# Cim & seven *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 30 Oct 1997* > 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. --- ### m.driussi *30 Oct 1997, 21:20* Reply: Item #1989349 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00# I was and remain undecided whether Cim means "snow" or "pollen" or "flower/seeds" (like a dandelion's paragliders). They would seem to belong to different seasons, fwiw. Then there is "Cimmeria," which is using the "cim" of darkness (and pronounced by us moderns as "Simmeria," no?). "Darkness Glowing"? Sounds good! "Darkness blowing from tree to tree"? Not impossible! There is also "Cimmerii" (Latin pronunciation: Kimmerii) a Thracian people living on the Dnieper. For the literalists. While cim might be a special type of snow (as in, "Esquimoux have a large number of terms for snow"), it cannot be general snow since then the father's planned name for child would have been "Seven Cim." That bit about "Seven Snows" has always acted like a hint of some sort. But what? I'm repeatedly tempted to come up with the equivalant in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, or other language, just to see if there might be a linkage . . . brute force reverse engineering. Today I'm wondering if Gene Wolfe didn't get some tribe names from his friend Algis ("you may remember him as Jonas") Budrys--mantic tip to check Baltic languages. Oh hey, it happens to be a mangled contraction of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves"--and =that's= why it has such a fairy tale ring to my ear. (Odd that there is a dwarf in the TS story . . . ) =mantis= ---