I have been pooling over my D'ni guides and searching on the internet for stray bit of info with which I might carry out a sacred quest:
To attempt to Decipher the names of the D'ni-named ages.

I became inspired while reading the Book of D'ni over again- I was curious as to what the name "Terahnee" could mean, and I did a little research.

"Terahnee" seems to come from "Tehra," a noun meaning Tree, and "ahnee," a verb meaning to take/get. It therefore seems that Terahnee translates loosely as the tree-getting age, which makes sense, I guess, since it was the primary age that the people of Ronay fled to.

Looking through my guide, I found the word "Tahg," which means to give. I realized, then that "Tahgira" must mean something about giving. I realized that what was missing, -ira or maybe Gira, may then explain Eder Gira's name as well. Well, I thought about it and a common theme of both ages is ventilation of some sort.

Eder means to rest, or resting, so

Eder Gira may mean The rest age of ventilation
Tahgira may mean age of ventilation-giving, or something of that sort.

"Kemo" means fish, making Eder Kemo the fish rest age.

We still do not know what "Delin" means, so there doesn't seem to be any way of telling what Eder Delin, the apparently new age whose pictures I have fallen in love with, may have in store for us.

Eder Tsoghal seems to mean the rest age of ground/earth but may also mean caves or tunnels, as Gahlpo is a cave.

I can't figure out what Noloben means, but we do know that it was used as a museum age. That doesn't seem to help us, though.

Teledahn seems to be a word fused from pieces of two words: Tel, meaning guild, and Geh’Dahn, meaning wisdom. Maybe during the combination of these two words the G is dropped, forming Telehdahn. Thus Teledahn seems to be the age of the wise guild.

Kadish Tolesa. Well, took me a while to find out and I think I’ve surmised a reasonable answer: Kadish obviously refers to King Kadish. Took me a while to find out, but “to” means “place” and “lesh” means rule. To-lesh, and then with an extra “a” vowel at the ends for apparently no reason. Kadish Tolesa could therefore be Kadish’s place of rule, but could also mean Kadish's main place. Very iffy, but it makes sense.

Gahreesen- this is a weird one. Gah means and, Rees means to eat and ehn is a suffix turning rees into the third person. Basically it means “And it eats.” No idea why it’s named that. Maybe because it used to be a prison, who knows.

So, I know that there are a lot more but I'm sort of beat right now...so feel free to contribute if you have anything to add! Let's let this topic "toolehn!"

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"Your choices, Maurus. Free will is an incredible gift." -Dr. Watson

You might be interested in a couple of threads at the D'ni Linguistic Fellowship. This one deals with the names of the Ages, though much is still unknown, and this one deals with Tolesa specifically.

BTW, Kadish was not a king. The era of the kings ended about 2,400 years before the Fall, when Kadish fled to his vault. Kadish was a former guildmaster in the Writer's Guild, then he became a merchant and ran an art gallery.

Noloben was not a museum Age. I think you have it confused with Negilahn.

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Oop, that's right. I meant Todelmer.

DOesn't mean I know what Noloben means, either. /shrugs

Eh, Guildmaster, King, What's the Difference?!
I do get Kadish confused a lot. I keep forgetting that he wasn't a king.


I looked at that topic about Kadish Tolesa. Kind of interesting.
I have this theory, though, that the D'ni may have taken bits of different words when naming things, similar to the way we do today.

For example, we have many prefixes and suffixes today that are based off of root words which are much longer, as opposed to using all of the full words to describe something. Perhaps The D'ni did something similar?

WHo knows. But I still can't get over "Gahreesen." >_<

Nonetheless, my main concern for this topic really, was to determine what "Gira" meant as it appeared in more than one name of an age.

THe topics you sent me are interesting. Very similar to some of my arguments, and yet they forgot something very important when considereing the naming of Taghira- that Tahg means "to give."

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"Your choices, Maurus. Free will is an incredible gift." -Dr. Watson

Last edited by Maurus on Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:08 am; edited 2 times in total

TakuaKaita600 wrote:

Oop, that's right. I meant Todelmer.

DOesn't mean I know what Noloben means, either.

Actually, we think we're pretty close to pinning down Todelmer. "To" means "place" and "mehr" means "watch", so "Todelmer" could be something like "place of star watching". But, we still need confirmation on the "del" element.

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AH, yeah.

Actually, what had happened was, I had no idea what noloben meant, so moved on, and then forgot which age noloben was later on. >_< But that's interesting about Toldelmer. That's probably it.

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"Your choices, Maurus. Free will is an incredible gift." -Dr. Watson

TakuaKaita600 wrote:

WHo knows. But I still can't get over "Gahreesen."

The problem with your theory is that the name is more likely based on "gahro" (great) than on "gah" (and). The D'ni often dropped the "o" when forming words: gahrtahvo (great tahvo), Garternay (great tree root), etc.

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TakuaKaita600 wrote:

I became inspired while reading the Book of D'ni over again- I was curious as to what the name "Terahnee" could mean, and I did a little research.

"Terahnee" seems to come from "Tehra," a noun meaning Tree, and "ahnee," a verb meaning to take/get. It therefore seems that Terahnee translates loosely as the tree-getting age, which makes sense, I guess, since it was the primary age that the people of Ronay fled to.

According to the DRC, "Terahnee" means "The New Tree". It's on the DRC site in the D'ni Essentials section, under "Pre Earth" (4th Paragraph). The same article says that "D'ni" means "New Start".

"deh" = "re-", & "nee" = new
"deh'nee" = "d'nee" = "D'ni" = "Renew" (a symbol of a "new start")

"ter" = "tree", "ah" marks the direct object of a sentence, & "nee" = "new"
"ter-ah-nee" = "Terahnee" = "The New Tree"

"to" = "place", & "mehr" = "watch"
Todelmer is an observatorial Age, so it's speculated that "del" means "star/sky" or something to that extent, so:
"Todelmer" = "Place of Sky-Watching"?

Both Eder Gira & Tahgira have steam, so it's supposed that "gira" means "steam". As for "tah", that's the D'ni word for the noun "it", but I don't think that's quite right in this context.

For Eder Tsogahl, the D'ni Linguistic Fellowship has a fascinating thread about the possible relationship between "gahl" & "gahlon", & the possible meaning of "ohn".

"Gahreesen" literally sounds like "gah-rees-en", which means "and it eats", but this is probably a coincidence, like "therapist" looking like "the rapist". "Gahreesen" also looks suspiciously like D'ninglish for "Garrison" *twitch-twitch*. Hopefully, it's actual D'ni, in which case it's probably a contraction of "gahro-reesen", meaning "Great [Something]".

"to" = place
Kadish Tolesa was written for the purpose of protecting Master Kadish's hoards of wealth. "lesa" most likely means something like "protection", "wealth", "treasure", etc, so:
"Kadish Tolesa" = "Kadish's Place of Treasure"?

"tehl" = "guild", but I don't think that's the case with "Teledahn". "-ahn" is suspected to be a suffix that makes something a place-name; not that it literally means "place", like "to", but more akin to adding an "a" to the end of words in English (Example: "serene" + "a" = "Serenia" = "a serene place"). I'm guessing the active word in "Teledahn" is "teled" (whatever that means).

K'laamas wrote:

"tehl" = "guild", but I don't think that's the case with "Teledahn".

I think it might well be the case. Remember that the Age was originally written as a birthday present for a guildmaster.

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I'm of the opinion that Teled is D'ni for Mushroom or a specific form of muchroom and the ahn is the 'ahn thats found on Laki'ahn.

I wonder if reesen is not a term for fortress or something, but then the sen on the end could be sehn

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Yay! Thanks RAWA! *hands RAWA a thank-you cookie*

RAWA wrote:

So, in that spirit, here's a small present:

Are you feeling all right? In case you hadn't noticed, that was a lucid explanation without the least hint of cryptic ambiguity. And it gave us TWO new words! I'm glad I'm sitting down ...

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Well, it is the holiday season. The penguins are all tucked, snug in their beds, visions of sugar-herrings dance in their heads. Or maybe the eggnog's been fglowing freely at Cyan HQ.

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Ooohh! The Man has arrived

RAWA wrote:

<garEsen> "Gah-ree-sen" is derived from three D'ni words:
<garo> "gah-ro" - adj. great, mighty
<arEu> "ah-ree-uh" - v. to protect
<senaren> "sen-ah-ren" - n. building/structure

So, basically, it's a mighty structure for protection. It would more accurately be translated as "fortress", but since it sounds so similar to "garrison", it has been generally translated as "garrison".

Now this begs the question whether the -sen is a productive suffix or not. It certainly seems fun enough to be used frequently. Can you form new words with it rather freely, or is it a closed class of words, praytell?

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