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Eponyms and bedlam
Feb. 21st, 2010 04:26 pmIn my last post, I asked people how they'd feel about finding the word "bedlam" in a story with no connection to our world. (Bedlam is the name of an asylum in London, and is itself a corruption of "Bethlehem"1, so a world containing neither location should arguably not contain the word.) Responses were mixed, though fewer people had a problem with it than didn't.
I'm generally on the side of the overlookers — there is an implied translation (and thus an implied translator) in any story set in an invented world, and if there is no Bethlehem, no Bedlam, and no bedlam in that world, there is presumably a local word meaning "a scene of wild chaos." When translating that word into English, the implied translator needs to pick an English word that means the same thing, and bedlam does the job. If you start down the road of eliminating eponyms (and their ilk), you find you can't have copper without Cyprus, guns without Gunhilda, attics without Athens, or petrels without St. Peter. There can be no obsidian without Obsius, its Ethiopian discoverer; no grotesques without the grottoes of Nero's Golden House; no chapels without the holy cloak (cappella) of St. Martin of Tours.
But there's obviously a handbrake on this train of thought. Most readers would balk at finding Irish elk in Middle-Earth, or seeing Théoden's scandalous behavior described as "Gríma-gate." Eponyms that have not completely abandoned their capital letters seem to be right out — no French fries or Brussels sprouts in fantasyland — as do words that vividly evoke their origins, such as "spoonerism" and "gerrymander". (But I can haz sandwiches?) If the invented language lacks certain concepts, the author has to decide whether or not the corresponding English words will fly — I wouldn't hesitate to use words for colors that weren't distinguished in the medieval world, but I'm constantly checking Wikipedia to see when pendulums were invented, and wondering whether my characters would know about angst and ennui.
In the end, it all comes down to an author's judgment call (and a willingness to argue with editors). I normally wouldn't balk at using "bedlam", but in this particular case the sentence structure gave me pause (I say "[The city] was bedlam", which tags bedlam as a place, not a condition). I'm leaving it, since it is the right word, but I may decide at a later date that it's too specifically evocative and either remove it or adjust the wording. There's a great gray area — can a quisling in a cabal be mesmerized by a bowdlerized pamphlet about a marathon? — with very few clear lines between yes and no. "Bedlam" raises a flag (for some) because its etymology is fairly widely known. Presumably "gun" would also become questionable if its origins were popularized in the same way2 — which leads to a slippery slope for both writers and readers. If ignorance is necessary for bliss, to me that seems like another argument in favor of erring on the side of overlooking. At some point it's necessary to let authors get on with the business of storytelling.
1 Lit. "house of meat". Not "house of ham" (unfortunately).
2 I am in fact reluctant to use it in the book, but only because in the context of the book it would be a loan-word, which draws attention to the etymology.
I'm generally on the side of the overlookers — there is an implied translation (and thus an implied translator) in any story set in an invented world, and if there is no Bethlehem, no Bedlam, and no bedlam in that world, there is presumably a local word meaning "a scene of wild chaos." When translating that word into English, the implied translator needs to pick an English word that means the same thing, and bedlam does the job. If you start down the road of eliminating eponyms (and their ilk), you find you can't have copper without Cyprus, guns without Gunhilda, attics without Athens, or petrels without St. Peter. There can be no obsidian without Obsius, its Ethiopian discoverer; no grotesques without the grottoes of Nero's Golden House; no chapels without the holy cloak (cappella) of St. Martin of Tours.
But there's obviously a handbrake on this train of thought. Most readers would balk at finding Irish elk in Middle-Earth, or seeing Théoden's scandalous behavior described as "Gríma-gate." Eponyms that have not completely abandoned their capital letters seem to be right out — no French fries or Brussels sprouts in fantasyland — as do words that vividly evoke their origins, such as "spoonerism" and "gerrymander". (But I can haz sandwiches?) If the invented language lacks certain concepts, the author has to decide whether or not the corresponding English words will fly — I wouldn't hesitate to use words for colors that weren't distinguished in the medieval world, but I'm constantly checking Wikipedia to see when pendulums were invented, and wondering whether my characters would know about angst and ennui.
In the end, it all comes down to an author's judgment call (and a willingness to argue with editors). I normally wouldn't balk at using "bedlam", but in this particular case the sentence structure gave me pause (I say "[The city] was bedlam", which tags bedlam as a place, not a condition). I'm leaving it, since it is the right word, but I may decide at a later date that it's too specifically evocative and either remove it or adjust the wording. There's a great gray area — can a quisling in a cabal be mesmerized by a bowdlerized pamphlet about a marathon? — with very few clear lines between yes and no. "Bedlam" raises a flag (for some) because its etymology is fairly widely known. Presumably "gun" would also become questionable if its origins were popularized in the same way2 — which leads to a slippery slope for both writers and readers. If ignorance is necessary for bliss, to me that seems like another argument in favor of erring on the side of overlooking. At some point it's necessary to let authors get on with the business of storytelling.
1 Lit. "house of meat". Not "house of ham" (unfortunately).
2 I am in fact reluctant to use it in the book, but only because in the context of the book it would be a loan-word, which draws attention to the etymology.
