Are Merlin's Welsh Names A Security Risk?

evilauthor wrote:

PeterZ wrote:My point is that the name is NOT dead as of our time and may not be in the Terran Federation before the Gbaba destroyed it. They named a ship Excalibur for Heaven's sake!

Sure, but Merlin isn't a COMMON personal name and I can easily see not one of several million colonists or even command crew having it. But the ones who remember Federation culture - and particularly the King Arthur stories - would instantly recognize the name "Merlin".

Also, "Excalibur" is named from the story.

BTW, how many people are named Aragorn? Or Thor? Or Sauron? Or Cthulu?

Merlin is not that rare. We have a retired town cop by that name. Wonderful fellow with a great sense of humor and a very impressive beard...

Don

evilauthor wrote:

PeterZ wrote:My point is that the name is NOT dead as of our time and may not be in the Terran Federation before the Gbaba destroyed it. They named a ship Excalibur for Heaven's sake!

Sure, but Merlin isn't a COMMON personal name and I can easily see not one of several million colonists or even command crew having it. But the ones who remember Federation culture - and particularly the King Arthur stories - would instantly recognize the name "Merlin".

Also, "Excalibur" is named from the story.

BTW, how many people are named Aragorn? Or Thor? Or Sauron? Or Cthulu?

It depends in Norway and other Scandinavian countries Thor is not exactly unknown along with other names from Norse mythology.

I really think a lot of folks in this thread are forgetting about the law of large numbers and probability.

My Real Life name is at least as unusual as Merlin to most folks and in a city of 400k the local library had 3 other folks with the same given name in their database. Now 1 in 100k is pretty damned rare but even assuming that only 1/3 the colonists going to safehold were from the right linguistic background (English/romance/latin) languages that would still suggest that there would be 23 men with that name amongst the adams of safehold.

Also I did a google search for Merlin and my city and found a specific named individual with the name merlin mentioned within 2 pages of results.

Honestly the amazing thing in a Safehold context is that Merlin is considered a name no-one has heard of because in the west at least the name is so deeply embedded in the culture that eradicating it is probably one of the hardest things for Langhorn to do without completely reprogramming the entire personality.

While I accept selective memory erasure in story terms I have always found the idea that memory can be selectively erased one of the great myths of literature that conflict with reality of modern memory science. Specifically it keys to the idea that memories are identifiable engrams that can be identified and eliminated. This is an idea that is well out of favour in the memory research community.

Silverwall wrote:without completely reprogramming the entire personality.

Isn't that exactly what Bedard did?

Rawb wrote:

Silverwall wrote:without completely reprogramming the entire personality.

Isn't that exactly what Bedard did?

The descriptions in text imply that other than erasing memories and implanting new ones the people were the same basic person as they always were. How that actually works is unknown as identical twin studies suggest that at least 50% of personality is environmental based and 50% genetic.

Given the psychological trauma those people went through waking up fresh I wonder how bad the suicide and mental illness rate in the newly woken adams and eves were.

I am also assuming that couples were kept as family units certainly that is the implication of the Knowles' that were woken by Shan Wei so all the "your my wife and I love you" memories must have been retained in some way.

As I said this is to me more amazing and fantastic than the federation weaponry, AI's and the psychology/pathology of the Gbaba combined.

Silverwall wrote:
The descriptions in text imply that other than erasing memories and implanting new ones the people were the same basic person as they always were. How that actually works is unknown as identical twin studies suggest that at least 50% of personality is environmental based and 50% genetic.

Given the psychological trauma those people went through waking up fresh I wonder how bad the suicide and mental illness rate in the newly woken adams and eves were.

I am also assuming that couples were kept as family units certainly that is the implication of the Knowles' that were woken by Shan Wei so all the "your my wife and I love you" memories must have been retained in some way.

As I said this is to me more amazing and fantastic than the federation weaponry, AI's and the psychology/pathology of the Gbaba combined.

Weren't all the original colonists supposed to be young, an unmarried? There WEREN'T any pre-existing relationships among them unless they formed them after being picked and before they went into stasis.

-Spoiler-

evilauthor wrote:

Silverwall wrote:
The descriptions in text imply that other than erasing memories and implanting new ones the people were the same basic person as they always were. How that actually works is unknown as identical twin studies suggest that at least 50% of personality is environmental based and 50% genetic.

Given the psychological trauma those people went through waking up fresh I wonder how bad the suicide and mental illness rate in the newly woken adams and eves were.

I am also assuming that couples were kept as family units certainly that is the implication of the Knowles' that were woken by Shan Wei so all the "your my wife and I love you" memories must have been retained in some way.

As I said this is to me more amazing and fantastic than the federation weaponry, AI's and the psychology/pathology of the Gbaba combined.

Weren't all the original colonists supposed to be young, an unmarried? There WEREN'T any pre-existing relationships among them unless they formed them after being picked and before they went into stasis.

Seijin Khody was married and recalled his wife calling him on a com. That suggests that they were married before landing on Safehold. She died in a slashlizard attack early on.

Silverwall wrote:I really think a lot of folks in this thread are forgetting about the law of large numbers and probability.

My Real Life name is at least as unusual as Merlin to most folks and in a city of 400k the local library had 3 other folks with the same given name in their database. Now 1 in 100k is pretty damned rare but even assuming that only 1/3 the colonists going to safehold were from the right linguistic background (English/romance/latin) languages that would still suggest that there would be 23 men with that name amongst the adams of safehold.

Also I did a google search for Merlin and my city and found a specific named individual with the name merlin mentioned within 2 pages of results.

Honestly the amazing thing in a Safehold context is that Merlin is considered a name no-one has heard of because in the west at least the name is so deeply embedded in the culture that eradicating it is probably one of the hardest things for Langhorn to do without completely reprogramming the entire personality.

While I accept selective memory erasure in story terms I have always found the idea that memory can be selectively erased one of the great myths of literature that conflict with reality of modern memory science. Specifically it keys to the idea that memories are identifiable engrams that can be identified and eliminated. This is an idea that is well out of favour in the memory research community.

Try having a very common name, mine get shouted out and a dozen respond.