Fictional languages

[Anonymous]

I have not read any of Michael Moorcock's books. I was wondering if he created his owns names or made up a language.

[Bill]

To my knowledge, he did not make up his name, it was given to him by his parents (you will have to ask him which one), and although sometimes the English slang sounds to this American like a made up language, he usually posts in English.

I'm sorry; just kidding with you.

Suggestion, you should give some of his work a try (even if he does answer your question here, which he is prone to do). It is well worth the time invested.

[Michael Moorcock]

I don't use made up languages, by and large, though I will use the same roots to make up names, since this tends to give them a kind of unity.
I have used other languages in some of my books, especially the non-fantasy books, and made use of thieves' cant in books like The City in the Autumn Stars and my current book The White Wolf's Son. Many of the names of 'the Dukes of Hell' are the names of demons and spirits from conventional demonology, but just as the point of writing my fantasy books isn't much to do with world-building or language-invention, but to do more with producing some kind of parable, so I'll use anagrams and other word-games to produce my names, such as Corum Jhaelen Irsei. The reason for this is to produce thematic links between books -- sometimes between a fantasy novel and a 'realistic' novel.

[Anonymous]

I heard thibefore but I'm drawing a blank...

What's Corum's name an anagram of?

[Strider]

Corum Jhaelen Irsei = Jeremiah Cornelius methinks.

So, there are other hidden anagrams in your works, Mr. M? Maybe thereby hangs a quiz thread? :)

On the subject of names, in my Mayflower copy of An Alien Heat, Jord Jagged keeps drifting into 'Lord Jagger'.....deliberate artifice or do we sack the proof-reader?

[Michael Moorcock]

He was originally Lord Jagger. Who turns up in the Bastable Warlord of the Air, as I recall. I changed it, but clearly some slipped through.
Can't remember why, now. Warlord of the Air and the other books in the series have lots of public figures (as well as a few private ones) making appearances, in different contexts to their familiar ones. There are quite a few anagrams in my books (Lady Miggea, for instance, in The Dreamthief's Daughter, who leaves desolation wherever she goes...) but I don't always remember them, later. The Hawkmoon books have a lot, many of them a bit dated (a ship named after Harold Wilson, British
prime minister, for instance). The Dragon in the Sword had quite a few, too. I don't do it for them to be detected. It's just a way, often, of making up alien sounding names. And having a bit of private fun. Others, in more directly satirical books, are there for the reader's amusement, as well as my own! :)

[Jagged]

Before you all get carried away, I would remind you that Michal Moorcock is a fictional character. He first showed up in a miniature model I made of Earth when the end of time was drawing neigh. I put him in as a spoof of my Polish friend, Lech Crammokooci, and he went away scribbling pages and pages of notes for novels great and small. I still have a fondness for this character whom I pictured as a Norwegian troll with a brain somewhat like a super-computer with some illogical short-circuits that produced unexpected and extremely innovative results.

[Michael Moorcock]

Rumbled!

[DeepFixer]

That's one of the things that I like about Mr. M's books: he doesn't feel the need to make up languages in them.

Like in the LotR books, with MANY appendices on pronounciation and a complete course on 'How to speak Elvish.' Or Star Trek books that require the 'Klingon Dictionary' to translate page after page.

Jack Vance handles it pretty easily. He'll sometimes have footnotes that relate some "alien" concept/word that he's created. Tho', some of his stuff has appendices in them, but they don't seem as annoying to me.