[Spoilers All Cosmere] Based upon my deep deep understanding of gemology aka a few hours on Wikipedia...

[silver-the-ridgerunner he/him]

When a crystal breaks, and it has no natural fault lines, it kind of breaks in every direction at once. Kind of like when a car windshield gets hit by a big rock. This breakage is known as a "conchoidal fracture" - viz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture

The shattering of a perfect gemstone would lead to a conchoidal remnant of a gem first gem topaz concHOIDal HOID HOID HOID

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by silver-the-ridgerunner

[silver-the-ridgerunner he/him]

Also I wonder if "Cephandrius" derives from "cephas," which is a name based on the Aramaic word for "gem" (כֵּיפָא). See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter#Names_and_etymologies

[Inquisitor #5]

Huh, I don't think that should be the source for Hoid, based on the morphemes, conchoidal doesn't split in the right places.

Also, isn't Hoid originally his master's name?

 

As for Cephandrius being derived from Cephas, (like Adonalisum probably deriving from adonai) I find it not unlikely, but I don't like it for pronounciation reasons: I say Cephandrius as sefandrius but know that Cephas is kefas.

Actually, pulling Cephandrius apart you'd get ceph and andrius, the former being a plausible derivation of Cephas, the latter a related to andros, man, giving you a possible reading of stone man or rock man.

 

Or it's just a fantasy name of no provenance.

 

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[AquaRegia he/him]

9 hours ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

As for Cephandrius being derived from Cephas, (like Adonalisum probably deriving from adonai) I find it not unlikely, but I don't like it for pronounciation reasons: I say Cephandrius as sefandrius but know that Cephas is kefas.

Interesting.  I've always head-pronounced Cephandrius with a hard C... and I knew someone named Cephas who pronounced it "Seefus".

[Inquisitor #5]

8 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

Interesting.  I've always head-pronounced Cephandrius with a hard C... and I knew someone named Cephas who pronounced it "Seefus".

Huh, neat.

So, wikipedia gives Cephas as having a soft C, but the Aramaic root has a hard C sound and the Greek rendering uses a K, but the sound seems to have shifted somewhere between Greek and English.

I find myself agreeing with the Roman teacher who complained about the existence of the letters C and Q, as it made spelling harder for his students because C, Q and K all represented the same sound. Heh.

I will note, I'm not a native speaker of English, which probably informs my reading of names and understanding of words (knowing Cephas as kefas but not in English, for instance) and I feel like some of my readings would elicit an "excuse me?" from people who go in with an English sound inventory.

I'm for instance very inclined to believe that C followed by a front vowel is soft, S, and followed by a back vowel is hard, K. Which seems to be true for English as well, call vs cell.

Me being a non-native speaker is also why I was never tripped up by Jasnah being Yasna, roughly, because my native language (Swedish) doesn't do J as DJ but closer to English Y, including in the word jungle, which we spell djungel and pronounce roughly like yung-ell.

Anyway, I seem to be rambling, better wrap this up.

 

 

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[silver-the-ridgerunner he/him]

"Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?"

I believe that the linguistic drift in the so-called Biblical languages was no less pronounced than in the tongues of Roshar. 

Why yes I enjoyed that pun why do you ask.

[Inquisitor #5]

On 2021-08-15 at 6:19 PM, silver-the-ridgerunner said:

I believe that the linguistic drift in the so-called Biblical languages was no less pronounced than in the tongues of Roshar. 

Undoubtedly, languages experience drift.

That's entirely fair, though we can possibly see traces of how it happened.

Taking the example of Cephas, it's borrowed into Ancient Greek from Aramaic, presumably as a result of this hot new religion that Paul is talking up all over the place, taking the form Κηφᾶς, or, roughly, in Latin letters Kephas.

This is then borrowed into Latin, which at this point renders the K sound with C, as in Cincinnatus (roughly kinkinatus) or Caesar (roughly kaysar, err, the ay sounds roughly like English I, whence German Kaiser and Russian Tsar), becoming Cephas.

Then either through drift in Latin or through ending up in English, we get Cephas (seefus).

Or something like that anyway.

I'm still not convinced that Cephandrius needs to be inspired by Cephas, but at least this solves my pronounciation issue.

 

Also on this note, we do see some prominent drift in Alethi, they have an E drifting to an A, Kelek->Kalak and, presumably, merem->maram.

I'd love to know why which sounds have drifted though, as Jezrien has become Jezerezeh and not Jazarazah.

Then again, one day I might write a post complaining about Alethi phonology and orthography.

On 2021-08-15 at 6:19 PM, silver-the-ridgerunner said:

Why yes I enjoyed that pun why do you ask.

Heh, good one. 

 

 

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[LewsTherinTelescope]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Also on this note, we do see some prominent drift in Alethi, they have an E drifting to an A, Kelek->Kalak and, presumably, merem->maram.

Other way around actually, Kalak is the original name, Kelek is the modern Alethi way of saying it.

[Inquisitor #5]

4 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Other way around actually, Kalak is the original name, Kelek is the modern Alethi way of saying it.

Oh, thanks.

That's what I get for not double-checking, I'd say my point still stands in general though.

Just swap in Nale instread of Jezrien, Nalan rather than Nelen.

 

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[AquaRegia he/him]

Back to the original topic, being both a geology nerd and a Sanderson nerd, I now can't stop thinking about concHOIDal fracture.

I don't think it means anything... but if nothing else it's a neat coincidence that I'm grumpy I didn't notice.  Cephandrius never even goes by "Hoid" on Roshar, and I think he existed long before Roshar did in Brandon's mind, but the word might have served as an influence for choosing the name.

[Weltall]

As @Inquisitor #5 mentioned, 'Hoid' was originally the name of our Hoid's master. It's seen in Dragonsteel Prime and confirmed to still be canon in Frost's letter to him in Words of Radiance when the former asks whether he's stopped hiding behind the name of his old master. He does go by that name on occasion on Roshar (he tells it to Dalinar in WoK and Kaladin more or less exclusively refers to him by that name after their meeting in WoK) though he's more commonly just known by his title of Wit.

Anyhow, point being that Hoid isn't his original name and we don't know when he started using it, so trying to find deep meanings in it is likely a fool's errand. While Dragonsteel Prime isn't canon, we know that he went by Topaz then and the canon books confirm that all the Vessels knew him as Cephandrius, so if he was using Hoid as one of his aliases before the Shattering it certainly wasn't in the company of the people who actually participated in the event.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Weltall