posted
Hey, does anyone remember whether Alai was given a last name anywhere in the Ender series? Papa Moose, here's your chance to really impress me! Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
or is it REALLY his last name like on south park the kids call Eric Cartman "Cartman" which, of course, is his last name
Posts: 42 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Wow, 2004 ... I can look at the project I was working on then, and see what I wrote down. I don't think I found anything official, so either I put no name, or I got my dad to make one up I'll get back to you.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Given the type of people on this forum, it is almost incoceivable that a last name was given in the story and that this question remained unanswered for so long.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It definitely wasn't revealed in any of the books. The question is whether OSC has given him one off-screen, so to speak.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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-Could it be possible that the culture Alai came from only used one name and not both a first and a last name? Or that when he became Caliph he simply was Caliph Alai so his last or first name (whichever the excluded one was) ceased to exist and became useless to the storyline.
Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
*pets the Peguin*
Actually that would make sense, he simply did not possess a last name.
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Alai was Arab, (atleast around the area). Arabs usually don't have single last names. They usually go by the word 'ibn' (which is the arabic word for son) and then the name of the father.
Sometimes, however, they will have last names, but this could be an influence in giving him a last name, if he never had one Posts: 13 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Depending on WHERE in the Arab world one comes from, it may or may not apply.
The ibn construct only works for those societies recently come in from being nomads (most of em, granted), so it doesn't apply to all.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Penta: The ibn construct only works for those societies recently come in from being nomads
Yeah i should have rephrased that a bit.
The people that use it nowadays, most likely, are people probably living in Saudi, as you said, though it doesn't really follow a strict generalization anymore. Many people, even those who were recently nomads, now have regular last names.
Posts: 13 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
C'mon your an ORANGE COLOURED PEGUIN! How can anyone resist petting you?
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And I think I would have noticed if Alai had a last name, at least from the books prior to SOTG. I read SOTG pretty fast, so it might have been in there and I didn't notice.
You know, there are a lot of English surnames with "son" in them, that no longer literally mean your father's name is John or Peter or Jen or Neil or...
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Alai was African. I never gave him a last name. This was because by the time he cropped up in the Shadow books, I couldn't remember his last name and instead of exhaustively reading EG just to find out whether he had a last name, I simply never referred to one in the later books, either. I don't mind if he has a last name, I just never gave him one. The characters who addressed him thought of him as "Alai" and didn't need his last name - he was the only Alai they knew.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
I always read it as "A lie" because in ... well shoot, now I can't remember, but in whichever Shadow book it is when Bean and Petra are saved by Alai's men, Bean ask's if it was Alai who was responsible and the men responded "No, a truth!" or something along those lines. I can get the page reference if you want, but I tried to keep the specifics of the situation at a minimum to keep from having to post an annoying spoiler warning. But yeah, that's what I remember.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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(I refuse to pronounce the Homecoming Saga names with the stressed syllables and the y's listed in the pronunciation notes, because they make the names sound totally unlike how they're spelled. To your credit, OSC, you say in those notes that it doesn't matter how you pronounce names when you read a story to yourself.)
Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Actually for me, I`ve never felt the need to pronounce the names I`m reading. I just see each as symbol representing someone I guess. Alot of times I don`t even know what there names were if asked, I couldn`t spell it. I just read and know who these people are.
Sometimes it goes too far though, I`ll give them different names, like people I know or names that seem better "he sounds like a Tony".
Posts: 15 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Hubby and I like to discuss the books after we've both read them. The Homecoming names were particularly difficult ... we kept getting distracted by the pronunciations when we were trying to discuss the plot. "Is that how you say it? I was reading it as...."
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Or that when he became Caliph he simply was Caliph Alai so his last or first name (whichever the excluded one was) ceased to exist and became useless to the storyline.
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