Characters and place names
Lufianblid? Maluk? Where do these names come from?
I’m glad you asked… All the names of the places and characters have been created, or chosen, very carefully.
You may have done your homework already, searching for the names on the Internet. However, not all of them will be easy to find, and it won’t be clear why I have chosen them. Here is a little background information.
The names reflect the locations of events in the book:
- New Zealand
- Alaska, Canada and the Arctic
Generally speaking, the names will therefore be:
- Māori (New Zealand)
- Alutiiq and Yup’ik (S and W Alaska)
- Inuit (N Alaska, N Canada and Greenland)
However, there are two important exceptions to the above: the soft-toy world of Lufianblid and the human world of Felacynn.
The name ‘Lufianblid’ is a combination of Old English (lufian), meaning ‘love’, and Old Norse (blid), meaning ‘kind’ or ‘mother earth as a doctor’. As you will read in the story, the ‘d’ is silent. The animals that live in Lufianblid are called ‘Lufians’. Their job in life is to safeguard their home.
The animals refer to the human world as Felacynn. This name is a combination of two Old English words: ‘fela’, meaning ‘many’, and ‘cynn’, meaning ‘people’. Hence, Felacynn can be interpreted as ‘many people’. Inhabitants of Felacynn are called Felacytes.
I have tried to find, or create, names that are unique. The meaning of the names is intended to reflect the character of their owner. While the characters of Lufianblid are based on actual toys in the Rydor household, the characters of Felacynn are fictional and any resemblance to real characters is purely coincidental.