It's been ten days since Gary Gygax left the Prime Material Plane; the shiv‘ah, so to speak, is well over, and it's time to move on. But the week has produced many fascinating tributes, and I wanted a chance to blog them. So many of the tributes were about how Gygax subtly but overwhelmingly affected the author's life. It's true that when one thinks about it, Mr. Gygax's influences, while almost invisible, are just about ubiquitous. In last week's entry (q.v.) I wrote in response to Internal Monologue's comment about Gygax's constant use of latin abbreviations, e.g. "i.e., q.v.," etc.) "...it might even be fair to blame my obsession with Latin on Gygax's use of these abbreviations." Given how my "obsession with Latin" dominates my character (to say nothing of my life), I think this off-handed comment deserves some amplification.

When I first started upgrading to AD&D in fourth grade or so, the Latin abbreviations (starting, I think, with q.v., because the Fiend Folio and then the Monster Manual were my first books) really lept out at me. Even the glossary in the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide didn't satisfy my curiosity: I knew there had to be more abbreviations I was missing, and I wanted to know them all, and what each stood for. So naturally I asked my dad. My father is a lawyer, and has a certain fondness for sesquipedalian verbiage (a clichéd phrase, yes, but how can I avoid it?), so he was the most qualified person in my world. He was certainly happy to help. He opened up his legal pad and started writing down "i.e., id est, that is" and so on. Then having filled about half a legal page, he tore it out and gave it to me. I hung this page on my bedroom door, and, as the years went by, slowly made additions until I had filled the page. Granted, I hadn't yet actually started learning Latin (that began in seventh grade), so there are some horrendous mistakes (e.g. I conflated quod vide with quo vadis, inexplicably coming up with the mysterious and nonsensical quod vote.) That yellow and yellowed legal page sits on my old bedroom door in my parents' house to this very day.

So it is indeed possible that without Gygax I would never have become a Mad Latinist. But I suppose that's something of an ambiguous complement ;)

( Without further ado, here are some of the more notable tributes... )

It should come as no surprise, though, that what I'm most eager to mention is my own (all too predictable) tribute: [[la:Ernestus Geisericus Gygax]]. It has been pointed out that there might be better Latin names to equate with Gary, but I'm hoping the wikipedian community will allow me to keep Geisericus, just because it's so absurdly Dark-Age sounding. Those of you who can handle Latin, please check the article for anything that needs emendation or amendment. Heck, if you appreciate the subject matter but not the language, I will be happy to take your suggestions either here or on the disputatio page.

ADDENDVM: if you know Latin, you should also check beluosus' clever tribute.

Gary Gygax has died. May his soul find the appropriate outer plane of existence.

Internal Monologue puts it perfectly.

Like Zac, I missed a chance to fulfill a Gygax-related dream: I wanted to ask him if he'd considered a Latin name. On Wikipedia we normally Latinize the given name(s) of any modern person, but leave their surname(s) unchanged, unless we have evidence that they use or used a different form. But as I note here it's hard to Latinize Gary (my suggestion is Geisericus), and Gygax lends itself well to declension. Mr. Gygax seemed like the sort of person who might have considered a Latin name at some point in his life, so I really wanted to ask him at last Gen Con. But I didn't run into him, and thinking I'd get a chance this summer, I didn't try too hard to contact him. Now the world will probably never know.

ADDENDVM: I should especially have called attention to this paragraph from Zac's write-up:

I will also miss Gygax's idiosyncratic style. My verbal SAT score was at least 60 points higher because of Gygax's predilection for recondite vocabulary (milieu, denizen, enervate, and the whole gamut of Latin abbreviations: i.e., cf., e.g., qv., et al.).

This is utterly true. In fact, it might even be fair to blame my obsession with Latin on Gygax's use of these abbreviations.