THE GOLDEN KING
(Book 2 of the Scythian Trilogy)
Your historical books are filled with long names. How accurate
are these names, and if they are made up, couldn’t you have chosen ones easier
to pronounce and remember?
A good question, and one which crops up fairly regularly. I
believe that if I am writing about a particular time and place, the names must
reflect those times. If I may offer a more modern example to start with – if
you were writing a Regency novel set in England in the late 1700s and early
1800s, you would come across many people called William or George or Mary – but
no Jason or Kylie. Modern names would look out of place and detract from the
overall realism of the writing. Similarly, writing about the time of Alexander
the Great necessitates the use of names common at that time. The protagonist in
the Scythian trilogy is Nikometros, son of Leonnatos. Greeks of his day usually
had one name, but would sometimes add their father’s name to distinguish themselves
from others of the same name. Among the Scythians, his name is sufficiently
different that he only has to use Nikometros – though Tomyra shortens it to
Niko when talking intimately. Scythians had a slight difficulty pronouncing his
name and often said ‘Nikomayros’ instead. The Scythian names used are accurate
and derive, for the most part, from actual names in Scythian history. When my
well of published names ran dry, I created similar sounding names using the
existing rules of construction. As for pronunciation – well, I don’t think
anyone really knows how Scythian names were sounded out, so have a stab at it
and anything you come up with is probably as likely as anything else.
I will have more to say later as ancient Egyptian names also
cause problems for readers. Watch this space!
I thought Scythia was a large grassland. How come there are
forests and mountains in your books?
We tend to think of Scythia as sweeping plains of grass, perhaps
undulating slightly, but otherwise stretching to the horizon, with the wind
carving patterns in the swaying grass. That was only part of it though. If you
look at a topographical map of the area, you will see that the land popularly
known as Scythia is bordered on the south by the hot, dry, mountainous regions
of Sogdiana and Bactria, and on the west by mountains backing onto the Caspian
Sea. These were wooded mountains, mostly coniferous, but with stretches of
broadleaf forest. Many small rivers ran through Scythia, but the main one that
features in the Scythian trilogy is the Oxus River, which empties into the Aral
Sea in the north (also called the Mother Sea). This river carves narrow gorges
in the southern mountains where it flows rapidly, but slows to become wide and
boulder-strewn in its lower course.
