Hidden references to South Africa in WOT

[KryptTonight]

Maybe I'm not the first to notice this, but there are definately some references to the country of South Africa in WOT  :o

 

For starters there's Rand's name. Rand is the name of the currency used in South Africa, for example you'd pay R150.00 to buy a WOT novel in a South African book store!

 

Another thing is Egwene's surname: al'Vere (though it's spelled 'al weer' in SA, the pronunciation is identical), which is a South African word that means 'again'.  :o

 

Maybe Robert Jordan (may he rest in peace) did this intentionally, or maybe not. We'll probably never know. Or maybe this was the great man's subtle homage to J.R.R Tolkein - who was originally born in SA before trekking over to England!

 

Tolkein dropped in a couple of small South African references into Middle Earth, such as descriptions of forests and stuff that were based on real places in SA and the name 'ooliphants' (can't remember how he spelled it  ???) which is the SA pronunciation of elephants.

 

Hmmmm...food for thought, what do you think guys?

[DemandredFO]

Well RJ had two more obvious references to Tolkien, Carldon(I believe) took the traveling name Underhill and there was an inn and also an adventure story called the Nine Rings.  These other may have been Tolkien references too, I don't know

[Cockta]

Yeah, and the first book was intentionally similar to Lord of the Rings, because RJ wanted people to feel like "home", for the lack of a better word. This I believe was something Luckers said before, so I kinda ripped it off him!  ;D  :P