Friday, 5 June 2026

Just One Word: "Brant"

Brant whirr from rushes. I googled "brant" when I quoted it from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER FIVE, because I was unfamiliar with the word. Today we find Neil Gaiman explaining why he had named a character "Brant":

"He's 'Brant' because it's the name of a wild goose, and I liked the idea of him being a wild thing migrating across America. Also, it's one of those strange, monosyllabic American names."
-Neil Gaiman interviewed in Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion (London, 2000), 13, p. 247.

Thus, here is another, albeit minor and coincidental, Anderson-Gaiman parallel. The closer we peer, the more there is to be seen. We at Blog Central have not yet reread all the way to the end of Three Hearts... Fortunately, we are out during the day, not back at home reading. Nevertheless, the rereading continues and much of it is like reading for the first time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

Have gotten to Chapter 4 of THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS. Will watch out for "brant."

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

A lot of those monosyllabic American names are of British origin -- but peripheral.

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And that reminded me of how commented that some of the English colonists in N America preserved archaic forms of English.

Ad astra! Sean