So I've been doing some research on everyone's favorite wizworm, and I've noticed two things.

1) To the best of my knowledge, nobody seems to know the etymological origin of the name or its meaning. Pretty much all of the dragons' modern names come from some identifiable modern tongue with a definite meaning. Most of the Great Westerns have names which come from some European language, normally German, but a few Celtic, etc. When I first heard the name Lofwyr 20 years ago, I assumed that it was some Eastern tongue... Chinese, I assumed in the depths of my teenaged ignorance... but since then no one has revealed the language of origin. Does it have one? What does it mean? Was it just something pseudo-Eastern (or possibly genuinely Eastern? And why, for a Western?) and cool that the devs thought up back in the pre-Internet, pre-Chinese-readily-available-to-learn-in-the-US late eighties? Or is there reason to the rhyme?

2) I have also noticed that pronunciations of this name vary grotesquely. My 20-years-ago GM pronounced it "LOH-fer", and a GM I met a few weeks ago pronounced it (incredibly) "LUHFT-air." I tend to pronounce it "LOH-fweer" or "loh-FWEER" (the accented syllable seems up for debate) but until we can nail down a language origin and meaning, we won't know for sure what it should be. How have you heard it pronounced?

So my questions are a) what the heck does Lofwyr's name mean? and b) how do you pronounce it?

Thank you for your replies.

Furthering draconic scholarship, with your help.

First, I'll answer 2 because it leads into 1. When I first saw the name Lofwyr, I immediately thought of Anne McCaffrey's dragonrider novels. I always figured the 'wyr' part of the name was a variation on weyr. I always read it as a weer. Put together, I use Lof-WEER.

This leads into the meaning. Weyrs in their source material are essentially dragon caves that also accommodate their riders and support staff. Appropriate considering who we're talking about. So that gets us the second half of his name. The first part of the name is reminiscent of 'lofty'. Together you get lofty dragon cave, with the implication of extended ownership of those beneath him. Given he's the head of Saeder-Krupp, it seems highly appropriate.

And yes, that was my first instinct on reading his name all those years ago, so I never thought their might be a hidden meaning behind it. It just seemed to fit my mental image of a golden dragon ruling a corp.

Edited to Add: My group pretty much uses the same pronunciation, with only the occasional variance of syllabic stress.

-Temperance

Well, Lof is probably the Anglo-Saxon for "beloved"( usually spelled leof, but pronounced like loaf, IIRC),(ETA:) which can also be a title of respect, like "Lord" "Wyr" has a few possibilities in that language that it could derive from, including "hard-skin", "Myrtle", or maybe they just decided to leave off the final M from "Wyrm", aka "Dragon". It does not sound remotely Eastern.

I see Temperance and I were posting at the same time. That theory is also reasonable.

So, The Loved Wyrm ?

I would pay good Nuyen to see you walk up to Loffie and call him that to his snout. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

It was a typo, I promise! I edited, I edited!

I can't recall ever saying it out loud, but in my head I pronounce it LOAF-veer.

Maybe the person who came up with the name is a fan of Rumiko Takahashi. IIRC she's really fond of using names in which the meanings are often opposed to the actual character's personality.

The hard-skinned lord? Makes as much, if not more, sense as many other 1E/2E dragons' names. I'm looking at you, Haesslich!

Also, for reference, there are two asian-named Greats who have been mentioned as far back as 2nd: Ryōmyō (龍みょう (?), dragon (god) of wisdom, I think) and Lung - 龍 (yup, you can also call him Ryō if you want to piss him off I guess), which means 'Chinese [in a shadowrun context: Eastern] dragon' in Chinese. Or maybe he's into simplified mainland chinese (and would be spelled 龙) just to distance himself from 'that other dragon'. Or, in common courtesy, both dragons use modern signage (which would spell Ryōmyō 竜みょう) as a mutual courtesy and avoid the 'shared' sign '龍' altogether. I could totally see that.

Masaru (late 2E) is a local phillipino legend. Arleesh (early 2E) is ... I don't know.

i think it's a typo and was supposed to be lowfyr . . which would be pretty much obvious as to what the name means on pronounciation alone.

Not to me it isn't... But my German is atrocious... More Scandawhovian than German.
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But the play on word pronunciations is amusing anyways. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

lowfyr . . low fyr . . low fear . . it's not even a german pun O.o

I was seeing Loafer... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

freudian slipper?

Something like that... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

w in german is pronounced like an english 'v' is it not?

so that would be "lov" "fyr" (love fire?) if we're going to assume it was supposed to be a play on english.

if it was supposed to be something in german, of course, i haven't a clue what it could mean. my knowledge of the german language is extremely limited.

Yes, the german w is pronounced like the english v in german.
Judging from the fact that these names are not invented by germans but by americans in SR1 way back when, i don't think they knew enough about german to do something with that either.

*shrug* hard to say. they're gamers.

in my experience, that tends to correlate to knowing lots of mostly-useless random stuff. whether or not said random stuff included knowing how you pronounce "w" in german i certainly can't say, but it's possible.

"Der Nachtmachen" and "Haesslich" do not point to someone with fluent knowledge of German on the design team of SR1, though.

knowing that a german w sounds like an english v does not make you fluent in german. i'm living proof of that. at the height of my knowledge of the german language, i probably knew less than 40 words.

all it takes is one person saying something like "that's not how you pronounce luftwaffe" while watching a WWII documentary, as one example. (in fact, ime, most british narrators read it with the v sound, while most american narrators don't, so it might not even take someone who's watching to mention that fact (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) )

Haesslich is just a 1:1 translation for ugly.
We in germany write it Hässlich, but you non germans don't get our fancy letters, so you have to make up for it with ae/oe/ue for ä/ö/ü respectively (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

You think they have trouble with German? My heritage is Hungarian. I've been trying to teach my wife "Merry Christmas" for five years.

Yes, well, to me, most of the eastern european languages sound as if i should give somebody a heimlich maneuvre when they are speaking it, so yes, i can understand her having problems with that . .

You are in good company at least.

Steven Brust from the Vlad Taltos series is an American of Hungarian descent and often slips some Hungarian words/legends as well as food dishes into his books.

Do NOT read Dzur if all you got is leftovers in the house, all the food mentioned there tends to make you hungry and settling for scraps isn't going to make for a happy camper, unless you can whip them together into some kind of dish. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I actually didn't know that. The bit about the food is spot on though. Man. That guy can describe food.