Young Sylvia: I’m the Grand General of Dragonspyre who has a really awesome sword and equally as awesome side kick ladies who’ll help me kick your sorry behind back into the next timeline if you so much as think of getting in my way.
Having 3 different Professor Drakes teaching at Ravenwood was pretty confusing…So naturally each and every time they spoke about any of them students would make a point of clarifying which Professor Drake they were talking about.
For the longest time this drove Cyrus absolutely insane. One could only take so much of students having to say “the myth one” after his name even though they were in his class and they had no reason to be talking about Malistaire or Sylvia. It bothered him so much he even suggested Malistaire and Sylvia hyphenate their last names so they’d be the only ones having to deal with this annoyance. They laughed it off of course.
Years later Cyrus almost misses all the different names the students would come up with to tell the 3 Drakes apart. There’s no use for them anymore now that there’s only one Professor Drake teaching.
I was bored and when I get bored I get really into etymology so I’m just going to do some googling and see if I can’t find out what we’re calling ourselves.
Because it’s my school, I’ll start with Ice, then proceed arbitrarily through the elemental schools, then balance, then the spirit schools. There will sometimes be brief commentary but for the most part I’ll keep my own comments out of it and let y’all interpret it. Why these names for the schools? How fitting, or not, are they? If you want I can make a second post or reblog this with my own comments but for now I’ll leave it as is.
Ice – Thaumaturge: From Greek thaumatourgos meaning “wonder-worker”. Interestingly, it comes from the same root as “theater”, which is thauma(wonder, lit. “a thing to look at”). Plus ergon “work”. Source.
Storm – Diviner: From Latin divinus “of a god”. It means “soothsayer” and seems to more literally mean “to be inspired by a god”. Source. Also.
Pyromancer – Fire: This is one of the more obvious ones. It comes from Greek pyr “fire” and manteia “divination”. The manteia root is common with all “mancy” magics and the prefix is fitting. Interestingly, given what divination is, a pyromancer is someone who divines by means of flames. So, another fortune teller. Source.
Sorcerer – Balance: From Medieval Latin sortiarius “teller of fortunes by lot” or literally “one who influences fate/fortune” and by extension the Latin sors “lot, fate, fortune”. It has the same root as “sort” as in rearrange or order things. Source.
Necromancer – Death: Another obvious once, it has the same “mancy” (manteia“divination”) ending as pyromancer, but the prefix comes this time from the Greek root nekros “dead body”. A necromancer divines by means of communicating with the dead. Fun fact, manteia is related to the word menos“passion, spirit” which is where we get the term “mania”. Source.
Conjurer – Myth: From prefix com- “with, together” and iurare“to swear”. It means, basically, to band together. Which makes perfect sense for what a conjurer does, id est, summon things. Source.
Theurgist – Life:Like thaumaturge, the ending part of theurgist comes from Greek ergon “work”. But the root is theos “a god” (same root as theist and theocracy). So, rather than a work of wonder, theurgists do works of god. Theurgy is divine magic. Or more simply theurgist means “miracle worker”. Source.
Stop talking and start doing: My Fallout Shelter for my Tumblr blog 