🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan19.232437.5103@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>In article <1993Jan18.002137.6847@trl.oz.au>, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
>> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>Well, whatever n'ha is, it isn't Romance....
[deletion]

>> 
>> No, it isn't Breton. In Breton c'h is a single letter (just like
>> ch, dd, ff etc in Welsh) that represents a velar fricative (i.e.
>> = Welsh ch).
>
[Much deletion]

I'm sorry, I didn't see the origin of this thread, but I suspect all you
real linguists (by comparison, this is my first semester as a Ling. major)
are barking up the wrong tree.

Any science fiction fans out there?

You see,  Name n'ha Mother's-name  is the form of address used in a science
fiction series I know and love.  If you knew this and are speculating whether
it was taken from a real language, I apologize for wasting bandwidth.
If you didn't, read on.

It's the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  The women, known as
Renunciates or Free Amazons, took an oath that gave them relative freedom
in the extremely patriarchal society the novels are set in.  They used,
for example, Claudia n'ha Charlotte (that'd be me! -- not that I go by it) to
avoid taking a man's name.  This *was* fiction only, until (female) fans
of Bradley's novels started to adopt this convention.  The author has been
asked by women, at science fiction conventions, to take their oaths (lifted
direct from the novels) so that the women feel they are true Renunciates
as in the novels.  Some legally change their names, so this is indeed what
you might find on someone's birth certificate, but the word "n'ha" was 
invented, by Ms. Bradley.

The language she invented does resemble some real languages, but does not, so
far as I know, come from any particular language.  Nor did she give elaborate
glossaries, a la Tolkien.

Hope this helps,

Claudia Mastroianni