(urth) Patera Incus
Mo Holkar
lists at ukg.co.uk
Mon Aug 16 07:38:36 PDT 2010
At 15:02 16/08/2010, Antonio wrote:
>Biological species on the Whorl need not be the same as here. It's
>perfectly possible for there to be a genetically close relative of
>gulls there that would merit to have its name translated as 'fulmar'.
Although that is certainly a possibility, it would seem to render
vain any attempt to infer meaning from any of the character names.
For example, if I was trying to persuade people that Silk was not
really connected to Tussah, I might hypothesize that on the Whorl,
tussah moths are not related to conventional silk moths. In fact, on
the Whorl "silk" might not mean moth caterpillar fibre at all -- it
might be spun from the soft underfur of nocturnal primates.
Personally, I feel it would be unlike Wolfe to "cheat" by secretly
departing from Earthly taxonomy in a deliberately misleading way like
that, in order to obscure an implied name-link: if these hidden
name-meanings were really intended, they must have been intended to
be logically comprehensible to the careful (Earth-based) reader.
But that is just my feeling: you could easily be right.
best wishes,
Mo
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