From: mary whalen <marewhalen@yahoo.com>
Subject: (whorl) Names and meanings (1)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 10:49:36 

This is Sean Whalen (prion).

Trivigaunte.  Looking at this word, I couldn't image its origin. 
Parts of it looked Latin, but I couldn't place it at all.  In Latin,
tri- means three (from tres), vi- means road (from via), and there is
no stem gaunt-.  However, the closest is gaud-, meaning joy.  This
might mean Joy at the Three Roads, or something.  This seems a bit of
a stretch, however.  Trivia is also a by-name of Hekate, the goddess
of witches, magic, and other things, who was often worshipped by
women.  Trivialis means trivial, unimportant, which is what the
Trivigaunti war is.  Another Latin word meaning trivial is levis. 
Levis with a long e means smooth, beardless. Trivi means I rubbed, I
wore away, from terere, to rub, to wear away.  This verb is the Latin
equivalent of Greek tribein, to rub, wear away.  A tribade is a
lesbian, so Trivigaunte might be Joy of Lesbianism.  This reminded me
of when Siyuf tells Chenille that in Trivigaunte, men are duty, women
are pleasure.  Duty in Latin is officium, munus, pietas, religio, or
fides, so I don't know if the second part of that phrase has anything
to do with it.  None of this is perfect, though, so I looked further. 
The closest word to this in Latin is triginta (thirty).  Taking the
letters in triginta out of Trivigante, we are left with u, v, and e. 
The only Latin word I can form out of these is uve, which means,
approximately, "be wet!".  This wasn't going anywhere, so I thought
that maybe the letters were scrambled.  The closest word I could find
was vigintiviratus, the office of the vigintiviri (a council of twenty
men).  The vocative form of vigintiviratus, the form used to address
as "you", is vigintivirate.  Taking the letters in Trivigaunte out of
vigintivirate, we're left with v, i, and i.  This could form 7 (VII)
in Latin.  Taking the letters of Trivigaunti (the adjective) out of
vigintiviratus, we're left with i, u, and s.  Ius (stem iur-) is Latin
for both, soup, right, or LAW.  This would make vigintiviratus equal
to Trivigaunti law (Trivigaunti ius = vigintiviratus).  Since it is
scrambled, this might mean that men no longer rule in Trivigaunte. 
However, virago (stem viragin-) is Latin for warrior-woman.  Taking
the letters of viragin- out of Trivigaunte, we're left with t, u, t,
and e.  Tute is the vocative form of tutus, meaning watched over,
guarded, protected.  With a long e, it is also the adverbial form of
this adjective, meaning safely, guardedly, while being protected. 
This would mean Trivigaunte means "Guarded by Warrior Women."  I'm
fairly sure that the explanation for the name can be found among these
speculations, but the exact one is still unclear to me.

prion
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