Babsidi—Ilisidi’s mecheita—male, or female?
Ok, dear readers—I have another question for you.
by CJ | Apr 18, 2012 | Journal | 57 comments
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In Foreigner when Bren is first introduced to ‘Babs’, the line from Ilisidi is “Don’t worry. He hasn’t taken fingers in a year or two.”
yes, definitely male.
Because of the spelling of the name, I always believed Babsidi was male.
Good observation: -i is a male ending. -o tends to be female.
Yup. Reread said section about two weeks ago. Although, this is a new Babsidi, isn’t it? I think in one of the books I read most recently, it said Babsidi, son of Babsidi… Yup, Deliverer, my page 247, “The dowager was already safely aboard a younger creature, Babsidi son of Babsidi…new to the dowager’s service.”
I just finished Deliverer, and recalled the same thing that mrgawe did–Babsidi MacBabsidi is a male. 🙂
Speaking of which — are the book-cover images of the mecheiti accurate? I get the long, snaky neck, but I had the impression that they were somewhat hairy, maybe like a buffalo. Some of the covers make them look smooth and almost reptilian.
Amusingly I just read about Babsidi yesterday (my first time through Foreigner, really enjoying it so far!) – and yes, male.
@Scott: I got the impression they had coats somewhat like horses, or perhaps winter-coat horses; Bren does complain at one point, mentally, about mecheiti fur on his coat and clothes after a ride. My mental image of them was something like the “fabulous beast” version of a nightmare. Mostly equine shaped, but with fangs/tusks, and a mean disposition 😀
Thanks!
I bet he’s eat .
^heh interesting. my attempted clever comment was scuppered by wordpress. Plus my typing is bad 🙁
They’re not shaggy unless in winter coat, they’re brown to black, and they have snaky necks that can turn right around and bite the rider on the foot—or bend straight back, looking at their rider somewhat upside down—and slobber. There’s a reason camel riders put one foot in the bend of the neck. They’re too tall for a human to get up on conveniently without an aid. There’s a strap right by the front of the saddle that you can grab and hang to, and a cooperative one will lift the foreleg just enough to give you a boost, but you’d better be athletic. The tusks are relatively small, like a wart-hog’s, but capable of doing a lot of damage, and the old mecheita cavalry used to cap the tusks not in blunt bronze caps, but really sharp brass caps.
I somewhat drew on experiences with non-horse riding animals: camel, elephant—and gave them the bad habits of several.
And no, if an animal has tusks, you do NOT touch their nose. They’re wired to react, same way you’ll have a knee-jerk if certain nerves are set off.
Around mechieti, being ON a mechieta is your best defense.
Thanks, CJ–it’s nice to have that straight from the hors…, er, mecheita’s mouth. Had to smile at “bad habits of several.” 🙂
Then there’s Bobsidi, his cousin with that scandalous haircut…. I’ll get started writing that long conjugation on the blackboard now….
If i is a male ending, explain Ilsidi. I always felt that Babsidi was male and the leader of the herd.
Lol—well, Ilisidi is Ilisidi, what can you say? Her father wanted a son and her parents named her George. 😉
As long as they didn’t name her brother ‘Sue’.
My major complaint about all the cover art is that the mecheiti have no ears or mane, when in Foreigner their ears and mane are mentioned several times… Plus a diamond shaped raised knob or callous on the nose with a lightly prehensile upper lip (sort of like a giraffe). From Foreigner I didn’t see them as a “humpy” type of animal, but rather more horse-like. Having ridden both horse and camel, there is nothing about the kinesiology of a camel that I would call a rocking, ground covering gait. Camels sway side to side in a pace (2-beat, legs on the same side moving forward at the same time)as opposed to the trot (2-beat, diagonal pairs moving forward) and gallop (slow 3-beat, racing 4-beat) of horses. Racing camels do gallop, but the gait is unnatural and they can’t keep it up for long. Also pacing would be very difficult for an animal to reach to the side to snatch leaves or grass, as they would tend to over-balance and fall while pacing) Humped animals also have great difficulty lefting their weight off of the fore legs in order to jump.
I actually pictured them as something like wild boars( omnivorous and bad-tempered, prone to rooting up bushes and potentially goring the unwary with tusks) but with tall legs and a somewhat dragon-ish neck. Now that I finally have a week off after my finals, I am planning to do some fanart of my version. Is there somewhere here I could post it, assuming I come up with anything worth showing?
I recall Babs being male in the first few books. And Babsidi son of Babsidi in the latter books, I’m going to assume is also male. Nokhada was definitely the one described as female a few times.
Also I enjoy the comments about -i being a male ending usually. It got me flipping back through the books and indeed it is quite true. Ilisidi is just absolutely a special case and I defy anyone to say otherwise — even Bren says, when Toby asks if this Ilisidi is the same as the one he was talking about in a historical context: “There’s only one.” Damiri is another case of a female name with an -i at the end…
Also, if -o is more feminine, then how would we get Tano, or Ramaso? Obviously these aren’t absolutes, just guidelines.
The atevi clearly aren’t that strict with these -i is male, -o is female endings, but then neither is English. Maybe as a holdover from Latin in the English and related languages I know, -o tends to be male, -a, -e and -y/-ie/-je tends to be female or a diminutive of a male form which can also be used as a female name.
And then there are names like George, which ends in an -e but the -e isn’t pronounced – so maybe that should be grouped with the consonant-ending names. Those seem to be divided more by the sound of the internal vowel: Ann and Jane with the a-sound are female, John and George with the o-sound are male.
So needing a male atevi name in a hurry, I’d guess it feels natural coming op with a name ending in -o.
And about naming a girl George or China, American (and English?) law is a lot more permissive than our Dutch law. To protect children from being named ridiculous things they’ll be dreadfully teased about, one isn’t allowed to name a child using an ordinary word (like China, or Lilac, or Sparrow, or Doorknob), or name a girl with a boy’s name, or a boy with a girl’s name, unless this is a traditional usage (for instance Rose is both a flower and a girl’s name, and Robin is a bird, and both a girl’s and a boy’s name). So if you wanted a boy and got a girl, you’d have to go for one of the traditionally ambiguous names (Robin, Leslie, or, as it’s been used before in that way, George). If you want an unusual name for your child, you’ve got to have documentary proof that it has been used as a name for the child’s gender before, or that it’s not a known word in any of the languages in use hereabout.
I wonder if that kind of rules are common elsewhere? I’ve never heard of a boy named Fatima, or a girl Mohammed, so in countries with a strong traditional divide in mens’ and womens’ rights this divide might be a lot stricter than in countries in which the sexes are supposed to be equal. Atevi society seems very gender-equal so that might be a reason they’re not too strict about the -i and -o endings.
When I was teaching, calling the roll on the first day was usually a test of pronunciation and good guesses. And I tried not to react no matter what, except with a pleasant look as I got the face to go with the name. But on one day I called out “George X” and got a feminine “Here!”
There are IIRC some female writers with the first name George. The only one that comes to mind right now is George Sand, who is French; but I thought I remembered at least one English example as well. George Eliot was a woman, but looking it up in wikipedia just now that was a fake-male pseudonym for marketing reasons. Still, it must be quite rare as a female name, it’s not really one of the ambiguous ones.
And are there really no rules at all about naming your child? Not even about not naming them after ordinary words like Doorknob or Table or Cutlery-drawer, Dog or Elephant, Eeyore or Piglet? Or even worse words and fictional (animal)names? I’d expect the registry clerk, or whoever has to note down the name officially, to protest if a parent tried this. But what use is protesting if a drunken or mad parent insists and the clerk can’t refuse?
This is also a back-door into our naming rules: if you can prove that, say, an American artist, is officially named Doggy Dog, you could name your child after him (but not in translation).
But it doesn’t stop other Americans from wondering what their parents were “on” when they named the kid. “River Phoenix”? And I seem to remember some “Hollywood Stars” have been more than creative, e.g. Rumer and Scout Willis?
Not that I think creative names are inherently bad–my grandmother wanted a unique name for my aunt, and said she made up the name “Reva”, which I’ve heard of in others so not so unique.
The worst recently in the UK are names such as ‘Chardonnay’ and ‘Chelsea’ – along with the images of a specific type of female they convey…
Hanneke – I’ve heard of those naming laws in northern Europe (and Iceland, I believe), but there’s nothing like that here in the US. Everyone’s free to name their kid just about anything.
Speaking of names–I’m nine books into the series and, being a cyclist, I *still* frequently misread “Banichi” as “Bianchi.” 🙂
Naming laws seem like such a good idea sometimes. In my region of the US, there are some definitely odd names. Some are interesting: Sierra as a non-gender-specific makes sense.
Some are just weird. The boy pronounces his name “See-ehr-ah” but the name is spelled “Serra.” Leaving me wondering how the parents came up with that one.
But then I go looking for unusual character names (for writing or for gaming purposes) and realize that none of the children in my son’s class have any *really* out-there names. Just a lot of variations on so-called “tribal” names, which I am beginning to suspect are not at all African in origin, but simply made-up, pleasant sounding amalgamations of syllables.
Not that there is anything at all wrong with that! Most of the best names are exactly that: auspicious and pleasing collections of syllables.
If you really want to make people go ‘huh’, try using a name from an unusual ethnicity. Hawaiian names around here are pretty common, but one of our friends has a mile long Hawaiian name that gets shortened to ‘Kela’ for convenience. It makes TSA in other states scratch their heads mightily. Welsh is another good one; an older woman of my acquaintance was named Mynfawr, but commonly went by ‘Nan’.
May I observe: “Who needs Google when you have blog readers like these?” 😉