What's In a Name: Gemstones and Sulphites and Ores, Oh My!

By Spring Brookring

Welcome, readers of Yn Nor, to this month's rambly installment of What's In a Name! You will witness phenomena, gasp in awe, and read things the like of which have never been read before! Well, sort of. Maybe not really. But it is pretty phenomenal that I'm writing this in the middle of the day and not in the middle of the night. Aw, what the heck, enjoy it anyway.

This month's article will basically discuss getting names for characters from one of the most plentiful resources on Earth (besides air and water). You guessed it—or you read the title. They're rocks! Applause. Now, as anyone can see, there are a lot of different kinds of rocks out there. You probably don't know what they are and you probably won't need to know all of them. They may interest you less than belly button lint. But they can make really good names.

One name that springs to mind is Jasper. It's a rock. It's also a good name for a variety of genres. See the connection here? I bet there are a lot of rocks that you know off the top of you head, but few of them work as names. Like Granite. Or Limestone. Anyone named Granite is bound to get bullied in kindergarten. And others, like Diamond or Emerald, don't make very good names, either. It's somewhat akin to naming someone Gold or Oak. Ruby is fairly commonplace, but a suitable name all in all. Just use common sense. (You may not have a lot to spare. If this is the case, borrow someone else's for a minute or two).

What about all the rocks you don't know? There are thousands of them that only the nerdiest geologists memorize. For instance, buergerite. A rock book from the library describes it as "big-long-list-of-elements = iron tourmaline." The book describes tourmaline as " a group referring to a number of related species and varieties." They call rocks species. I learned something new today. I'll bet you anything you didn't know buergerite existed. If I'm right, you have to send me candy. My point is, even though buergerite is NOT a good name, there might be hundreds that are and you'll never know about them. If you want to use rocks for names, I recommend finding a good website or classification book of some sort. Veddy veddy helpful, and sometimes they have pictures! Shiny…heheh. Ahem.

Okay, so now you know a lot about the kind of names not to pick. So which rocks make good names? You'll have to do some combing through your resources, because the majority of names are big, long, hard to pronounce, or Latin. How about Jadeite? Or Eilat? Topaz? I named my cat Topaz, actually. This proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Topaz is a good name.

One thing you'll tend to find in a rock encyclopedia is types ending in 'ite'. Almandite, spessarite, rhodolite, etc. It's like scientists named them that way on purpose or something. It's a conspiracy to make them bad names! Really, if all your characters' names end in 'ite', people will suspect they belong to a secret cult or some such. But there are things you can do with these names, so don't run them through the paper shredder yet. Take almandite. Now chop off the last four letters, and you get Alman. That's a good name, isn't it? *nods and glares* Isn't it? Or try something else. Remove the 'n' and the 'te'. This will get you Almadi, another perfectly good name. Now try spessarite. Without the last four letters it becomes Spessa, or, with some more rearranging, Sarise. Often all you need are just the letters to work with.

As I mentioned before when you in the back were daydreaming, the finding-names-from-rocks process is much, much easier with a book or a website. But these complicated instruments can be confusing. In the book I have, after every rock type there is a huge chemical equation along the lines of Ca(Li,Al)3Al6(BO3)….and it carried on for about three inches. Very confoozling and unhelpful. Again, use common sense to pick through what's useful and what's not. Chemical equations for names are not useful for anyone's sanity.

So, now that you've read this and know everything about turning rocks into names, get out there and name rocks! Er, rock names! Eh, something. I'm sure I'll have something significant to say if you hang around for another hour or so— *collective gasp of horror* Guess not. I don't even have the heart to chase you all out with a stick. See you next month!