The "Italian" Elves of Scarwood

[Yaztromo]

Am I the only one that "smells" some Italian sound in the Redwood?
Cicatri Down, close to The Scar... actually, in Italian, Cicatrice means Scar. It is true: very similar words are also in other languages, but more often linked to very technical medical terms.
"Cumasti" sounds an Italian word as well. Not sure, but could be a "fantasy" variation of "rimasti", i.e. "the stay behind", the ones that decided not to go West.

Perhaps it's just a red herring, but I guess that this thingy should be easier to double check than other...

[Havard]

Very interesting!

Thanks for sharing this. The Scar connection cannot be a coincidence?

-Havard

[Yaztromo]

I don't think that Scar-Cicatri can be a coincidence, but the Cumasti-Rimasti is a long shot and could be just my well-known madness.

[Rafael]

Hehe, thanks, Yaz! This might be something that our Anglo-Saxon friends don't particularly have on their radar; for any Southerner, this is pretty clear from the get-go.

"Cicatriz" is "scar" in Spanish. As to linguistic bases for the Elven names, I don't think that's the case, because Mr Arneson didn't really follow a pattern with the naming of people and places. Notably, an "aster" in Latin is a flower - or a star. My world of Meleon's city of Asterion, for example, is "the city of the fallen star".

I personally always assumed that this name was another example for the "Beverage Rule" - the hypothesis where I assume that all place names in Blackmoor (like Blackmoor itself) are taken from alcoholic drinks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asti_wine


Because this is what we nerds do. We drink, and we know things.

*Mental image of Luke Skywalker milking those green boobies in TLJ.*

NO, Luke! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!