Resource: Names/Titles Spreadsheet

[shadaras]

three--rings over on tumblr came to a (very relatable) conclusion that this fandom needs a list of what character names and titles are (in subtitles, hanzi, pinyin, translation, and with reference to if TYK calls them something different than SHL), and started a spreadsheet for this purpose!

It's clearly new/a work in progress, but it's already quite useful! It looks like it's set to be editable, too, so you can add in missing characters/other bits of information if you have them. :)

Qi Ye: Fun with linguistics and a hilarious google find

[rekishi]

I'm currently reading "Qi Ye" (the novel focusing on Jing Beiyuan 《景北渊》, titular Qi Ye 《七爷》, and Wu Xi 《乌溪》, Da Wu 《大巫》.   As this starts a good 15 years before the TYK/SHL storyline, Wu Xi is not the Great Shaman, Da Wu, yet. (Btw, fun fact, both 乌 and 巫 are Wū, first tone, so these are homophones. The 乌 in the not-family-name sense means "crow" and that is so fitting with how Wu Xi is described in the book and dressed by the costume department in SHL it's wonderful.) 

Instead, he is referred to as "shamanet". While for me the meaning of this is clear with the -et syllable being commonly used in English to denote a diminutive (coronet, piglet, princelet, caulifloweret, starlet, etc). But also, I have never come across the word at all! Now I'm ESL and there will always be words like that which still make sense. Still, when I brought this up I wasn't the only one who hadn't seen it before.

trobadora and shadaras helped me with thinking and with looking up things in the Chinese version of the book. At first we thought the shaman-et derived from xiao wu (小巫), little shaman, which would make sense with how the -et syllable is usually used. In fact though (thanks, Dora!) the novel gives us 《巫童》(Wu Tong, shaman child; Chinese speakers please correct me because at least neither Yabla nor Pleco have a compound entry for this and the Baidu Baike page refers to social structures in Africa only).

This still makes sense in the way the -et syllable is usually used (caulifloweret, piglet), but it still is a fascinating neologism (if in fact it is one; disclaimer: I am not well versed enough in cultures that had/still have shamans to make that a definite statement and am open to corrections, however I did google, please see below).

While this discussion was ongoing I also googled a little and found the following:

• "shamanet" is Albanian for "shaman" (the fully grown one)
• shamenet is Hebrew for "cream" (as in cream cheese or sour cream)
• it is a forest in Kenya
• the term shows up in some pseudo-Christian texts and also a table top RPG game (one hit each)

And then there is this gem, which has brought absolute hilarity to us (original post at my DW):

( the screenshot contains SHL spoilers so beware )

So, if you are reading Qi Ye, this is additional background knowledge!

(Languages are such fun.)

(Mods, can you add tags as you see appropriate? For Qi Ye maybe? Thanks!) Thanks!

ETA:
It would have helped if I had actually looked into the translator's glossary (which, in my defense, is not included in my epub so I had to look it up) and they say:

"大巫师 – Great Shaman, lit. “great wu master”
大巫 – Great Witch, lit. ‘great shaman’ (as you could guess, I couldn’t translate it like that… ‘witch’ is neutral in this sense)
巫童 – Shamanet (shaman + diminutive suffix –et; the t is silent, pronounced like the end of hey), lit. “wu child”"
(Source)

(So hey, I was right on the -et syllable!)

They also link to the wikipedia article on Wu (shaman), which probably makes translation choices a bit clearer I think.