"Adonalsium" is not Adonalsium's name :P

[Ripheus23]

Again, unsure if this has been argued before, but, I think "Adonalsium" is the name of the god-metal that goes with the being who was Shattered. So his name would have been either "Adonal" or "Adonals" or "Adonalsabc...xyz" where the italicized letters are the unknown letters of his original name.

Depending on the alphabet in question, let's suppose that the language his name comes from has one of those symmetry-things going on with it, in this case the first and last letters of proper names being capitalized. (I'm thinking of how the kandra names work, except mixed with Rosharan ketekism...) So, "Adona[el]" should actually read "Adona[ai]." That is, the original name (or at least title) of "Adonalsium" was just "Adonai," as in the derivation.

[Leyrann]

I believe the similarity to Adonai is intentional, but it is also intentional that it's not the same.

Furthermore, Adonalsium is an anagram of "a mind, a soul", which would fit very well with the theory that Adonalsium did not have a Vessel - in that case, he would have existed fully in the Cognitive Realm (mind) and Spiritual Realm (soul).

[Morsk]

I think the name was supposed to be deliberately mysterious. Fandom latched on to "Adonai" being God, and not the "-ium" being a metal. It was supposed to be unclear whether Adonalsium was a person or a thing; it was years before Brandon ever called Adonalsium "he" instead of "it".

This does make Adonalsium is strange word in-world though, because it seems like a word atheists would use, to deny the personhood of Adonalsium. To call it metal rather than a person is literally objectification. No one says Ruin is just atium, but they do this so thoroughly with Adonalsium that we don't even have another name for it.

[Ripheus23]

Doesn't Hoid suggest that the word "Adonalsium" is a gobbledygook word?

One merger I was thinking was, "Adonai" + "Elysium," godhood and paradise fused.

Like, on Yolen, they would have said something like, "O Adonai of Elysium*," or whatever, as a form of recurring address.

*Why would the Greek-myths name for Heaven be used of Adonai? (Well, why would the Hebrew by-name for the Lord be used in the Cosmere?) However, I noticed that in the Mistborn map with the names of the ashmounts, one of those was named "Zerinah," which is presumably derived from the name in the Mormon legend of Mount Zerin (literally moved by faith, although I don't recall if Zerinah erupted or not or whatever, as a dark parody of the original idea...). So maybe there would just happen to be a Yolish word for paradise, that was the same as from some Earth language.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Ripheus23

[Calderis]

14 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

Doesn't Hoid suggest that the word "Adonalsium" is a gobbledygook word?

That was him covering up what he'd said. He suspected that Dalinar would recognize the name and was wrong. 

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Questioner

When Hoid is talking to Dalinar he seems to expect that Dalinar may have heard of Adonalsium.

Brandon Sanderson

Adonalsium.  Yes.

Questioner

Why is that?  Why would he think that Dalinar would have knowledge about that?

Brandon Sanderson

He thought that Dalinar was part of some of the secret societies on Roshar, and he had thought his way into thinking Dalinar was part of them and that was how Dalinar was knowing certain things he was knowing.  Which he really wasn't, he was getting from the storms and things like this, but he thought that Gavilar had confided things in Dalinar and that Dalinar would know more about this.  And so he was kind of testing to see, and he was wrong.  

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15 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

*Why would the Greek-myths name for Heaven be used of Adonai? (Well, why would the Hebrew by-name for the Lord be used in the Cosmere?)

Even if you are correct on the Etymology, neither of those things are technically true. Everything that we read is technically a translation from the local languages. "Adonalsium" as a word, if derived from those two earth language words, would just be a representation of something in world that showed a similar conceptual basis. 

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

So, when there's wordplay in the Stormlight Archives, we know they aren't speaking English, so are you to assume that that is a translation of the...

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

This is what Tolkein said, and I always rely upon this. You're reading the book in translation, and the person translating it is going to try to use the closest in feel, but to also make it translate to English. So even when they use idioms and things like that, sometimes they translate and the translator can drop them in. Sometimes they just don't translate, so the translator comes up with something that works in English. It gets you a lot of loopholes, like if you accidentally call something an ottoman and people are like, "But there's not an Ottoman Empire in this fantasy world!" But you're like, "Yeah, all words work that way." It's in translation. This is why when you read something like Allomancy, and they're like, "Well, it's got Latin roots, right?" Yeah, it's just the root's in their language would be something old Terris, and the easiest way to convey that feeling is to use something that's got... you know. Stuff like that.

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[Ripheus23]

13 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Even if you are correct on the Etymology, neither of those things are technically true. Everything that we read is technically a translation from the local languages. "Adonalsium" as a word, if derived from those two earth language words, would just be a representation of something in world that showed a similar conceptual basis. 

 

No, I know the words, used in-universe, aren't from Earth languages, but metafictionally they are. The issue involves whether they are too "jarring" for readers. It would be one thing to use a word like "F^%@" as the name of God, in a fictional word, and a little of another thing, to expect a sufficient number of (English) readers, upon seeing this, *not* to get the feeling from the word in English, no matter if they'd been told the source of the word, in-universe, was totally different as such. Now "Zerin" is obscure enough not to be similarly jarring when so used, but I wonder if "Adonai" and "Elysium" would be.