Zarr Alim (all-knowing ant? ant of all-knowledge?), I feel like I've made progress.

I still have no idea how to name my cities, though.

[[deleted user]]

To be frank, I have little knowledge of mid-eastern languages. A concordance for the Bible could give you interesting information on place-names, though, as would a commentary on the Koran.

Not a great deal of help, I know

On a silly note, could Rosier have been Lilu? Rosier is the only full incubus with a physical male body.......

Of course, that doesn't fit with KC's canon that Pritkin is the only human/incubus hybrid.

[cristel-is-reading]

Well, it looks like in KC's universe anyone with the right amount of power can make a body. Rosier could be the only one who can now, but that doesn't mean others never could. I'm sure his father could, for instance, as he says he's not as powerful as him.

To tell the truth, it always puzzled me how he automatically took a male shape whenever he made a body. Weren't incubi supposed to be genderless?

In the short stories, if I'm not mistaken, it is clarified that Rian chose to manifest as female, so that would explain her. But in a Q&A, KC said that Rosier's shape was sort of his default shape, not something he chose to manifest as (in fact, she said that he would have to resort to a glamourie in order to change his appearance), so what gives? But I disgress...

I don't really know the myths very well, but it seems Gilgamesh's heritage is a bit blurry here...

From Wikipedia:

"In Sumerian mythology, Ninsun or Ninsuna ("lady wild cow") is a goddess, best known as the mother of the legendary hero Gilgamesh, and as the tutelary goddess of Gudea of Lagash. Her parents are the deities Anu and Uras.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ninsun is depicted as a human queen who lives in Uruk with her son as king. Since the father of Gilgamesh was former king Lugalbanda, it stands to reason that Ninsun procreated with Lugalbanda to give birth." (Emphasis by me)

Stands to reason, huh? So IF she was really a goddess, and IF his father's Lilu, that would make Gilgamesh totally non-human.

So be it Rosier himself, or his father (who goes as yet unnamed, by the way), or any other incubus that might have been powerful enough at the time, we could still squeeze Gilgamesh into the canon, LOL!

[[deleted user]]

Saleh made a body on Earth after thousands of years of accumulation of power, so he could have been "alive" to be Gilgamesh's father. I wonder if Lady Dorina might be intrigued by his story. KC did say that Lady D's love life might be bumpy. My new-found ship- Dory and Kit Marlowe - might now be threatened by Gilgamesh and Lady Dorina.

I do hope you get some real help with your quest for people and place names in Arabic from the other KC fans. I hope you publish your fic, even if it doesn't conform to canon. I'm sure we would love it!