Upon looking up the etymology of Wolfie’s Old Country surname, I found no results at first. So, I instead looked for surnames with the meaning “wolf”, and found two that were almost correct: the Italian “Lupo” and the Romanian “Lupu”. Tracking down the origins of “Grigori” and “Anca” lead me to conclude that Romanian was the way to go. In order to determine if “Lupom” could be reasonably extracted from the Romanian word for wolf, I employed Google Translate, and got interesting results.
As you can see, the author of this chapter appears to have conflated the noun form of “wolf” with one of the verb forms, the verb form of “wolf” meaning “to consume a large quantity of food in a short amount of time”; given this chapter’s emphasis on how much a were has to eat to maintain their metabolism, however, I am uncertain as to whether this is actually a mistake on the author’s part, or entirely deliberate.
The point is, Wolfie is of Romanian descent, and therefore both Latin and Slavic, and that honestly explains a lot.
It’s nice to see someone look up some of my research. It shows an interest in the story-building.
Your speculation on conflation is mostly accurate. Normally when I do a one-off like this, I have fun playing with the names of the characters, dropping subtle hints and hidden rewards for anyone who goes exploring. (Such as you.) I do avoid completely obvious connections and prefer a tangental approach. (Think of the magic words in the Harry Potter universe: Very similar, but slightly different, from what’s used in our universe.)
Thanks for the observation. It’s nice to see BLUE MOON REFLECTIONS still being read after ten years!
Upon looking up the etymology of Wolfie’s Old Country surname, I found no results at first. So, I instead looked for surnames with the meaning “wolf”, and found two that were almost correct: the Italian “Lupo” and the Romanian “Lupu”. Tracking down the origins of “Grigori” and “Anca” lead me to conclude that Romanian was the way to go. In order to determine if “Lupom” could be reasonably extracted from the Romanian word for wolf, I employed Google Translate, and got interesting results.
As you can see, the author of this chapter appears to have conflated the noun form of “wolf” with one of the verb forms, the verb form of “wolf” meaning “to consume a large quantity of food in a short amount of time”; given this chapter’s emphasis on how much a were has to eat to maintain their metabolism, however, I am uncertain as to whether this is actually a mistake on the author’s part, or entirely deliberate.
The point is, Wolfie is of Romanian descent, and therefore both Latin and Slavic, and that honestly explains a lot.
Semirelated, have the author’s of the comic proper ever looked up the etymology of the name MacBride?
It’s
really
quite
fascinating.
Oh for… here’s that first link, only to somewhere that’ll let you actually see it.
I hadn’t seen this note before!
It’s nice to see someone look up some of my research. It shows an interest in the story-building.
Your speculation on conflation is mostly accurate. Normally when I do a one-off like this, I have fun playing with the names of the characters, dropping subtle hints and hidden rewards for anyone who goes exploring. (Such as you.) I do avoid completely obvious connections and prefer a tangental approach. (Think of the magic words in the Harry Potter universe: Very similar, but slightly different, from what’s used in our universe.)
Thanks for the observation. It’s nice to see BLUE MOON REFLECTIONS still being read after ten years!