Why is the mor in VoldeMORt so evil-sounding? Sherlock Holmess mortal nemesis was Professor MORiarty. Harry Potters nemesis was Voldemort. Doctor Who had a nemesis named MORbius. So did Spider-Man. Morbius was also the name of the antagonist in The Forbidden Planet. Frodo Baggins went through the mines of Moria to get to MORdor, where he met Sauron, who, as great a villain as he was, started out as the lieutenant of Morgoth, the original and darkest villain in the world of Tolkiens Middle Earth. H.G. Wells sent his time traveller into the future to encounter a cave-dwelling evil race called the Morlocks. He also created an evil genius called Dr. Moreau. King Arthur was betrayed by Mordred. The really scuzzy city in Terry PratchettsDiscworld series is Morpork. So whats the deal with mor? Is there something to the syllable that suits it for melancholy, darkness, and villainy? We have to be careful here. There are more words out there that have mor that dont carry such dark tones. The names Morgan, Maureen, and Maurice arent so sinister (well, possibly excepting the case of Piers Morgan), and people just wanted more and more of Mork from Ork. So we cant say that this mor sound carries darkness and death wherever it goes. But we can say that it has some dark associations available if we want to use them. For starters, the Latin mor root (as in moribund and mortal and French words such as morte) refers to death; there is an old Germanic root mora for darkness, which shows up in words such as murky; our modern word murder comes from an Old English word morth for the same; and, of course, a morgue is a place where dead bodies are kept. Thats enough to give a familiar ring. And every evil name that has mor in it adds to the weight of the association, especially when theyrefamous evil names. In fact, mor may be what is sometimes called a phonestheme: a part of a word that tends to carry a certain connotation not because of etymology or formal definition but just by association. Words that start with gl often have to do with light (glow, gleam, glimmer, glitter, glisten, etc.) even though they are not all related historically; similarly, words that start with sn often relate to the nose (snoot, sniffle, snot, snore, sneeze, etc.). It doesnt mean that all words with those letters have the meaning in common, but there is a common thread among a notable set of them. How does this happen? Whether its through sound association or the force of a particular root word, it just seems to snowball. It may be partly through words with phonesthemes in them being preferred to words without (glitter chosen over coruscate because it sounds more, well, glittery), partly through words with phonesthemes in them shifting sense under the influence of the phonestheme (snub is getting more nose-focused), and partly through words changing form to come to have phonesthemes in them. One possible case of a word changing form to have a phonestheme is the oldest of the mor names above, Mordred, the betrayer of King Arthur. His name actually was originally Medraut or Modred, Celtic versions of the Latin Moderatus. How did it get the mor? Possibly with some influence of his mother, Morgause, or of Morgan le Fay. But possibly also through some sound associations, with murder(earlier murther) and with the French morte. After all, the best-known account of the Arthurian legend is Malorys Le Morte dArthur. We know that some of the names drew directly and deliberately on mor words. J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon and knew very well what he was up to when he chose his words. Morgoth, Mordor, and Moria are all formed using the same mor root that shows up in his Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin, a root referring to darkness and blackness. He borrowed it from the old Germanic wordmora, which, as I mentioned, shows up in the modern word murky. J.K. Rowling is well known as a dab hand at wordplay. Voldemort is right from French: it can mean flight from death or theft of death. Rowling herself pronounces it with a silent t as in the French, though shes just about the only one who does. Classical roots very likely played a role in the name Morbius, too. The first one, after whom the others (in Spider-Man and Dr. Who) are named, was in the 1956 movieThe Forbidden Planet: Dr. Edward Morbius, his ships master of languages and meaning, a man with an out-of-control unconscious. Morbius himself would have noticed the resemblance of his name toMöbius (of the famous loop) and Morpheus(shape-shifting god of dreams). He probably also would have known its similarity to Latin morbus, meaning sickness — source of English morbid. We can reckon safely that Irving Block and Allen Adler, who wrote the story and invented the name, had some idea of this too. What about the other names? We dont always know what the authors were thinking. But we do know that they may readily have been influenced by the sound. Sherlocks nemesis Jim Moriarty from the BBC show Sherlock (Screen shot, BBC) Moriarty is an actual Irish family name. Why did Arthur Conan Doyle choose that name specifically when he created him in 1893? Not to vilify the Irish — Conan Doyle had Irish roots himself. There may have been influence of the art in Moriarty, and there may have been influence of the mor too. Whats surer is that Moriarty adds weight to the overall effect of mor in evil names. Likewise, when H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895, we dont know why he called his evil cave-dwelling descendants of humans Morlocks, but its easy to see that Morlock sounds like warlock — plus a murky and mortal Mor, which is also in the French name Moreau, which Wells chose the following year for his evil genius who changes animals into humans. Terry Pratchetts Morpork (part of the twinned city Ankh-Morpork) is a bit of an outlier here, because while its a nasty, dirty city, its not quite as evil — and Pratchetts books are humorous. The sound of more pork is hard to miss. But so is the dark mor. There are plenty of evil persons and places with no trace of a mor, of course. Phonesthemes arent by any means sure-fire things. But if youre coming up with a name for someone or something evil, especially if its dark and deadly and unnatural, mor has a good effect. No doubt that had some influence when Scott Adams, who draws Dilbert, named his Preventer of Information Services Mordac. JAMES HARBECK | MARCH 12, 2014
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 20:01:38 +0000
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