All Those Funny Names... by Susan Price
Elfgift by Susan Price Elfgift exists because its original publisher, Scholastic, asked me to write something for their Young Adult fantasy series. I like fantasy. I also love mythology and history (the further back, the better). Mix all this together in my head and Elfgift emerges. I was once asked, in a school I was visiting, if I’d made up ‘all the funny names’ in Elfgift . The questioner had found them difficult to say and remember— and, of course, fantasy writers are prone to making up unpronounceable, funny names. — Jxxx!&gk, meet Slpadsim. But no. The funny names in Elfgift may be hard to remember and pronounce but they are all real Anglo-Saxon names. Ebba , the name of the slave heroine, means ‘strong.’ Wulfweard , the name of one of the heroes, means ‘Wolf Fate.’ Weard, wyrd or weird originally meant something like ‘fate’ or ‘destiny.’ The Norns, the Norse Fates, worked at a loom, ‘weaving our weirds.’ Although 'weird' is beginning to mean simply