From: tyan at twcny.rr.com (Thomas Yan) >David Goldfarb <goldfarb at OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote on Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:02:17 >> I especially disliked how you could tell which >> side a given character would end up on by their name.) > >That was true for about a handful of characters, but I guess for the >rest "ignorance is bliss": The names weren't familiar and didn't >strike me as obviously belonging to one side or the other... > >...Oh. Wait. > >*** (potential) Spoilers for To Reign in Hell *** > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >How did you know Abdiel's side from his name? Was it the "iel" suffix >-- did all such characters have the same allegiance? Just so. The "-el" suffix derives from the Hebrew for "God" and in angelology is on the end of just about all the angel names. So, any character with a name ending in "-el" I knew would end up on Yahweh's side (frex: Abdiel, Uriel, Raphael) and any who didn't (Asmodai, Mepistopheles, Lilith, Harut) would end up aligned with Satan. It worked for the pair of "grunt" angels, Kyriel and Sith. In the original Hebrew, as well, "Satan" meant something like "Adversary" and was more a job title or description than a proper name. Having it used as a proper name all through the book grated. -- David Goldfarb <*>|"Feeling smug about one's opinions is the very goldfarb at ocf.berkeley.edu | lifeblood of the Net." goldfarb at csua.berkeley.edu | -- Dawn Friedman