Word Origins and Strange Coincidences
May. 22nd, 2008 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
So I wanted to see if the little story I posted yesterday shows up in Google searches. I ran a search on hafoc "the destroyer" and sure enough, the story popped up. Among other things...
Let me tell you about Havoc. He is my totem or true self or.. whatever, you decide. He's real and important to me, but I've given up trying to define him further. Labels are for passing information to other people, so perhaps you need a label for him. I don't. He's inside my head, and once something gets there pinning a jumble of letters on it doesn't help me understand it any better. It's the utmost foolishness to believe that it would.
He appeared in response to my ponderings about a civilized, technological species who wouldn't destroy the ecosystem they inhabited. Obviously, speed would reduce the need for transit. Warm blood, high metabolism.. feathers.. a hefty dose of territoriality, as a guard against overpopulation... eventually, my ideal became a velociraptor. An odd choice, you might say, especially as he had all the features we now know velociraptors to have had, but which at that time I didn't know. Or thought I didn't know.
I don't think I'd seen or read anything to tell me otherwise, but you can never tell. I read a lot. Storing that much furniture in your brain can be dangerous, sometimes. You never know just what is going to come bubbling up.
He needed a name. I was at that time building an airplane model of a Douglas A-20 Havoc. (I never did finish it, since this was when I discovered how to get online. The rest is history.) I didn't know what the guy's name should be; had a strong impression that anything I could imagine would be wrong. But he had to have a label for others to use. Havoc wasn't his name, but it would work as well as any. Poor me, I was new enough online that I thought the name would be original.
I started writing my story about this interesting critter. As I wrote I realized his true name was a hand gesture. That's why nothing sounded right; his name didn't actually SOUND. His handsign translated as "person attack left rear" or "person hamstring left." Flanker was a decent one-word approximation.
Havoc went on with his own life even after Flanker appeared. Havoc was a less idealized, more current-affairs, more me version of Flanker as he was when he was at his lowest point; almost half mechanical, converted against his will. Amnesiac, unable to remember his true name or what he really was. But free of those who had enslaved him and slowly recovering. To his grim story add a sense of humor zanier than my human self's, and a mercifully short memory for anything painful that had ever happened to him, and you end up with Havoc. He's been down far, and he's still down, but.. he's on his way back up. And in the mean time, he's having fun.
The name Havoc was taken more and more places, though, so I started using Hafoc, Havoc with an F, as an alternative spelling. After a while I did a search on that and found that it is an Old English root word for "hawk." Which was VERY oddly appropriate, since Hafoc is a velociraptor and therefore a Very Old Pre-English Root Critter for Hawk.
I began listening for the movements of Coyote in the underbrush, but I shrugged it off. Always a bad thing to do when you think Coyote might be sneaking up on you.
As I said, today I searched on hafoc "the destroyer." I found the claim that not only is hafoc the Old English word for hawk, "hafoc" is supposed to be derived from a Hebrew phrase that translates as-- wait for it-- The Destroyer.
Considering Flanker's history that is Just Too Damned Appropriate for Coincidence.
I started chuckling, because all this makes it look as if I knew what I was doing when I chose the name.
And then I stopped chuckling. Because it occurred to me that maybe I DID know. Maybe I knew EXACTLY what it meant, knew EXACTLY what I was saying. Knew it because I had lived it, but.. but.. it never happened in the waking world, which means I've been wandering in...oh dear.
(Hear a tiny little noise, turn, and the last thing you see is this grinning set of coyote FANGS heading RIGHT FOR YOUR FACE...GOTCHA!!!)
I think I'll leave the bedroom lights on tonight. :D
Let me tell you about Havoc. He is my totem or true self or.. whatever, you decide. He's real and important to me, but I've given up trying to define him further. Labels are for passing information to other people, so perhaps you need a label for him. I don't. He's inside my head, and once something gets there pinning a jumble of letters on it doesn't help me understand it any better. It's the utmost foolishness to believe that it would.
He appeared in response to my ponderings about a civilized, technological species who wouldn't destroy the ecosystem they inhabited. Obviously, speed would reduce the need for transit. Warm blood, high metabolism.. feathers.. a hefty dose of territoriality, as a guard against overpopulation... eventually, my ideal became a velociraptor. An odd choice, you might say, especially as he had all the features we now know velociraptors to have had, but which at that time I didn't know. Or thought I didn't know.
I don't think I'd seen or read anything to tell me otherwise, but you can never tell. I read a lot. Storing that much furniture in your brain can be dangerous, sometimes. You never know just what is going to come bubbling up.
He needed a name. I was at that time building an airplane model of a Douglas A-20 Havoc. (I never did finish it, since this was when I discovered how to get online. The rest is history.) I didn't know what the guy's name should be; had a strong impression that anything I could imagine would be wrong. But he had to have a label for others to use. Havoc wasn't his name, but it would work as well as any. Poor me, I was new enough online that I thought the name would be original.
I started writing my story about this interesting critter. As I wrote I realized his true name was a hand gesture. That's why nothing sounded right; his name didn't actually SOUND. His handsign translated as "person attack left rear" or "person hamstring left." Flanker was a decent one-word approximation.
Havoc went on with his own life even after Flanker appeared. Havoc was a less idealized, more current-affairs, more me version of Flanker as he was when he was at his lowest point; almost half mechanical, converted against his will. Amnesiac, unable to remember his true name or what he really was. But free of those who had enslaved him and slowly recovering. To his grim story add a sense of humor zanier than my human self's, and a mercifully short memory for anything painful that had ever happened to him, and you end up with Havoc. He's been down far, and he's still down, but.. he's on his way back up. And in the mean time, he's having fun.
The name Havoc was taken more and more places, though, so I started using Hafoc, Havoc with an F, as an alternative spelling. After a while I did a search on that and found that it is an Old English root word for "hawk." Which was VERY oddly appropriate, since Hafoc is a velociraptor and therefore a Very Old Pre-English Root Critter for Hawk.
I began listening for the movements of Coyote in the underbrush, but I shrugged it off. Always a bad thing to do when you think Coyote might be sneaking up on you.
As I said, today I searched on hafoc "the destroyer." I found the claim that not only is hafoc the Old English word for hawk, "hafoc" is supposed to be derived from a Hebrew phrase that translates as-- wait for it-- The Destroyer.
Considering Flanker's history that is Just Too Damned Appropriate for Coincidence.
I started chuckling, because all this makes it look as if I knew what I was doing when I chose the name.
And then I stopped chuckling. Because it occurred to me that maybe I DID know. Maybe I knew EXACTLY what it meant, knew EXACTLY what I was saying. Knew it because I had lived it, but.. but.. it never happened in the waking world, which means I've been wandering in...oh dear.
(Hear a tiny little noise, turn, and the last thing you see is this grinning set of coyote FANGS heading RIGHT FOR YOUR FACE...GOTCHA!!!)
I think I'll leave the bedroom lights on tonight. :D
