and the Barsoomian Language, is there any point?
Tribes of Barsoom
What about 'Tur'?
Yellow Man Mojo
words will have different meanings. In a practical sense, however, the
English language is full of synonyms. Words which have the same meanings
but are different words. Alternately, English is also full of homonyms,
basically, words which sound exactly the same, but have different meanings.
Further, words continually branch out and modify
with context and usage. Thus, Herd gives us Shepherd. Ward gives
us Warden and Guard. The fact is that over time, the meaning and
pronunciation of a word may evolve so that it becomes a completely new
word, with a use and a pronunciation quite different from its forebear.
For instance, the 'departure' word, Goodby is actually an evolution of
the medieval phrase 'God be with you' or 'God-be'. Nowadays, we say Goodby
all the time, and don't even think in religious terms about it.
English is just lousy with this kind of thing, and other languages have
it too. There are several forms of humour, including Wit, Word-play and
Punning that are based on exactly this.
As far as evolving language goes, consider the
English word 'Car' which now refers to automobile. It also refers to a
railroad conveyance. Previously, 'car' referred to sort of
wheelbarrow, a wheeled device, but that meaning is now almost antique and
out of use.
It was rooted in the word 'Cart' 'Cart'
gives us the name 'Cartman', remember South Park? It also gives us 'Carter'
(Man who carts). And the French, Cartier.
Similar to Cart is 'Carriage,' which has at least
three meanings. A form of conveyance, a manner of walking or posture and
a machine part for holding and shifting another part. Both
versions of 'Car' and 'Cart' and Carriage seem related to the verb 'Carry'.
And in fact, Carry may also relate to 'Carafe'
which is a glass container. And of course, your carry your
carafes as cargo in a cart which is in a 'caravan. Note that
there are two separate meanings for the word Caravan. In England, it is
a mobile home or trailer, in other usage, it is a sort of camel train.
Meanwhile, for exotic relatives of Car, there is Cartoon and Caricature,
for the artistically employed, Carryon for the traveller or the jokester,
cartography for the map makers.
Now, notice that all of these words seem in some
way connected with transportation, with moving something or someone from
one place to another. There seems to be a cluster of shared meaning around
many words that start with 'car.'
Based on this, we might, hypothetically work our
way backwards into the English, even to languages ancestral English and
come up with the conclusion that at one point, there was a word named 'car'
or containing ‘car’ as a critical root, that was used to describe, not
an automobile, but a journey or action... and from which all these other
'car' words evolved.
But you can do this sort of exercise yourself.
Open up any dictionary. I opened a page randomly and started on Car.
A word about English though. Because there was
not standardized spelling, because of different phonetic accents, and because
of words coming in from different languages, working from the dictionary
will ever only give you partial results. Related words can have inconsistent
spellings or pronunciations.
Exactly which side of the argument are you on.
Feast and Fast are both words which relate to eating, either in abundance
or denial. From these two, we might infer a common origin. Rabies and Rabid
comes from Rabbits. Hand and Abund relate to possession... and so on.
Accents may radically change the sound or pronunciation
of words. Hungarian, for instance, seems to have tended to
transpose the ‘v’ and ‘w’ sounds, so Bela Lugosi went around saying things
like, ‘I am wery sorry, but I vant to drink the blood of wirgins.’
Closer to home, we have the American southern
accent. The phrase ‘you all’ in pronunciation becomes a word,
‘yawl’. An ‘I’ is softened to an ‘Ah’ and often the ‘r’ or
‘t’ drops off the end of the word. So what you get is, “If yawl don
mind, ah would ratha be home.’
What this means, of course, is that comparatively
simple words can mutate over time. Consonants soften or harden, vowels
elongate, the middle drops out or the end of a word drops off.
Things may be added on.
Not only the pronunciation of a word may evolve,
but that meaning can evolve as well. Sometimes this leads to a new
word. Sometimes a word may be changed or added to or subtracted from
in order to give it a new or a related meaning.
Language changes over time, and the way that words
are pronounced varies in different areas. Consonants soften or harden,
vowels elongate, the word may be recognizable, but sound quite different
through different accents. Over time, the word itself may drift into two
different versions from the original root. Linguists look for similarities
in words in different languages, to basically conduct archeology, working
their way back to root words, and tracing the evolution of the culture.
So, let's apply it to Barsoom.
This sounds like game playing, but actually, it
can be deadly serious. There is an entire field of linguistic archeology
which attempts to dig back to the roots of language, carefully examining
words in different languages to discover relationships or similarities,
and ultimately, to trace back to previous or root languages.
For instance, taking a leaf from Jared Diamond's
‘Guns Germs and Steel’ the word for ‘sheep’ is similar in many Indo-European
languages: ‘Avis’ (Lithuanian), ‘Avis’ (Sanskrit), ‘Ovis’ (Latin),
‘Oveja’ (Spanish), ‘Ovtsa’ (Russian), ‘Owis’ (Greek) and ‘Oi’ (Irish).
In English, a female sheep is a ‘Ewe’. Comparison of sound
shifts in other words over both time and locations suggest that there was
an original word for sheep, ‘Owis’ from which the other words evolved.
So, what I propose to do here is to take Burroughs
Barsoom, and conduct a similar exercise, in an attempt to deconstruct a
little bit of the language. In particular, since modern Barsoomian
is helpfully translated into English by John Carter, we can assume that
many of the non-English terms, such as place names, personal names, etc.,
may be archaic Barsoomian. The prior language or languages
of ancient Barsoom, and deconstruct that. Along the way, we
might be able to make a few guesses at the history and culture of ancient
Barsoom, how different tribes or races emerged and moved.
and the Barsoomian Language, is there any point?
Let me admit, this is really a pointless effort.
Barsoom is a fictional civilization. Barsoomian is a fictional language.
And archaic or ancient Barsoomian is doubly fictional, it's a fictional
backstory to a fictional present. So obviously, there isn't
that much to do. Burroughs wrote what he wrote, he made it all up,
so why go further.
Well... Because its fun?
Actually, Burroughs seems to have been a bit of
an amateur linguist. In Tarzan the Terrible, for instance, he actually
wrote and appended a Pal-ul-don language glossary. Moreover, he used his
terms and 'Don' language accurately and consistently through Tarzan
Of course, that's one novel, so that may not be
saying much. On the other hand, Burroughs also used his Martian terms and
martian language consistently through is Martian series. He didn't change
his form of greeting from Kaor! to Kaboba! from one book to another.
And similarly, through the fifty or so books of
the Tarzan series, the language of the Mangani was consistent. The Mangani
words and expressions that we heard were expanded upon, but not changed
as he went along.
What does this tell us? Well, obviously, Burroughs
made notes on Mangani and Barsoomian language, among other things. Given
that he was writing over a 40 year span, he would have needed his notes
in order to be consistent (or if he didn't need them, he was some kind
of a genius). He made notes, used these notes to make his rules, and he
used them consistently.
In fact, if you look at Burroughs, there's a fair
bit of evidence that he didn't just sit at a typewriter and make it all
up. We see signs that he put an impressive amount of work into world building
in various books. In some cases, he draws maps, as in Caprona and Pal-ul-don.
He includes a glossary for Pal-ul-don. When writing Beyond the Farthest
Star he actually went to the effort of consulting with an astronomer
to design his new solar system. His views of Venus and Mars were influenced
by the state of thought of the time.
Now, given that Burroughs was probably a careful
world builder, and given that on at least three, and possibly four or five
occasions, he actually went out of his way to at least allude to or develop
the rudiments of imaginary languages, I'd argue that there's something
there to at least support speculation.
Burroughs was not a formally trained linguist.
But he was an intelligent and fairly well read man. And he was working
in a language, English, that is full of obvious and not so obvious linguistic
peculiarities. Its not out of the question that he actually
was consciously applying some degree of known linguistic patterns and rules.
And its quite likely that he was guided subconsciously by a subliminal
awareness of language structure and history. He was, after all, a writer.
Language was his bread and butter.
So, the bottom line is that Burroughs may, consciously
or unconsciously, deliberately or simply by employing linguistic rules
that he didn't even know he was using, may have put enough in here that
we might actually get something interesting.
Where to begin? Well, its difficult
to say. We need to find a common feature that will likely figure
prominently in a name, and then look for objects having that common feature
with commonalities in their names.
Tribal or racial names are very important and
offer a starting point of sorts. On or near Barsoom, we have three
varieties of white race:
I'll include the Tarids because of their proximity
to Barsoom, and based on a theory that the Tarids are actually relics of
an Orovar age of space flight.
These three names have a very similar root:
Oro - var - ...
.... - ther - n
..... - tar - id
Note that Therns are referred to with a 'holy'
prefix. So it should be
Oro - Var - ....Holy - Ther - nnn ..... - Tar
So there is a Var or Ther or Tar sylable which
seems to be at the root of all three names. Essentially the 'v' has hardened
to a 'th' or ‘t’, but we can see that they're related.
Now, let's look a little further afield. Gulliver
Jones encounters a White Race, the Hither Broken down, that's:
Hi - Ther - ....Definitely linguistically cousin to Thern Hi - Ther
- .... Holy - Ther - nnn. Is it fair to look at Gulliver? Possibly
yes, since Burroughs may well have been inspired or influenced...
Now, look at Otis Adelbert Kline's White Martian
nations, as seen in Outlaw of Mars and Swords of Mars...
Xancibar Khalsifar (mixed race, but conquered by and ruled by whites)
Kline was definitely influenced by Burroughs, this is unquestionable.
In his Venus novel, Port of Peril, he even makes a direct reference
to John Carter. His two nations break down into three component roots:
Xan - ci - bar Khal - si - far. Both of them share a ci or si syllable,
which we can regard as identical, and a very similar 'far' and 'bar' syllable.
The 'far' 'bar' sylable is not too far from 'var' or Orovar, and 'ther'
of Thern and Hither, and the ‘tar’ of Tarid Essentially,
they all seem to be accented variations on the same root word. Which we'll
Now, we don't actually need either Kline or Gulliver
Jones to make this work. But it is worth noting that the tribal/racial/nation
names found therein seem to fit the pattern we find with Barsoom. I'll
submit that 'far' may be the original tribal name for the white race of
Mars. As they spread and diverged, this led to the 'white' tribe
splitting into other nations or subgroups, which simply added suffixes
and prefixes. Thus, we could establish a tentative ethnography based linguistically:
Oro - Far - .... (Orovar)
Hi - Far - .... (Hither)
Khal - si - Far - .... (KhalsifarXan - si - Far
- .... (Xancibar) Holy - Far - nnnn (Thern) .... - Far - ids
The Therns and Tarids are the most divergent of
the group, both physically (baldness/blue hair) and being the only ones
to add a suffix. All of the other white tribes define themselves
with prefixes. Khalsifar and Xancibar obviously began as a single tribe,
the 'Si-Far' and split off much later into Xanand Khal tribes, so they
are distinctive in compounding their name. Barsoom may actually be an artifact
of the white language. We know that the Martian name for Earth
is Jasoom, and for Mercury it is Cosoom. We can easily assume that
the word ‘Soom’ means planet or world.
However, note the resemblance to Xancibar, which
shows that under some pronunciations 'far' may broaden to a 'b'. In which
case, 'Barsoom may actually be: 'Far - Soom' (World or land of the ‘Far’
people?). Having the ‘nation’ or ‘tribe’ first, and then the ‘world’ or
‘place’ after, indicates that a suffix may be a geographical designation.
Which may suggest why the Therns and Tarids have the 'nnn' and ‘id’
suffix. It's referring, not to their tribe, but to where they live.
This makes a little bit of sense given Thern outlook.
If they saw themselves as the truest expression of humanity, the most pure
of the 'far' people, they wouldn't need a prefix. Thus, nothing goes in
front of their 'far' because as far as they're concerned, they're the purebloods,
the root stock. They'd identify or modify with their location. Thus
"pure blood white people of the holy land". Of course, etymologically,
there's no relationship between the 'nnn' and the place names Iss, Otz,
Dor or Korus. So there may be a further linguistic artifact or two at work.
Obviously, if ‘nnn’ ever referred to a geographical designation, that ‘nnn’
designation is no longer applying to the geography.
With the Tarids of course, you can't possibly
get more remote, on Barsoom, than Thuria. So the geographical designation
works. The Tarids call Thuria ‘ladan’.
But if suffixes contain geographical information,
then what about the capital of the Orovars, Horz? Why doesn't Horz
describe the tribe? Think about it. Horz may actually break
down as follows:
(f)ar - zzz
The already soft consonant sound that begins the
name of the 'Far' race is inadvertently or deliberately lost, softened
so far it's inaudible. And you've got a geographical suffix "zzz". So,
this gives us a few clues to both the language and the social outlook of
the 'white' barsoomians of antiquity. In particular, we've got a race name,
'far', tribal names, 'oro, hi, si xansi and kalsi' and geographical designations
'nnnn', ‘id’ and 'zzz'.
Finally, there are a few other racial names.
We don't ever get to hear a racial name for the Red men of Mars, probably
because as far as they're concerned, they're the only humans left.
We don't hear a racial name for the blacks, they are simply called the
‘First Born.’ But we do get a couple of other racial or tribal
names outside of the white tribes, inside and outside Burroughs.
There are the yellow Okar of the north pole, in
Burroughs' Warlord of Mars. And there are the hairy red ‘Thither’
of Gulliver Jones. Thus, these racial or tribal names have
similar roots to the white tribes:
O... - Kar - ....
Thi - Ther - ....
Both feature prefixes modifying their names.
The yellow race seems to have a distinctive hard ‘k’ consonant. The
hairy red race has a root phonetically similar to both the Therns and the
Hither. So it doesn't quite fit.
So perhaps ‘far’ or some variant like ‘bar’ is
simply the generic racial name for human? If so, then it might be
expected that tribes, as they diverge would modify that racial name.
We might have a linguistic evolution tree that goes as follows:
Bar (human) -----> Far (white human)
-----> Kar (yellow human)
Now, these are tentative assignations for now.
But keep them in mind, because its time to go and look at a few other words,
and try and break things down from a different direction.
We start off with "Tur" (God). I've
argued in Religion on Mars, that originally, during the Orovar period,
that the Tur cult was the dominant religion on Barsoom. If
indeed, the Tur cult dominated much of the planet, then we could expect
that the archaic language would be heavily laced with 'Tur' reference.
If you look at the archaic place names, you find a lot of Tur references.
Thark (Tur - K) (dead city) Thurd (Tur - D) (dead
city) Torquaas (Tur - Kas) (lost sea or gulf/mountains) Aanthor (An - Tur)
Lothar (Lo - Tur) (dead city/Orovar
refuge) Manator (Mana - Tur) (red archaic city)
Ptarth (P - Tur - th) (advanced red
Except for Ptarth, and Manator, which is an archaic
society, these are all ancient dead cities. Most modern cities don't seem
to have any particular affiliation with Tur in their names, which actually
seems consistent with the vanishing of that religion.
There's also Thuria, the name of the moon.
Tur is a sky god living in the sun. The suffix, ‘a’ or ‘ia’
in Barsoomian names usually denotes women or daughters. Thus,
‘Thuria’ is actually ‘Tur - a’ or ‘daughter of Tur.’ This fits
with a possible history of applying Tur or God's name to everything in
We can see similar or identical patterns at work
in Earthly languages. Thus, for instance, we have 'King' and 'Queen', and
this leads to geographical names like 'Queensland' in Australia, or Kingston
(Kings town) in Jamaica and Canada, Kings County in Canada and the US.
Note that what we see here is not just ‘Tur’ showing
up everywhere, but the pronunciation of Tur evolving. The ‘T’
has a tendency to soften to a ‘Th’ sound. Meanwhile, the vowel
mutates from the harsh ‘U’ to a softer ‘O’ or ‘A’.
If indeed the linguistic rules that we ferreted
out earlier apply, then we can draw some conclusions. Thark and Thurd,
Torquaas and Perhaps Ptarth are places whose suffixes, ‘K’,
‘D’, ‘Th’ and ‘Quaas’ may refer to their locations. Lothar,
Manator and Ptarth are cities whose prefixes refer to their tribes or perhaps
some other feature, like kings or founders.
Tor appears as a number. Now, assuming
that Tor derives from Tur, then Tor as a number would probably be a holy
or lucky number, equivalent to ‘seven’ on Earth. In fact, Tor
is four. Barsoom is fourth planet from the sun, or number four away
from the home of God... In short, it seems to fit. Even more
interestingly, the first multiple of Tor (4) is Bar (8). So
Bar, in Barsoomian numbers, is related to, a derivative or multiple of
Tor. Hang onto that thought.
The word ‘Tor’ also appears among the First Born
in the form of ‘Dator’, which refers to a prince or high status individual.
Given that Tor may be derived from Tur, the term should perhaps be ‘Da
- Tur’. Words frequently evolve as they change.
So Tur may have started off referring to God, but a derivative word like
Tor may have begun to refer to status or high class.
Tur and Tor may have separate meanings, Tur being
God and Tor being ‘high status’ or ‘close to god’. Or there
may be an overlapping meaning. Tur may always refer to God.
But Tor might refer to either god or high status/close to god depending
on circumstances. Tor might have been a title for kings or
high priests, for example.
‘Tor’ shows up frequently as a name.
There is, for instance:
Torkar Bar (Tur - Kar - Bar)
Tor Hatan (Tur - Hat - An)
Sanoma Tora (Sanoma - Tur - A)
Dotar Sojat (Do - Tur - Sojat)
This indicates that there was probably a strong
tradition of religious names, similar to our use of David, Paul, Jesus,
Angela, etc. Even though the religion is largely lost, the
naming tradition continues, just as today, people use judaic names without
any real awareness of the origin of the names. Equally, ‘status’
or ‘noble’ names are also used in our language: Rex, Earl,
But here is something interesting:
Dejah Thoris. (Dejah - Tur -
Iss of course is the current dominant Martian
religion, so its perhaps not surprising that a Princess of Mars might incorporate
that into her name. But ‘Tur-Iss’? Dejah Thoris
incorporates the two holiest or most religious Martian names.
So 'Tur-Iss' (Thoris) may actually be a very holy name, roughly comparable
to Angela in English or Jesus in Spanish. Alternately, it might
be Tor-Iss, which would probably translate to Princess of Iss, also fairly
Okay, now, lets circle around a bit.
Remember that Tur is the ultimate root word so far, which appears in both
numbers, place names, personal names and at least a noun or too.
One of the offshoots of Tur is Tor as a number. One of the
offshoots of the number Tor is the number bar Bar. Bar is a multiple,
numerically. Where Tor is a basic or root number, Bar is a multiple
or offshoot of Tor.
Perhaps, instead of a racial designation, the
original ‘Bar’ word was a religious one. Instead of 'white people' it may
have originally meant 'worshippers of Tur' Thus, the Thern
would mean 'Tur worshippers in the 'nnnn' location, Horz would mean 'Tur
worshippers in the 'zzz' location, Barsoom is really 'Tur's world', or
‘Tur's Worshippers World’. Hither and Orovar, Xancibar
and Khalsifar may be different tribes of Tur worshippers or 'Oro, Hi and
Si (Kal and Zan) bands of Tur worshippers)
Of course, if that's the case, then the Okar or
yellow folk of the north pole, are actually O-Kar, and Kar is another corruption
of the root word that leads back to Tur or Tor. So their name originally
was "O-Tur" or ‘O-Bar’ translating as 'O' worshippers of Tur'.
And of course, Bar gets us to Barsoom and to the
tribal names. So perhaps we've gotten it wrong with all of
our tribal names. Instead, Bar may mean ‘worshipper’ or some
variation on worshipper, ‘followers’ ‘people’ ‘children’ ‘descendants’.
This makes sense. Tur or Tor is the singular deity, there is only
the one of him. Bar is the multiple, or multitude that derives
from Tor. Thus, the multiple or multitude worshippers of the singular
Tor will naturally call themselves Bar.
If indeed, Tur is the root of Bar, then actually,
we should revisit some of the tribal names:
Therns (Tur - n) (Worshippers
of Tur from ‘nnnn’) Tarid (Tur - id) (Worshippers
of Tur from ‘id’)
Hither (Hi -Tur) (Worshippers of
Tur of the Hi people)
All of these are archaic or lost tribes, out of
the Barsoomian mainstream. This may also explain the name of
Gulliver Jones other archaic tribe, the Thither who would be Thi - Tur,
or worshippers of Tur of the Thi tribe.
It's likely, of course, that as the Martian tribes
diverged, their language evolved, and thus their term for themselves as
‘bar’ or ‘thur’, Tur worshippers, diverged. Among the Okar,
the consonant ‘th’ or ‘b’ hardened into a ‘K’. Among the Orovars
and Khalsifar, the ‘th’ or ‘b’ hardened into a ‘v’ or ‘f’ sound.
Given that the Therns are closer to the ‘T’ than
the Orovars who have softened it to a ‘V’, we can speculate that the Therns
and the Orovars split off from each other very early in their history and
Extending on that, we might infer that the Therns
and the Hither are actually related tribes on one side of the Thern/Orovar
The Tarids may be more closely related to the
Thern line than the Orovar line, although that might be debatable.
It's more likely that their tribal name regained the ‘T’ because they were
living on Thuria, close to Tur.
The Khalsifar and Xancibar are clearly related
tribes who split off from each other comparatively late. Both share
the middle ‘si’, so their root tribe was probably Sifar or Sivar or Sibar.
The softer consonant suggests that the Sifar descended from the Orovars.
And there is some support for this notion, given that these nations are
relatively near Horz, a major city of the old Orovars.
So, we can map the evolution of language thusly:
Tur (God) ------>Tor (High/Holy)-----> Bar (worshipper/people)
-----> Far (white)
-----> Kar (yellow)
Or it may have been parallel:
Tur (God) -----> Tor (High/Holy)
-----> Bar (worshipper/people)
------> Far (white worshippers)
-------> Kar (yellow worshippers)
We can also roughly chart a partial tribal evolution
as well: We start with the Bar, who give rise to the Far and
the Kar. The Far split into the Ther and Var. The
Ther split further into Thern and Hither. The Var become Orovar,
who give rise to Sivar who then split into Xancibar and Khalsifar.
Interestingly, Kar or its variant, Kor, appears
several times as personal names:
- Kar Komak, the virtual bowman of Lothar
- Torkar Bar (there's a good one!), Dwar of the
- Vas Kor (Kar?), Dusarian noble
- TMOM-A-Kor, a prince of Manator-Kor-an, cavalryman
of Gathol-Kor San, Jeddak of Duhor
- Lakor, a Thern
Now that's peculiar. Why does Kar show
up so often in people's names. Is it a reference to yellow
man descent? But there aren't any obvious features in these
people. So perhaps it's a relic name. After all,
a name like Smith doesn't mean you or your immediate ancestors were blacksmiths,
just that it's somewhere in your ancestry.
On the other hand, perhaps it does not refer to
the yellow worshippers, or perhaps it has a secondary meaning.
Both Bar, Far and Kar may refer to different kinds or classes of worshippers,
so there may be additional meanings to these words. Notably,
Kar may refer to children or descendants. Or Far might refer
to older worshippers and Kar to new worshippers. After all,
people refer to themselves as the children of God. There may
be a similar operation here.
Remember that as with ‘car’ in English, its likely
that we may only be able to arrive at a rough category of meanings, rather
than a precise single meaning. Barsoomian words, particularly
Barsoomian root words may have several potential meanings, depending on
context, history and usage.
If Kar refers to son, then this may actually help
us pull things together....
- Kar Komak, (son of komak)
- Torkar Bar (Tor - High / Kar - Son Bar - Tribe
or High Son of Tribe, roughly: Prince)
- Vas Kor (son or perhaps father
Of course, if you want something to blow your
mind, consider this:
Jon - Kar - Tur
Jon - Son of - God
Let's see. He appears out of nowhere, he
speaks an unknown language (and the belief is that another language is
spoken in the Valley Dor, Barsoom's heaven), his skin and features are
those of the extinct race of Orovars, he has superhuman strength, leaping
ability that resembles flight, and the minute he can talk to them, he's
telling them that he's the son of god.
Well, this puts a different face on things doesn't
it? No wonder the Tharks were unwilling to kill him outright.
And to put the cherry on the cake, his girlfriend
ends up being Dejah Thoris or ‘Tur-Iss’, literally, the daughter of the
two dominant Martian deities.
There might be some further evolutions of Tur.
Tur as noted, may be the original root for Horz. The "T" goes
silent or flattens, a recurring tendency in Martian phonetics. A suffix
is a geographical designation. Thus, (T) Hur-Z or Horz. But "Hor" itself
is a frequently recurring phoneme. Amhor and Duhor. or Am-Hor and
Du-Hor. So perhaps by this time, Hor was becoming an archaic word for City?
Another potential root word, "Du", as in Dusar,
Duhor and Dukar (Burroughs, Burroughs and Kline). These are three cities
loosely within a broad region of the northern hemisphere that would have
been the area of one of the lost Martian seas, one of the three big lobes
of the polar ocean. So with 'Du' are we getting back to the primeval lost
name of an ancient Martian sea? Like Throxeus, Korus and possibly Torquaas?
The 'aas' or 'us' suffix reappears, possibly as a water designation. So
our hypothetical sea might have been named the "Duquaas or Duxeus. Possible,
but speculative. Note that the original tradition seems to be that suffixes
represented geography, and prefixes represented something else, perhaps
affiliation. If its affiliation, then we have the nation or people of Du,
perhaps Du was a king. Looking at the three cities, we find that
their names are all variants of the Tur root.
Du-Hor Du-KorDu-Sar (Far)
Or as we've tried to deconstruct,
these would translate to:
Duhor - City of DuDukor - Children of DuDusar - People of Du
Which suggests they were founded in the later
epoch, after the Tur root had diverged. The cities themselves were probably
founded serially, one being colonized by a predecessor, rather than simultaneously.
So, for instance, it may have been 'City of Du' originally. A colony gets
founded, the subordinate city is called 'Children of Du', another city,
further out, cis out of effective control, becomes 'Free People of Du'
or 'People of Du.' We also have another ancient root, Mana, from the Mantor
trio. No ideas on that...
Orovars in Space? Let's get far out?
"Thorth" the prophet of the white Zarovians of Venus. In a previous
essay, we've discussed the possibility that Amtor's 'Thora' is a descendent
philosophy of Thorth.
But try this on for size. We have
some evidence that the Orovars were space faring. We've theorized
that they made it as far as Thuria and that the Thurian population are
descendants of the ancient Orovar culture. If we look at Kline's
books, it's very definite that his white Martians were space travellers
who were able to reach the Earth's moon, and thus the other inner planets.
So, perhaps Thor and Thorth on Venus are themselves
originally derived from elements of the Tur cult. And if we're
looking for evidence of Tur worship spreading from Barsoom, consider the
planetary name or name of the south hemisphere culture: Amtor...
Am - Tur?
Or consider the ‘royal title’ of the north hemisphere
culture ‘Torrogo’ .... Tur - Rogo? Rogo is a chief or
chieftain. A Torrogo is a high chief or emperor.
So this suggests that ‘Tor’ in Torrogo may mean ‘high status.’
Or a very similar meaning as in archaic Barsoomian.
Consider the racial or planetary name of the northern
hemisphere Venerians: Zarovia. ‘Zar’, possibly
a variant on ‘Far’? Was the northern hemisphere of Venus colonized
by displaced or crashed Orovars? That might explain other peculiarities
like Thorth and Tor.
Also, in the north hemisphere of Venus, we have
Ralph Milne Farley's Cupians and Vairking. Vairking may reduce to
Var-kin or Far-kin. Although the Vairking are furred humans,
this suggests they may have had contact or been influenced by Orovars.
More significantly, both the Vairking and Cupians have a religion, the
‘Priests of Kar’ who believe that their people came from another world.
‘Kar’ of course, may be a significant religious/tribal/personal term in
Let's look at Earth for a second:
Thor in scandinavia? A variant of Tur, renamed as a storm god because of
the thunder and lightning of the space travellers vehicles and weapons?
Scandinavia is in the north. So if the Orovars did get that far, they might
have also found Pellucidar.
In Pellucidar, there is an inner moon. The
land and people beneath it are called Thuria. This is the same name
as Barsoom's closer moon. Coincidence? Or evidence of
Orovar exploration and contact?
Of course, at this point, I'm getting a bit far
afield. But it is tempting to go looking for sets of known
words, place names and personal names in the Pellucidarean, Amtor, Zarovian
and Cupian/Vairking languages just to see whether there is further evidence
which would support the notion of Barsoomian contact.
Going back to Otis Adelbert Kline's Doctor
Morgan series, it is very clear form Maza of the Moon and Swordsman
of Mars that the Orovars planted a colony on the moon, and that the
Ma Gongi planted a colony on Mars as well as Earth. Moreover,
there's evidence that the Ma Gongi may have planted a colony on Venus as
well as a second Earth colony in South America.
So, that leaves the door open for Kline's race
of white martians, call them Orovars, to have been traveling the planets
and leaving their own traces. So, all we have to do is pore
over approximately twenty or thirty novels by three different authors.
Maybe one of these days. For now, I'm content simply to raise
A few random thoughts. By the way? Tars Tarkas?
Tur(s) Tur-kas? Religious name. Or possibly a status
name: Tor(s) Tor-kas. Or perhaps an Ethnic name Far(s) Far-Kas.
Or possibly a combination Tor (High) (s) (geographic designation) Far (people)-kas.
There's about a dozen different ways to interpret that name, almost all
of which suggest significant status. And Tardos Mors? Tur-dos? God's
warrior? God's servant? Alternately, ‘Tor-dos, or Prince or
King. What does the root 'dos' signify?
Kar Komak... - Son of Komak?
Where Komal the banth is worshipped. - Perhaps Kom or Komal is an
ancient root word for Banth? - In which case, Kar Komak may
translate to 'Son of the Lion'?
Also, deconstructing Barsoomian language in this
way, Carthoris becomes an elaborate Barsoomian pun. Phonetically,
the name is Kar-Tur-Iss, which produces three simultaneous layers of meaning....
1) Kar (son) (of) Tur (god) (and) Iss (goddess)
Big Mojo indeed.
2) Also, Kar-Tur (Carter) he takes his father's
name, and to the extent that there's some trace of heretical 'tur' worship
implied, its neutralized by invoking the feminine, Iss. Essentially, he
is Carter and Iss, the Earth hero united with the Martian Goddess, whose
avatar is obviously intended to be Dejah.
3) And, he takes his mother's name, Kar (son
Here's another root word: Vak, as in, Invak and
Onvak. What does it mean? Don't know. Another possible root word. Kan.
As in Kantos Kan. Perhaps the equivalent of Bob Robertson.
Another possible? Dak, as in Jeddak (Jed-Dak) and Dak Kova. Obviously,
its a modifier of Jed (Chieftain) making Jeddak (High Chieftain). So it
may be the contemporary Barsoomian replacement of the word Tor. At
this point, we may be sledding into contemporary Barsoomian and away from
the ancient language.
Turn to Kline's Khalsifar version of Tur, the
Sun God 'Sarkiss' or 'Sark-Iss'. Sark? Tur? Well, they share
an internal proto-syllable 'ar/ur'. Its possible that changing pronunciations
mutated a T sound to a Zh sound and then a S sound. Perhaps the 'k' sound
is a linking device. Or perhaps a truncated version of the Khal from
the Khalsifar nation. Working backwards, the original name
probably came across as Tur Khal Iss. Or Tur (God) ruler of the Khal (people)
and Iss (lesser goddess) Was this like Thoris (Tur-Iss) another fused name,
and perhaps a failed attempt to perpetuate the cult of the sun god by incorporating
the attributes of the Iss God? I've previously written that Tur probably
incorporated a lot of lesser gods, and this was part of his MO (See
Religions of Barsoom).
It's a bit farfetched, but what the hell.