The Caliphate of Azithan needs a new name.
It needs a new name for two reasons:
1. There is no way I'm going to make "Caliphate" sound acceptable. Not never. Its only associated with anything positive in my mind because of the later Ender Wiggins books, and that's not an association I want.
2. Azithan sure sounds a lot like Azkaban.
I'm tempted by the Malik Republic, though I'd prefer a word that seems religious over Republic. I've never found a name that quite fits.
Suggestions?
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The Glorious People's United Kingdom of Faith!
ReplyDeleteNo, not really.
But "Communion" is a term that has religious connotations and could be used in place of "republic" to reflect a religious state.
I've just finished running a five-year campaign with a Caliphate as one of its primary political forces, and one of the most overtly heroic ones. This has permanently affected how I hear the word.
ReplyDeleteOn that score, "Convocation" might be cool. The idea that the society sees itself as a gathering.
ReplyDeleteThe Oligocracy of Zithaan.
ReplyDeleteOligocracy is a form of rule that I just totally made up. And the country name is the same, only I shoved the first "A" over into the cheap seats.
Jesse Cox Nice. Communion is good, but has overly christian meaning. Caliphate was intentionally muslim, but ... yeah. The NPR keeps telling me about a terrible Caliphate.
ReplyDeleteBrandes Stoddard Good! I'm not sure it'd work for me, not now at least.
Robert Bohl That's not a bad word. Overtly religious without being overtly christian. Hmm.
John Hattan That sounds a lot like an Oligarchy.
Necrarchy? Though that makes it seem like the undead are in charge.
ReplyDeleteYes, but it's a democratic oligarchy. Haven't yet figured out how that works :)
ReplyDeleteKritarchy was a consideration for a while. That's rule by judges, applicable to both ancient biblical israel and modern muslim courts.
ReplyDeleteThe Malik Veneration?
ReplyDeleteJohn Hattan I feel like there's a political joke to be made about the US in there somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWilliam: Also, convocation has religious connotations but is not strictly speaking religious in its definition, so it's really flexible and good that way. Plus it sounds smart.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the religious title of the person in charge? I.e., "Bishopric" "Abbey", etc.
ReplyDeleteTheocracy.
ReplyDeleteExercise for the reader -- determine if I'm responding to Sean Gomes or William Nichols.
Derrick Sanders Used to be the Caliph.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols So, you need a new title as well? Try raiding Sumerian/Babylonian lit...
ReplyDeleteGiven that being in community with the dead is a big theme, it could also be called a Continuity -- not typically used to describe a government or nation, but clear in a way Kritarchy isn't, immediately.
ReplyDeleteIn one of Verner Vinge's novels, the society that emerged from a very particular plague called itself the Emergency. It proved to be a subtle joke.
A Sumerian priest king was an "Ensi", so you could have "The Eternal Ensirate of Wizzum"
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox Which Vinge novel? I find a few of his splatter together in my head.
ReplyDeleteA Deepness in the Sky -- the Emergency takes over the human trading station around the strange planet. They're the people who use the magnetically active brain disease and MRI machines to "focus" people's minds?
ReplyDeleteIs that the universe with world names like "We Finally Made It," or am I thinking of a different one?
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl I think that's Iain M Banks (and those are ship AI names)
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox Oh, THOSE assholes.
ReplyDeleteYup. I was reading it when I went to go see Sweeny Todd, and it stuck with me -- Sweeny is Mrs. Haversham's personal Focused.
ReplyDelete(I always end up writing too much about these guys...)
ReplyDeleteAs their status as a nation comes second to their status as a religion, I would expect them to call themselves something like The Faithful People of Malik.
Of course there would be as many names for these people as there are peoples which know of them.
The well educated and somewhat cynical scholars of the Southern Rivers refer to them as Malik's Slow Horde. They try to continue to call the land by the names they held before the coming of the necromancers but every generation a few more are consigned to the history books and the maps are redrawn with a larger grey blot labelled Malik's Occupation.
The commoners along the trade routes still refer to them as The Necromancer Kingdoms, a title which is both more and less accurate than all the rest due to the abundance of necromancers and the utter dearth of Kings.
Commoners further away, and Lords and Ladies a little further than that, simply call it The Lands of the Dead. They only hear of these people third-hand and so they hear nothing of their great achievements of civilisation, only horror story of cities where the dead live false lives and every year they are one city closer than last.
William Nichols Also (IIRC), Persians used the word "Satrap", but it doesn't really have the religious overtones, and pre-dates Islam. shrug. I dunno.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford You are continuously welcome to do !
ReplyDeleteMalik Continuity?
ReplyDeleteContinuity of Malik?
Also, I absolutely adore that this post has had almost nothing about the society, and you guys remember enough to give cool ideas.
ReplyDeleteI'm not huge on "Malik" because it's a fairly common middle-eastern name that has similar problems with exoticism as "Caliphate".
ReplyDeleteTo someone from that part of the world, it would be like having The Republic of Bob ("nobody asked you to live on Planet Bob")
I like Convocation....
ReplyDeleteSean Gomes Oh, thanks!
ReplyDeleteI got to Malik through Caliphate, as same root.I supposed if I'd actually finished reading the wikipedia post, I would have realized its become a common name.
Le Sigh.
William, what if you took a common adjective or noun and corrupted it to make it super-easy for English speakers? That might help with your appropriation concerns.
ReplyDeleteHeh.
ReplyDeleteThe Continuous Convocation? The Convocation of Continuity?
"The Continuous Convocation" sounds like a very long talk. Which is literally what it means. Makes it a little silly, for me.
ReplyDeleteSo this may be a side track, but -- what are these people's beliefs about the afterlife? Some clearly stick around as shades or ghosts, but that's clearly not what everyone does.
ReplyDeleteSome equivalent of "heavenly" or "afterlife" or "ancestral" may figure prominently.
ReplyDeleteContinuous Convocation made me think of "The Ever Faith," which is a fun phrase, and creepy-a-f, but doesn't sound (to me) like what you started out asking for.
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox Oh, Jesse.
ReplyDeleteThere's an old saying among the priests: Ask three priests what they think about the afterlife, and you'll give five different answers.
Some even take the heretical position that ghosts are not a soul, and that there's nothing to us but our bodies. Others hold that spirits live on in the Lifeless, that soulstuff holds them together. Still others claim the Ancient One is waiting beyond the pale gates of death.
Sometimes, these arguments come to the Priest's Convocation -- effectively, the house of commons -- who never does come to a full decision, but does, from time to time, ensure that certain beliefs are viewed as heretical. That is, they don't so much claim a specific belief as claim that certain ones are untrue.
Convocation of Malqort?
ReplyDeleteThe Malqort Convocation tastes better to me.
ReplyDelete+1 for the q without an accompanying u.
ReplyDeleteJohn Hattan Thanks. Its a modification of Melqart, a Phoenician god, who may have been the biblical Ba'al.
ReplyDelete