Disputatio:Hellsing

Sunglasses

How would one 'latinize' the word sunglasses? I've been using solperspicillum, but I'd like to find a better one. --BiT 02:37, 14 Martii 2007 (UTC)

That's five syllables! How about something shorter and based on English slang "shades"—umbrae? or maybe with a diminutive suffix? IacobusAmor 03:22, 14 Martii 2007 (UTC)

• Umbercula?
• Umbraculum?
• Opacum?

Umbrae sounds nice though. --BiT 15:44, 14 Martii 2007 (UTC)

"Eyeglasses" is vitrea ocularia ("Glossarium", Alicia in terra mirabili), so maybe you could use that as a base, such as vitrea solaris or such. -Secundus Zephyrus 05:40, 4 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

It sounds logical, but a bit too long maybe?

• Solspeci (-orum)?
• Umbracula (-orum)? (basicly means protection from the sun)
• Opaci (-orum)? (from the verb opaco, to overshadow)

..Or just simply Umbrae? --BiT 11:22, 4 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

Perspicilla solaria. --Iustinus 20:33, 4 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

A bit long and hardly-pronounce-able? Opaci and umbrae sound good to me? --BiT 15:14, 5 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

You think so? It doesn't seem that long or difficult to me. Yes, Iacobus complained about solperspicillum being five syllables, and it is true that, English "sunglasses" is only three, but if you look at other languages, German Sonnenbrille is four, French lunettes de soleil is five, and Italian occhiali da sole is six. I have no idea how many syllables Polish okulary przeciwsłoneczne is, but that definitely looks "long and hardly-pronounce-able" to me! ;)

Different languages have different ideas of what's too long and what's to short. Perspicilla solaria is not terribly long by Latin standards, nor is this one of those Vaticanesque long circumlocutions (it quite literally means "sun glasses). Perspicilla solaria is in fact given in Albert's Imaginum Vocabularium Latinum (which in turn is cited in Calepinus Novus).

But if you really don't like that expression there actually are plenty of other ways to say glasses. Here's what Morgan says in his notes:

102 glasses, eyeglasses, spectacles ocularia vitrea (n. pl.), ocularia, ium* n. pl. (Petrarch), conspicilla, orum n. pl. (*) (Plaut., apparently with meaning "vantage point"; of eyeglasses: Calepino s.v. conspicilia: "item quod oculis adhibemus ut melius intueamur; vulgo 'ocularia' dicuntur, perspicilla"; Rabelais 942: "sic hallucinari necesse sit et caecutire nullis ut postea collyriis aut conspiciliis iuvari possint"; Erasmus)

102 glasses: binoculars, field glasses, opera glasses perspicillum, i* n. (for citations, see telescope), geminatum perspicillum* (Egger R.A. 58)

102 glasses: telescope tubus opticus (Galileo, etc.), perspicillum, i* n. (Erasmus; Latham citing Newton), têlescopium, i* n. (Latham citing Newton; Egger S.L. 78) [see also binoculars]

So if you really wanted something short, then sure, in the right context opaca (neuter to agree with perspicilla, vitrea or vitra) would work. But there is such a thing as register. If you look at en:Alucard, the word "shades" is not used. It's hardly odd for an encyclopedia to prefer formal expressions, even when clunky.

Other, general notes:

• Ves -- should be vires, if you mean the plural of vis.
• Dominatrix Hellsingi -- If this means "Leader of the Hellsing organization," as the text of the English article says, then dominatrix might not be the best word, but more importantly we want to make it more clear what Hellsingi referes to here. I would say Societatis Hellsinganae or something like that.
• Drakulus (in the Vide etiam section) -- Should be Dracula. This is actually attested: see Vladislaus III Dracula, and the images shown on that page.

Hope you don't mind the comments. --Iustinus 17:54, 5 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

The word "vis" can either have the genitive vis or viris, but I'll go with your version as it seems more frequent. Besides that I love getting comments, so thanks for that I guess. --BiT 19:09, 5 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

The morphology of vis is highly anomalous. In the singular one frequently sees nom. vis, acc. vim, abl. vi, occasionally dative vi, and if there is any genitive form at all it's so rare that I can't even find it. In the plural one frequently sees nom./acc. vires, occasionally vîs (which may have been what you were thinking of), rarely genitive virium, and (so far as I know) never the dat./abl. So, while it is true that the word has two stems, basically vi- and viri-, it is wrong to think of it as just a normal, well-behaved, third-declension noun that just happens to have two alternate stems.

And some more comments, things I somehow missed before:

• If we are talking about the plural of vis, then of course the adjective needs to be plural as well.
• We do have an article on vampires already as well: vampyrus. You can see some citations to Latin sources there too. The spelling vampir- seems fine to me (so long as it links to the right article), but why have you made the noun feminine? I could certainly see vampyrus being a "common" noun, that can change to vampyra if the entity in question is female, but Alucard is male, so I'm not quite sure why the idea even occured to you.
• In re Alucard's gun Iakal, the English article does seem to assume that this is just the English word "Jackal." The classical Latin name for that animal was thos (though it was rarely used: the Romans usually just said canis), but note the Busbecque quote where it is refered to as ciacalis. Now, I don't know if we really want to call the gun "thos," or for that matter "ciacalis," but I thought I should at least point it out to you to give you the option. As for his other gun, I would have assumed that it was just a katakanification of "Castle," but clearly the English publishers didn't agree.

I'll let you know if I come up with anything else. --Iustinus 20:11, 5 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

Oh, duh, Casull. That's where the name comes from. --Iustinus 20:59, 5 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

Haha, vampíra is the Icelandic counterpart of the word vampire, so I sort of used it without checking into it. On second though I think that the names of the guns should be kept unaltered, because there isn't really any reason for it. I added the word vampira for Seras, being a female and all, thanks for the pointers. ;) --BiT 22:34, 5 Iunii 2007 (UTC)