Ur....ur....ur...

Post by **Matthias** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 3:43 am

I was searching my fathers rather large "Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary" and I happened accross the definition of "ur-" as it turns out, there are two meanings and both of them lead me to the definition of "uro-" which, also by chance, has two meanings as well:

the first one, however, has nothing to do with what i want to share with you. It deals with Urology and urine...yeah...

(ur-^2) , Uro-^2, a learned borrowing from Greek meaning "tail" used in the formation of compound words: uropod. Also, esp. before a vowel, ur-.

i don't know if this has anything to do with anything, or if SRD was just making the title up "ur-Lord" or anything, but i thought it interesting to mention something...

[Edit] I just found out that there was a third definition:

ur-^3
pref.
Original; prototypical: ur-feminist; ur-language.

Post by **Avatar** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:04 pm

The third definition is close to how I define it for myself, and the one with which I'm familiar. I very much doubt that he just made it up, given the care with which (we assume or like to believe) the other names/words were selected, such as those of the Ravers for example.

--A

Post by **KAY1** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:06 pm

I always thought 'ur' was kind of another way of saying 'sub' or something. The urviles begin with 'ur' though not with the hyphen, which I always thought was just a way of saying they were descended from the Viles.

Website · Post by **The Somberlain** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:09 pm

When I first read the books, I took "ur-" to mean sort of "honorary". The "ur-Lord" is not a Lord as such, but he's the equivalent rank of one, sort of thing.

But I think I read somewhere that it's a bit like the prefix "über". So the ur-viles are like the Viles, but better.

Post by **Charles Timewaster** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 4:04 am

My theory was that it was a twist on the "original/prototypical" definition.

The history of the Land is a history of gradual decay...even when there's forward progress, things are never as good as they used to be. So to the people of the Land, "original/prototypical" means "ideal". Because the meanings had blurred, people got mixed up sometimes. The ur-viles and the ur-Lord were considered ideal forms, even though they weren't around in the beginning.

I think there are other places where Donaldson uses "ur-" in the traditional way...I seem to remember the One Forest being described as "ur-forest"

Post by **amanibhavam** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:37 am

The prefix ur- is a borrowing from German and according to etymologic sources it dates back approx. 100 years in English, with the meaning "original, primitive, earliest".

How this applies to the ur-viles who came after the Viles, I do not know. I have the impression that Donaldson sometimes uses words according to their sound and not the precise meaning. He also uses archaic words (from Old English for instance) like Mark and -down, which somehow "fit", although maybe few know their precise meaning.

Post by **ur-monkey** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 5:21 pm

KAY 1:

The urviles begin with 'ur' though not with the hyphen, which I always thought was just a way of saying they were descended from the Viles.

Interesting, in my copies of the 1st Chronicles, the Urviles (ur-viles) were also hyphenated...perhaps it varied from print to print?

Post by **wayfriend** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 5:13 pm

This ur-news just in:

Stephen: I've been reading your books since I was fourteen or so, and I still find today that I can learn from them today.

For instance, I only learned recently that "Shaheed" is Arabic (I think) for "martyr." How wonderful! Also that the prefix "ur-" means "original."

Also, is the word "ur-vile" one of your creations, or had you heard that somewhere before? I ask because when I was a boy there was a primitive computer game called "Rogue," and one of the monsters was an ur-vile. I guess i assumed this was a legendary beast that you had appropriated, but i can find no entry of it anywhere. I must assume the Rogue creators read your books!

Thank you again for your storytelling and your patience with us, your loyal readers.

--Steve Trimble
____________________________________________________________

As far as I know, I came up with "ur-viles" all on my own. (Which wasn't hard. As an English major, I was familiar with the "ur-" concept. And C. S. Lewis set a precedent for Viles by writing about--if memory serves--Hags and Cruels.) I've never heard of--and certainly never played--a computer game called "Rogue".

Considering my background, it's a bit peculiar that I have in some sense misused the "ur-". Among English majors--at least of my generation--"ur-" denotes "original," but it connotes "hypothetical." It refers to an original which we believe to exist, but which we do not possess. I twisted that quite a bit with "ur-viles" and "ur-Lord," trying to suggest an artificial and possibly corrupt relationship.

(12/14/2005)

Unfortunately, he seems to be telling us more about what it doesn't mean (as used in the Chronicles) than what it does mean. Artificial? Corrupt? Which one applies to Covenant?

Post by **CovenantJr** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:49 pm

Well he's certainly an artificial Lord.

Post by **balon!** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:24 am

I agree with KAY1

I always thought 'ur' was kind of another way of saying 'sub' or something. The urviles begin with 'ur' though not with the hyphen, which I always thought was just a way of saying they were descended from the Viles.

It just made sense in both the Ur-Viles and Ur-Lord. Subsets of the Viles, and a subset of the Lords.

Post by **Damelon** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:32 am

amanibhavam wrote:The prefix ur- is a borrowing from German and according to etymologic sources it dates back approx. 100 years in English, with the meaning "original, primitive, earliest".

I've thought of the prefix in this sense. Ur-Lord as original power, rather than the learned power of the Lords.

Post by **wayfriend** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 4:10 pm

But according to the author, the ur- in ur-viles doesn't refer to their geneology from the Viles, but other qualities as compared to the Viles. They are artificial or corrupt version of hypothetical Viles? Perhaps the sense is that they are poor substitutes for Viles?

Covenant is definitely not a sub-Lord! If anything, the title ur-Lord makes him superior (as in an uber-Lord), and may also imply that his Lordness was granted rather than earned, like an honorary degree.

I think the bottom line is that Donaldson liked the way it sounded. He was less interesed in the definition of ur- than in the way the sound "ur" resonates with the reader.

Post by **balon!** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:19 am

I never thought of it that way. Ur-Lord being greater because it was given instead of earned. That makes sense. As for the Viles, that makes a lot of sense as well.

Post by **ur-bane** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:13 pm

Wayfriend wrote:Covenant is definitely not a sub-Lord! If anything, the title ur-Lord makes him superior (as in an uber-Lord), and may also imply that his Lordness was granted rather than earned, like an honorary degree.

I don't agree here. While Covenant may not be a sub-Lord, he certainly isn't an uber-Lord either. Granted, while I agree that the "ur-" simply means "honorary" in his case, as you mentioned, the title was bestowed upon him. Mhoram said "Now at last we know how to honor you. You are ur-Lord Thomas Covenant..." Those words alone tell me that Covenant's title of ur-Lord was honorary. But again, it was given, not earned. And as SRD himself has stated in the text of the Chronicles (paraphrasing): Knowledge [substitute power or titles here] earned is more powerful than knowledge given.

IOW, the acts that follow Covenant's honorary title are what make him great, not the title itself. So while he was dubbed ur-Lord early in his time in the Land, he had not yet earned it. And had he not possessed a certain white gold wedding band, he would not even have been named ur-Lord at all. He would have had to earn the name, if at all, by defeating Foul.

Covenant himself would agree with me. After his title was given, only he knew that showing them the ring was not enough [to deserve the title].

Wayfriend wrote: I think the bottom line is that Donaldson liked the way it sounded. He was less interesed in the definition of ur- than in the way the sound "ur" resonates with the reader.

Here I agree. While still implying [unearned] status among the Lords, I think SRD did also like the way it sounded.

Post by **Variol Farseer** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:28 am

Suggestion about 'ur-viles': Perhaps the Demondim, when they spawned the ur-viles, thought that at long last they had created the Platonic ideal that the Viles should have embodied. To call them 'original' or 'prototypical' makes a good deal of sense in light of what we found out in Runes:

Spoiler

Neither the Viles nor the Demondim had proper bodies of their own. (In fact, they seem to have borne disturbing similarities to the Ravers. Perhaps we will find that the three brothers who became Ravers came from the same origin as the Viles.)

Since the Demondim-spawn were the first descendants of the Viles to have a fixed physical form, you could call them 'original' or 'prototypical' in that sense.

By the way, has anybody noticed this similarity between the Demondim and the Clave? Both named their most evil members or offspring after their long-dead forebears: ur-viles after the Viles, na-Mhoram after Lord Mhoram. Likely the Clave did this for the same reason that they built the Aumbrie with the kind of secret door formerly used in Foul's Creche: because samadhi Raver found it a familiar way of doing things.

Post by **Digital Thought** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 6:27 am

p.87: "BRUDE" TITLE OF KINGS OF PICTS
with "Fib" or Fife, and including "Fortrenn" or Perth, and "Got" or "Caith" in the Irish versions, which is Caithness.1 The Irish versions further state that all the seven divisions of North Alban were under the paramount rule of "Onbeccan, son of Caith."2 This prominence given to Caith (which, we shall see, is the tribal title "Catti") and his son indicates that the succession in Scotland passed from son to son, from the first king Fruithne (as Celtic scholars explain "Cruithne") who appears to be the Prwt (or Part-olon) of the Newton Stone, and that other four kings named with Onbeccan, after the seven provinces, were probably names in the contemporary branch dynasty in Ireland. The succession also in the case at least of the last two of these four kings, namely Gest and Wur-Gest or Ur-Gest, was clearly from son to son, as we shall see that the prefix Ur means "son of." This fact is of great significance, as showing that these early kings of the Picts succeeded in the paternal line and not in the maternal line, and were therefore presumably Aryan and not themselves Picts, which latter were in their matrilinear succession, which, we shall see, was a vestige of the primitive Matriarchist promiscuity of the Picts.

After these preliminary kings there now follows an unbroken line of twenty-nine kings of the Picts, each bearing the title of "Brude" or "Bruide"; and they are stated to have ruled jointly over both Hibernia and [North] Alban.3 This remarkable list of "Bride" or "Bruide" kings is as follows, and it will be noted that some of the names are essentially Aryan4 - the version in the Irish list, when differing in spelling from the Colbertine MS., is added within brackets:-

1. Brude Bont 6. Brude-Gant
2. Brude or Bruide-Pant(B.- 7. Brude-Ur-gant
Pont) 8. Brude-Guith6 (Gnith)
3. Bride-Ur-pant (-Ur-pont) 9. Brude-Ur-Guith (-Ur-Gnith)
4. Bride-Leo 10. Brude or Bruide-Fecir
5. Bride-Ur-Leo5 (Uleo) (-Feth)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. S.C.P. xxii; 4 and 24.
2. Colbertine MS. ed. S.C.P., 23.
3. Ib., 4 and 24.
4. Thus Leo, and Gant = Knut or Canut (?), Guth = Goth, and so on.
5. The Colbertine MS. reads here "Ur-leo;" see A.C.N., 137.
6. Ib. "Guith" and "Urgnith," 137, and Skene's eye copy facsimile also may be so read.

www.jrbooksonline.com/pob/pob_ch09.html

Post by **Nav** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:22 am

When I first read the Chronicles, like the Somberlain, I took ur-Lord to mean honorary Lord. I obviously didn't think too hard about what that meant for ur-viles though, as I'm sure I'd have realised that honorary vile didn't sit right.

Nowadays I like to think of ur- as being short for über. I sure it's inaccurate but it tickles me to apply (what to me is) gaming slang in this context. It kind of fits though: SuperLord, SuperVile etc.

Post by **Spiral Jacobs** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:43 am

amanibhavam wrote:The prefix ur- is a borrowing from German and according to etymologic sources it dates back approx. 100 years in English, with the meaning "original, primitive, earliest".

This is the way I automatically read it, because "ur" sounds very much like "oer" in Dutch which means the same thing. They obviously come from the same Indo-European stem.

Post by **Digital Thought** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 8:54 pm

Then are you suggesting that Berek Halfhand was the 1st Lord or that because he is supposed to be Berek reincarnated, that therefore he is called the 1st Lord?

I don't agree. I view it as a term of respect. It's obviously a title, like High Lord, and everyone acts like that Ur was even better than that. Ur-Viles meanwhile were altogether more powerful.

Anyway, it's okay not to agree. Just stay out of Florida when the posts are counted.

Post by **Torrent** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:29 pm

I've only read the German translation and they didn't translate "Ur". So I just thought it's supposed to be the same "ur" that we use in German.

For example: Ur-Großvater means 'Great Gandfather'. Ur-Zeit (ur-time) usually refers to a time when dinosaurs still walked the earth. "Ur-alt" (ur-old) means 'ancient'.

If I had to explain it I'd say that "ur" refers to something that "was there before". Or something that is really ancient. So I read Ur-Lord as "The Lord Who Was There Before Every Other Lord". Like the Abraham of Lords or like "The Founder" or "The Greatest/Oldest/Wisest". Or like the one Lord who is the lordiest of all Lords, so to speak.

Kevin's Watch

Kevin's Watch

Ur....ur....ur...

Ur....ur....ur...