Re: Vulcan in Vulcan
Steven Boozer 
Fri, 4 Sep 1998 22:25:34 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Saul Epstein wrote:

>Here's a paraphrase of part of what the "More on Vulcan" addendum to
>the ZC Grammar has to say about the name of the planet Vulcan.
>	The name of the planet is, historically, "wellequanno",
>	a compound of <welle> + <quanno> which became <whl'q'n>. 
>In other words, there was historically a term <wellequanno>, a
>compound of <welle> and <quanno>. The first word is "sounded" out for
>us, and might be transcribed by us as /wala/. The second word might be
>something like /kuahno/.
>	[....]
>   So <wellequanno> might have begun as a word for a club, a business
>partnership, a political alliance, a guild, a trade union -- or a
>neighborhood in the "Terran" sense. Two or more people who work toward
>their mutual benefit because of something other than blood or
>coersion.
>   Furthermore, I suggest that part of what Surak promoted was a
>determination to be everyone's <welle>, to make of their entire planet
>a <wellequano>. So that the name would have originally been a
>socio-political layer on top of any older names for "the world" that
>the different Vulcan cultures had.
>   (This would also mean that /whl'q'n/ probably applies to Vulcan
>AND all of its confederated colonies -- and that there are probably
>broad-thinking Vulcans who consider the Federation itself to be
>/whl'q'n/.)
>   To sum up:
>	    /whalri'/    "a Vulcan"
>	    /whale/      "Vulcans"
>	    /whl'q'n/    "Vulcan planet(s)"
>	    /whl'prahla/ "Vulcan language" 
>   Sound good?

Sound's fine... except that I just remembered we already know the word for
the planet Vulcan, widely used in pro- and fan-fiction:  T'Khas, or T'Khasi.
I believe it appears inter alia in Duane's _Spock's World_.  *ah'Hrak* "The
Forge" is also used as a term for the whole planet (SW p,204), pars pro toto. 

I would suggest slightly adjusting *whl'q'n* to mean both "Vulcans" as a
group as well as the word used for Vulcan values, Vulcan civilization, Vulcan
culture, etc.  Thus the inhabitants of T'Khas refer to themselves as whl'q'n,
much as those of Earth call themselves Human.

When Vulcans first met humans in 21st century Montana at the historic "First
Contact" (which I've only just seen this past week), I can imagine the
following exchange: 

    H:  Who are you?
    V:  The'whl'q'n.  ("We are Vulcan.")
    H:  What...?
    V:  Whl'q'n.
    H:  Cool! 

And so we came (will come?) to call them Vulcans.

BTW, T'Khut "The Watcher" (aka T'Rukh, as well as T'Kuht in Jean Lorrah's
novels) is the name of Vulcan's sister planet, which Federation stellar
cartographers named Charis.  The smaller worldlet the size of Earth's moon
orbiting T'Khut is called T'Rukhemai "the eye of the Watcher".  Together the
two form a striking image seen from the surface of T'Khas.

_________________________________________________________________________
 Steven Boozer    University of Chicago Library    s-boozer*uchicago,edu