So I had a new idea for a name. First, a little bit o' explanation, though... Oh and, by the way, the following is all pretty goofy!
If ya notice,
HEROES has extraordinary guys
and gals, so the title isn't gender-specific. Otherwise it would be
HEROES & HEROINES. Yet still, some people
might argue that the
HE in
HEROES means it is a masculine term only. So, a shortened word for the show could be, um,
'ROES.
Some people have said that in the Firefly 'verse, the term
'verse was used instead of
universe because it was a way to avoid the
uni- prefix in the word, which is also in
Unification Day... So in a similar way of creating a "new" term, 'ROES could be a gender-neutral way or just shorter way of referring to the show (though pretty unlikely).
Now, add the suffix
-ian, which can mean "a person of" (like Parisian means a person of Paris). So I thought the term
'ROESians could mean
fans (in the place of
people) of 'ROES.
So with that idea, I also thought the name should relate to something that HRG said, which was that he did not work for an organization that goes by initials. However, something short, like the letters for some professional organizations or societies (or, of course, a Greek fraternity or sorority) still seemed kinda cool, too.
With all those ideas in mind, I thought of a way how fans could be part of a group that doesn't go by initials, yet still look like they do... Are ya ready? Here goes:
'ROESian could be pronounced like
Roe-Zee-En (although probably more like Roe-Zhun, but bear with me). And guess what? With a combination of Greek and Roman (or Latin) letters, that can be written as
'ρzn (or, an
apostrophe, the lower case Greek letter
rho, and the Roman or Latin letters
z and
n, as opposed to the Greek zeta and nu)! I thought using the lower case Greek letter made it easier to remember it was "rho", since the capital letter looks like the capital P...
But wait! There's more!
One thing I found out is, that way back when, if a Greek vowel or the letter rho was the first letter of a word, then "breathing marks" (or, one of the different diacritical marks) were used. A rough breathing mark (
spiritus asper,
dasy pneuma or
dasia) meant that an "h" sound was made before the vowel or rho (aside: a rho when pronounced is a trilled "r" sound), and it was written like a c-shaped mark (like the mirror-image of a comma, but in a higher position) before the capitalized vowels or rho, or above the lower-case vowels and lc rho (tangent: a "smooth breathing mark" just meant that the first vowel sound or rho was pronounced without the "h" sound preceding it...). So a lower case rho with the dasia would be a rho with the c-shaped mark above it, and some sites explain that's why there's an "h" after the "r" in "rho"...
Well since the name
'ROESian's a combo of different alphabets already, why not also write it as a combo of lower case and small caps, too? I thought it would look kinda neat if the name
'ROESian was written with a combo of Greek and Roman lower and small upper case letters (click for a larger version):
This way, the "n" in this orientation is a "z" when turned 90 degrees ccw, if ya wanted to make a pattern of it... And people might ask what the letters rho zeta nu* are short for, but they aren't initials.
And last, if the diacritical mark means an "h" should be pronounced before the rho, then you could kinda justify that the name for the HEROES fan is
(H)ROESian, which sounds sorta close to
HEROESian, but if the "h" isn't pronounced, you could also kinda say it was the apostrophe in
'ROESian, too!
Or not.
* I just realized that, courtesy of David Hewlett's Canadian SGA character, Dr. McKay, that the letters could look like what's pronounced as Roe-Zed-En, too, so I guess it may only seem kinda fun for those who see the
ρzn and pronounce it like
'ROESian. Another example: some people might also think the
ρ is the letter p, as in Peter...
This post has been edited by HERΟ: Apr 23 2007, 08:15 AM
What are we?, Name for the fandom?
Nov 17 2006, 05:41 AM
