Saturday, June 6, 2009

When is a name not really a word?

For my first blog, I felt it pertinent to discuss the name of my blog. I've chosen Epertase. How did I come up with Epertase you might ask. That's pretty easy. While those who know me, will recognize Epertase as the name of the fantasy novel that I am currently writing. Actually, it is THE LIGHT OF EPERTASE, but that's not really important right now. The real credit for Epertase goes to my now-four-year-old son, Aiden. When he was in the early stages of being able to talk... and talk... and talk, he used to enjoy building towers with his building blocks or whatever he could find to stack on top of each other. For some unknown reason, when we asked him what he was building, he would always say his Epertase.
At the time, I had just begun my epic fantasy novel and even with all of my creative juices flowing, could not come up with a name for the world I was creating. Meanwhile, Aiden was running around screaming "Epertase" all day and I was still stuck. This is the part where I would like to tell you about my genius epiphany, you know, the one where I came up with this wonderful name for my fantasy kingdom, even if it would have been a lift from my son's new-found vocabulary, but that wasn't so. No, instead it took my beautiful wife to explain to me the awesomeness (not sure she used that exact phrase) of Aiden's word.
Then it clicked. I ran to my computer and logged onto the google website and typed in "Epertase". That's right, I googled. You know what? Not a single entry for "Epertase". Google thought that I wanted to see a definition for expertise. That's as close as they could get to my kid's brilliant word. Dictionary.com... Pertuse, which means Punched; pierced with, or having, holes. Actually, that's a pretty cool word too.
So there you have it. My son named my book, my kingdom, and now my blog. But if anyone asks, I'm telling them it was all my idea. Heck, he's only four.

2 comments:

  1. Did you ever find out what word Aiden was really trying to say? Epertase is a cool word...

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's what he was saying. He still mentions it but not as often.

    ReplyDelete