# What's in a name?

*The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 25 Feb 1999*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1395>

> Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright
> in each message remains with the person who wrote it.
> Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original
> archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than
> retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.

---

### Dan Parmenter
*25 Feb 1999, 14:23*

> From: "Kevin J. Maroney" <kmaroney at crossover.com>
> (Remember that most/all of the animal species of Urth except humans were
> driven extinct at some point in the past, and the animals present in the
> Book are alien replacements which approximate the original species.
> Destriers aren't horses, they're alien horse-like beings. This is an
> inversion of the standard sf cliche where an alien world is populated by
> exotic creatures which are actually just cows and bunnies with different
> names; here the Earth is populated by alien species which are *like* cows
> and bunnies.)

By the first rule of Wolfean naming ("everything is exactly what it
says it is") is it fair then to assume that Triskele is indeed a dog?
Possibly a "modified" dog, but a dog no less?  The Wolfean Naming Rule
clearly doesn't always work, since the Salamander is no newt (though
it does resemble a certain Newt after a fashion, it flames and flames
until its flames burn its bridges and it conveniently disappears :-)

Dan P. aka
Lexicographer Shellac

---

### CRCulver
*26 Feb 1999, 00:35 · follows Dan Parmenter*

Shellac wrote:
<<The Wolfean Naming Rule clearly doesn't always work, since the Salamander is
no newt (though it does resemble a certain Newt after a fashion, it flames and
flames
until its flames burn its bridges and it conveniently disappears :-)>>

The Salamander, according to ancient Greek belief, could survive in fire.
Jorge Luis Borges, in _El Libro de Seres Imaginarios_ (The Book of Imaginary
Beings), wrote an article on the Salamander and Wolfe took it, like many of
Borges' creatures (Baldanders, etc.) for the BotNS.

- Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com>

---