Sunday, May 8, 2011

White, in my words

whitebyn : white

The Fennas word for the color white is byn. Byn is an uncommon last name. Byn is an unusual first name. In Swedish byn is the definite singular of by which means village. Byn is the name of a number of cities and towns in Sweden.

How did I come up with this word? The word for white in Welsh is gwyn, white in Irish is bán, white in Breton is gwenn.

My previous Fennas word for white was wenn. After some consideration, I decided to change my word to take more from the Irish word. Starting the word for white with W was perhaps too like English. The word for white in French, blanc, also starts with B.

2 comments:

  1. hi there! i was just out browsing art blogs, and this post caught my eye! im an american who recently moved to sweden and giggled because a recent word i just learned is "by", village or town (i.e next to the town i live in is Grönby, green village)
    I am supposing from this post, it is a characters last name in a story you are writing?
    let me know if you ever need any acrylic fantasy art ^^ i am doing alot of anime at the moment but i am a sucker for all things fae and old world.

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  2. Byn could be a character's last name, there are people whose last name is White, but I made it to be my Fennas word for the color white. It'll be used as a "foreign" word in my fantasy writing. Maybe as part of a city name.

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