Nov. 30th, 2007 11:06 am
A servant to the borrower
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muckefuckLast night I dreamt I was in a cocktail lounge singing along sotto voce to a Fine Young Cannibals cover of a cheesy 70s lovesong (if I could remember the name of it, I'd tell you--honest I would!) when my eyes fell upon a map someone had left open on a table. It was an Oriental-themed fantasy world that I knew and someone with a basic knowledge of Hànzì (as evidenced by the fact that their guesses were obvious but often wrong) had tried to gloss the transliterations.
One of the features was an island group called the Huahuang on the map but they had an alternative name based on the legend of their formation and it seems our anonymous scribbler had tried to provide a gloss based on that. In the distant past, some powerful being had borrowed a valuable pair of shears from the heavenly deities. When some celestial nymphs came to retrieve them, the being spitefully threw them in the ocean. The nymphs raced to the spot, but the shears had already disappeared under the water. Terrified of returning to the Palace of Heaven empty-handed, they remained there and eventually became three towering islands. For that reason, they are called the "Hurled Shears Islands".
This other name had been glossed "suan" and "?ie" or "le", which doesn't make any sense. When I awoke, I had a look at my dictionaries to determine what would be more reasonable and settled on 投剪島 Tóuziǎn Dǎo. (Ziǎn is the Early Mandarin form of modern jiǎn "scissors; shears". I try to use EM for fantasy Chinese toponyms in order to give them a more archaic feel.) I still haven't decided what Huahuang stands for, but I'm willing to bet the first character is 華"flowery". Maybe it's the name of the chief nymph/island?
One of the features was an island group called the Huahuang on the map but they had an alternative name based on the legend of their formation and it seems our anonymous scribbler had tried to provide a gloss based on that. In the distant past, some powerful being had borrowed a valuable pair of shears from the heavenly deities. When some celestial nymphs came to retrieve them, the being spitefully threw them in the ocean. The nymphs raced to the spot, but the shears had already disappeared under the water. Terrified of returning to the Palace of Heaven empty-handed, they remained there and eventually became three towering islands. For that reason, they are called the "Hurled Shears Islands".
This other name had been glossed "suan" and "?ie" or "le", which doesn't make any sense. When I awoke, I had a look at my dictionaries to determine what would be more reasonable and settled on 投剪島 Tóuziǎn Dǎo. (Ziǎn is the Early Mandarin form of modern jiǎn "scissors; shears". I try to use EM for fantasy Chinese toponyms in order to give them a more archaic feel.) I still haven't decided what Huahuang stands for, but I'm willing to bet the first character is 華"flowery". Maybe it's the name of the chief nymph/island?