You may recognize him from C. S. Lewis' most popular books. But if you still don't recognize him, I'll introduce you:
His name is Lion.
Now, my very large following in Azerbaijan will know what is going on. No doubt they have known this for quite some time, that our friend Mr. Lewis named his lion Lion.
As for the rest of you (read: basically anyone who reads my blog...I have yet to get readers from Azerbaijan), you may wonder what is going on, and why people in Azerbaijan of all places are suddenly in the know, and you are not.
Allow me to fill you in on something:
The Azerbaijani word for "lion" is "aslan".
It's also the same in the Turkish language. There's a little Turkish Delight for you. :)
Anyway. I'm sure we all know of several instances where authors use fancy words for the names of places or characters. Why is this? Because it's so much easier to take something fitting that's already in existence than it is to create it anew. Lazy authors.
It's also just plain cool. Knowing that "Aslan" means "Lion" hasn't really changed anyone's perspective on the book or what they got out of it or who their favorite character is. It's just plain neat. It makes you feel fancy momentarily for knowing such a trivia fact, and then it makes you think that C. S. Lewis is that much cooler.
I'm certain that's what C. S. Lewis thought as he wrote his books. "I'm going to name this lion "Lion" and then people will think I'm cool!"
...Because that's the biggest motivation in writing: looking cool. After all, when you think of the coolest people you've heard of, they're all well-published authors, right?
Here's the key to looking cool while writing: brush up on your Azerbaijani. Or really anything that's little-known. It has to be little-known enough that you aren't committing a cliche. Because then you've failed at author coolness.
It's a difficult balance, finding something that's known enough to be cool but unknown enough to be novel.
But definitely worth finding.
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