crosspost: Beru headcanon [May 2016]
Dec. 12th, 2018 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineBetween trying to cram Wollstonecraft and Dryden into my brain, I’ve been thinking about Beru’s maiden name.
It seems to fit the common-ish Tatooine style of names: Skywalker, Darklighter, the like. Personally, I imagine that those kinds of names have been customary for people of that region of Tatooine, with ‘Lars’ and whatnot signaling relative newcomers or people from a different region. (I’ve certainly always gotten a pioneer homesteader vibe from the Lars farm.)
Of course, Beru’s name is a little different. TV Tropes jokingly refers to that kind of name as “Luke Nounverber.” Which the other ones are! And, like traditional Nounverber names, they seem to have pretty specific meaning. Someone who “walks” the skies—a pilot, obviously. (Most likely would refer to an ancestor, but nobody will take my pilot!Shmi headcanon from me.) Darklighter is more abstract, but I imagine refers to instilling hope: casting light in the dark. Or someone who happened to be carrying a flashlight at a propitious moment, idk.
Whitesun isn’t actually a Nounverber name, ofc: it’s Adjectivenoun. Now, those could have totally existed side-by-side, so it doesn’t need to be significant. But it does seem a bit, hm … insignificant? You can imagine how someone would have come to be called Skywalker or Darklighter. Whitesun refers to… the sun is bright?? (Shouldn’t it be Whitesuns?)
Hm. Well, in names, there’s quite a bit of blurring the lines between similar etymological components—similar in meaning or pronunciation/appearance. The latter is particularly easy when orthography is so, uh, idiosyncratic. Like, well, White and Whit getting used more or less interchangeably.
But whereas white of course refers to the colour (well, lightness or brightness), whit comes from wiht, person or human being. (Hence the Middle English ‘wight,’ living creature or being, that shows up all through Chaucer—I’d only seen it used for malevolent ghosts, so I was very confused at first!)
Sun would be sunne or sonne, easily confused with the patronymic -son, descendant or male child (depending on the case). A name like Whitesun could easily have evolved from Whitson. Now, of course they’re not speaking actual English, but it’s mediated through English to a very pervasive degree, so w/e.
And … it’s not exactly difficult to envision circumstances where a native Tatooinian might take on a name that literally says ‘I am the child of a human being.’
tl;dr—totally adoptingfialleril 's freeborn!Beru headcanon.
It seems to fit the common-ish Tatooine style of names: Skywalker, Darklighter, the like. Personally, I imagine that those kinds of names have been customary for people of that region of Tatooine, with ‘Lars’ and whatnot signaling relative newcomers or people from a different region. (I’ve certainly always gotten a pioneer homesteader vibe from the Lars farm.)
Of course, Beru’s name is a little different. TV Tropes jokingly refers to that kind of name as “Luke Nounverber.” Which the other ones are! And, like traditional Nounverber names, they seem to have pretty specific meaning. Someone who “walks” the skies—a pilot, obviously. (Most likely would refer to an ancestor, but nobody will take my pilot!Shmi headcanon from me.) Darklighter is more abstract, but I imagine refers to instilling hope: casting light in the dark. Or someone who happened to be carrying a flashlight at a propitious moment, idk.
Whitesun isn’t actually a Nounverber name, ofc: it’s Adjectivenoun. Now, those could have totally existed side-by-side, so it doesn’t need to be significant. But it does seem a bit, hm … insignificant? You can imagine how someone would have come to be called Skywalker or Darklighter. Whitesun refers to… the sun is bright?? (Shouldn’t it be Whitesuns?)
Hm. Well, in names, there’s quite a bit of blurring the lines between similar etymological components—similar in meaning or pronunciation/appearance. The latter is particularly easy when orthography is so, uh, idiosyncratic. Like, well, White and Whit getting used more or less interchangeably.
But whereas white of course refers to the colour (well, lightness or brightness), whit comes from wiht, person or human being. (Hence the Middle English ‘wight,’ living creature or being, that shows up all through Chaucer—I’d only seen it used for malevolent ghosts, so I was very confused at first!)
Sun would be sunne or sonne, easily confused with the patronymic -son, descendant or male child (depending on the case). A name like Whitesun could easily have evolved from Whitson. Now, of course they’re not speaking actual English, but it’s mediated through English to a very pervasive degree, so w/e.
And … it’s not exactly difficult to envision circumstances where a native Tatooinian might take on a name that literally says ‘I am the child of a human being.’
tl;dr—totally adopting
fialleril 's freeborn!Beru headcanon.
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