Recommend changing "Earth" elemental to "Geo" elemental

Seeing as how there is no "Earth" in Felarya, the term should change. I recommend it be changed to "Geo Elementals."

Thoughts?

gt500x wrote:

Seeing as how there is no "Earth" in Felarya, the term should change. I recommend it be changed to "Geo Elementals."

Thoughts?

The name of our planet comes from the, I believe it's German, word "Erde" (spelling may be off), which translates to "dirt/soil/ground/etc." This word was altered and eventually chosen as the name of our planet. I imagine it was used because this planet IS the ground under our feet.

People have been calling the stuff under our feet earth for much longer than we have officially called our planet "Earth".

Its like if someone came from a planet named "Fire", you could still have fire-element mages in Felarya, and could still have people chucking fireballs at eachother. The planet was named for the natural occurance, not the other way around.

To be fair, Earth actually does a lot better than its satillite. Poor Luna, no one ever calls it by its official name these days. That SHOULD change once we're a space-faring species though, when we are actually concerned about more than one moon. lol

There are multiple naming systems for the various types of magic anyway. If you aren't comfortable classifying someone by their element, you can always use the -mancy naming system that is so prevalent in various fantasy settings. Geomancy (earth), Pyromancy (fire), Aeromancy (wind), Cryomancy (ice) and so on. Lots of options with magical naming systems, and these would likely vary between various clans, groups and tribes.

Also, don't forget Felarya's auto-translation effect. No one in Felarya is speaking any language we can understand, but the translation effect changes that. People in Felarya are not calling it "earth magic". It just gets translated that way if the author of the story is writing in English.

rcs619 wrote:

People in Felarya are not calling it "earth magic". It just gets translated that way if the author of the story is writing in English.

Ghost king Felarya is a fantasy novel world and not intended as historically linguistically accurate...

...The language used is relatively modern and undoubtedly there will be some students who find it jarring to read of arrows being 'fired', when of course the expression evolved only after the introduction of matchlock muskets and of course not everyone in Felarya has seen guns but many would have arrows. Similarly, 'minutes' and 'seconds' are ahead of their time probably wouldn't be used as standard there.
Such arguments as may be offered can be overcome since the language being spoken is not English, but a bastardised form of Latin-Celtic something we have no idea of, some license in translation should be allowed.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

rcs619 wrote:

People in Felarya are not calling it "earth magic". It just gets translated that way if the author of the story is writing in English.

Ghost king Felarya is a fantasy novel world and not intended as historically linguistically accurate...

...The language used is relatively modern and undoubtedly there will be some students who find it jarring to read of arrows being 'fired', when of course the expression evolved only after the introduction of matchlock muskets and of course not everyone in Felarya has seen guns but many would have arrows. Similarly, 'minutes' and 'seconds' are ahead of their time probably wouldn't be used as standard there.
Such arguments as may be offered can be overcome since the language being spoken is not English, but a bastardised form of Latin-Celtic something we have no idea of, some license in translation should be allowed.

well that sums things up...not really sure how to respond to all those strikeouts XD

all the people in felarya probably have their own terms for minutes/seconds/whatever. a lot of language derives from latin which doesn't exist in felarya, so names for things would be really confusing and mind-racking to come up with. though along with the various forms of slang, stories for how they come about could be made as well, it could add to the culture aspect. off topic tho.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

rcs619 wrote:

People in Felarya are not calling it "earth magic". It just gets translated that way if the author of the story is writing in English.

Ghost king Felarya is a fantasy novel world and not intended as historically linguistically accurate...

...The language used is relatively modern and undoubtedly there will be some students who find it jarring to read of arrows being 'fired', when of course the expression evolved only after the introduction of matchlock muskets and of course not everyone in Felarya has seen guns but many would have arrows. Similarly, 'minutes' and 'seconds' are ahead of their time probably wouldn't be used as standard there.
Such arguments as may be offered can be overcome since the language being spoken is not English, but a bastardised form of Latin-Celtic something we have no idea of, some license in translation should be allowed.

well that sums things up...not really sure how to respond to all those strikeouts XD

all the people in felarya probably have their own terms for minutes/seconds/whatever. a lot of language derives from latin which doesn't exist in felarya, so names for things would be really confusing and mind-racking to come up with. though along with the various forms of slang, stories for how they come about could be made as well, it could add to the culture aspect. off topic tho.

Well, yeah. The translation is probably only going to work up to a certain point. Measurements are going to be different for different civilizations and worlds. I imagine Negav has established a standard set of measurements for use around the city, just for conveiniance.

I can kind of understand why someone would just use Earth measurements in a story though. It flows a lot better than laying out a whole new measurement system, and its more of a nit-picky kind of issue that doesn't really detract from most stories.

agreed, I think that sort of thing would be mutually agreed upon rather than sending the reader back through elementary school. (though with a series of video games it could be easier to display and teach, but that's a luxury we don't really have in our community yet.)

Yeah, exactly.
What I posted was the Foreword from 'Ghost king', a novel my David Gemmel, one of my favourite Authors. Ghost King is basically the retelling of Arthurian legend "as it should have happened." What the foreword is saying pretty much applies to Felarya too. Licence in translation should be allowed.

By the way, I did some research, and the suffix -mancy doesn't mean magic, it would mean "Divination". So Pyromancy would be asking for a divination, i.e. read the future, through fire. The real term for manipulating a force would be -urge or -urgy, which means "Work", but you can see how Pyromancy sounds more magical than Pyrourgy, and rolls of the tongue better too.

Back on topic, keep in mind that Elementals are almost always taken after the four classical elements, with a few additions such as Lightning and Lava. We use Earth for nothing more but convenience, and as Cliff said, putting in a whole new translation system is just not worth it. Plus remember, writers are Earthling themselves, so it's natural we use our own Earthling terms for our own Earthling fictional stories so it's easy for other Earthlings to understand what is written.