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ArchivesRilian, Trinian, Drinian...?
I'm a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.
Among many other things, some of the things I love about the stories are the names of some of the characters. I suppose I love 'ian' endings, as all of my favorite names in the book possess that: Caspian, Rilian, Trinian, Drinian (I think there is one more, Erlian, but I don't care for it as much). Apart from Caspian, does anyone know how Lewis could have come up with them? (Were they entirely his creation, were they his creation in part, or did he find them somewhere?) In case someone has information on this and has not read the books, the names I have listed are male.
I know next to nothing about etymology and I don't know any other languages, so I do not know how, exactly, a person might go about constructing a word. What might the segments of each name mean, and what language(s) do you think they are rooted in?
If anyone has anything on this it is much appreciated. :)
Among many other things, some of the things I love about the stories are the names of some of the characters. I suppose I love 'ian' endings, as all of my favorite names in the book possess that: Caspian, Rilian, Trinian, Drinian (I think there is one more, Erlian, but I don't care for it as much). Apart from Caspian, does anyone know how Lewis could have come up with them? (Were they entirely his creation, were they his creation in part, or did he find them somewhere?) In case someone has information on this and has not read the books, the names I have listed are male.
I know next to nothing about etymology and I don't know any other languages, so I do not know how, exactly, a person might go about constructing a word. What might the segments of each name mean, and what language(s) do you think they are rooted in?
If anyone has anything on this it is much appreciated. :)
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Replies
I've read quite a bit on CS Lewis himself, and there's been no discussion of where his names came from - unlike books on Tolkien, for instance, which are much more forthcoming.
If you're a collector, Douglas Adams has a female character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy whose name, Trillian, sounds wonderfully large and outer-spacey but was formed from her very middle-class Earth name, Patricia Macmillan.
If you're a collector, Douglas Adams has a female character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy whose name, Trillian, sounds wonderfully large and outer-spacey but was formed from her very middle-class Earth name, Patricia Macmillan.
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