How do you pronounce your wife’s name?
My wife is the beautiful and talented Mrs. Wright, who writes under her maiden name L. Jagi Lamplighter.
It is one of those rare names, like Galad Elflandsson or Morgan Llywelyn, that seem particularly designed to be the name of a fantasy writer.
But I am often asked, how is the middle name, "Jagi" pronounced? Is it "JA-gai" or "jay-GEE" "Ya-gee" or "Jay-jee" or "Yuu-dshee" or "Za-zee" or how?
As her husband, I can answer that question.
Her middle name is pronounced "!Kthoo-llrh-Uu-www" (accent on the !kth), as four syllables (five if you have a southern accent) with a fricative glottal stop click, followed by a subsonic echolocation whistle. The "th" here is a soft th as in "father’s feather" rather than the hard th as in "these clothes". The "J" is an aspirated Samian letter, pronounced like the z as in "azure" and not like the hard "J" in "jellicose." If you are pronouncing the name correctly, first, it will sound like it rhymes with "Rybczynski" and second, all the whippoorwills in earshot will panic and take wing.
The children and I have undergone the proper vocal surgery to pronounce it correctly: the work as done by Dr. Whateley of Miskatonic University.
The name Jagi is actually Etruscan/Latverian, and refers to a type of Slavic mischievous oak-tree dryad from sub-Ukrainian mythology.
The last name “Lamplighter” of course was assigned to her by her “handler” in Section S, the Unusual Events and Persons Division of NASA’s counterintelligence branch, (originally started as Air Force project Blue Book). A “lamplighter” is spook industry slang for a surveillance officer that welcomes incoming defectors. In her case, considering her background, they are not really defectors, but “Roswells”.
The “family” agreed to let her write up some of the events in her life, and those of her team mates, those few that survived, provided she changed the names and sold it as fiction. Except Prospero, of course. No point in changing his name, since he had already been “outed” by Shakespeare, back when Shakespeare was working as the apprentice of John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s archimage.
In case you are curious, the “L” in front of her name is the Latin abbreviation for “fifty.” This refers to her rank in the Inner Circle of Ascended Masters of the First Church of Christ, Superscientist, in Boston. The Christian Superscientists are a small offshoot of the Christian Scientists, but ones who unwisely decided to tamper with nature, and use the discoveries of Mary Baker Eddy to unlock the secrets of controlled psycho-atomic transubstantiation. This denomination was founded by Nicolai Tesla in 1899, and then again, after his horrifying time-travel accident, in 1499.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
