King.In.Yellow Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Yeah, I know. They're weird. Most people can't pronounce them (I can and that makes me better than you, but that's for a different thread). But is there some logic behind them? If we break them down, they seemingly consist of three parts. I'll use Hizdahr zo Loraq as an example. The given name, Hizdahr. It's probably arbitrary and given by parents to children. We know this because a lot of kids are named Grazdan and Gazdhan, to honor Grazdan the Great who was a great hero of some sort in Old Ghis. The family name, Loraq, which denotes family allegiance. However, the middle name, zo in my example, has been giving me trouble. What does it mean? It's zo among most Meereneese, with the exception of Reznak mo Reznak (the seneschal) and Skahaz mo Kandaq (the Shavepate). The two Astapori nobles we meet in the books, Grazdan mo Ullhor and Kraznys mo Nakloz both use the mo middle name. The Yunkish seem to favor zo, like the Meereeneese, instead of mo, with the exception of Grazdan mo Eraz, the Yunkish emissary to Volantis. So, we got zo in most important people, while in Meereen and Yunkai, mo seems reserved for petty nobles (Skahaz mo Kandaq and Grazdan mo Eraz) and a seneschal, who could be a less important son of an important family, given that he's sworn to seneschaldom. Knowing that the Ghiscari place great importance on ancestors, precedence and custom, is it possible that their names reflect the order of precedence, in the same way a Loraq must always be above a Kandaq in Meereen? Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldenhand_the_Just Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 i always thought the "zo" or "mo" meant "of"...as in "Hizdahr of Loraq" so people know this is Hizdahr of House Loraq... but that would beg the question of why there is "zo" and "mo"...i don't know then, but that's just how i interpreted it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golden&Crimson Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The "zo" probably has the same meaning has "da", "de" ou "do" in portuguese, "van" in dutch or "von" in german; show your origin, meaning that you belong to a certain family or a certain place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 I think, honest to god, it's just something GRRM tossed in there for some variety and to make the place seem more comlpex without having any real background. If you want to get serious about it...I can imagine something like a dialect split or a migration, where some families still go with mo/zo because that was the usage in Yunkai/Astapor/the south side of Ghis island/wherever, where they migrated from 900 hundred years ago after the plague of thingy and the war of whatsit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Daemon Blackfyre Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 The only Ghiscari name worth remembering is Skahaz mo Kandaq (i.e. Joseph Dzhugashvili), aka The Shavepate (i.e. Stalin).The blatant Orientalism of Slaver's Bay (and other areas of Essos apart from the Free Cities) aside, good point on the zo/mo difference between senior and petty nobles. It may reflect an order of precedence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Green Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 I'd have said it denoted class, though maybe it could also be to do with the senschal and the shavepate being almost like servants? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dornishman's Wife Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Another interesting touch with zo/mo is that women's names don't seem to contain either, even if their male relative's names do: It's Galazza Galare, but her cousin is named Grazdam zo Galare.As to whether zo or mo is used for a family, I agree that it's most likely about different degrees of nobility. As far as we know, it's always the same for one family, i.e. all male Loraqs are zo Loraq etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Green Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 Another interesting touch with zo/mo is that women's names don't seem to contain either, even if their male relative's names do: It's Galazza Galare, but her cousin is named Grazdam zo Galare. As to whether zo or mo is used for a family, I agree that it's most likely about different degrees of nobility. As far as we know, it's always the same for one family, i.e. all male Loraqs are zo Loraq etc. Its probably different for women because they are (probably) seen as inferior (unless they turn up with dragons of course). Though isn't Galazza Galare the Green Grace? (haven't read aDwD in a while) so maybe the lack of 'zo' is to do with her belonging to a holy organisation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FittleLinger Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 To be honest, I've also wandered about this. the most likely is, as Golden&Crimson said, like the van in dutch and von in German.In my country, for example, you can choose whether you take your old family's name as your last, or take your grandfather's first name as your last. So my grandson will be able to either share my last name, or adopt my first name as his last. The latter is rarer for sure though. So it's not out of question to be something like that. I don't know. Maybe someone should ask George to see whether we will catch him off-guard (for the first time!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonifer Tasty Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Given that Galazza Galare has no "zo" and her male cousin does, it would seem that mo/zo translates roughly as "son of" or "man of" - rather like the middle eastern "ibn" (Arabic) or "ben" (Hebrew).... Women don't get the ibns and bens. These are called "patronymics" because they precede the name of the father... Martin seems to have substituted the father name for the House name. Someone above mentioned the Orientalizing cast to descriptions of this part of the world...so it would fit. The mo/zo difference would mostly likely be dialectical - or deriving from varied transliteration? - as sometimes the "ibn" is written "bin" (Osama bin Laden). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonifer Tasty Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Just noticed that Reznak mo Reznak repeats the name - either it is because Reznak is an upstart who is claiming his own given name as the name of his new "House", or that Reznak is the son of another Reznak... If the latter is the case, mo might mean "son of" literally, and "zo" might mean "man of House"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Count Balerion Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 Story-internally, there seem to be a number of possibilities: Perhaps zo and mo are prepositions. In German, there's a hierarchy in the nobility between people with von, people with zu, and (highest of all) those with von und zu. This could be something similar. Or it could indicate a grammatical class system rather than a social one. Kind of like Swahili or Caucasian languages, where different prefixes and particles are use with different groups of nouns. "Of" in Swahili is cha for some nouns, ya for others, etc. Or perhaps it's like "mac" ("son") and "O" ("grandson/descendant") in Gaelic names. Story-externally, my guess would have been that it was arbitrary on Martin's part, at least before reading this thread. Now I'm not so sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blede Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 Reznak is the name of the house. When Skahaz presents Daenerys with a list of the Meereenese ships that joined the blockade of the city and their captains, there were some of house Reznak. I agree with the OP, zo indicates the most important families, mo the least important. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomStark Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 I chalked it upto to an analog of the Arab ibn/bin as another poster mentioned Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 The "zo" probably has the same meaning has "da", "de" ou "do" in portuguese, "van" in dutch or "von" in german; show your origin, meaning that you belong to a certain family or a certain place. That's exactly how I see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gurkhal Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 The "zo" probably has the same meaning has "da", "de" ou "do" in portuguese, "van" in dutch or "von" in german; show your origin, meaning that you belong to a certain family or a certain place. Sounds reasonable to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roose The Weddingcrasher Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 They have the names of Tolkien's Orcs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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