Matching Names
Found 1 matching names:A
| Name | ☼ | European | Old Spelling | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | ☼ | European | Old Spelling | |||
| A | ||||||
| ▸ | Aataaliannguaq | W | Âtâliánguaĸ | |||
| The stem is 'aataaliaq' with the ending '-nnguaq' (dear). Aataaliaq can be translated as 'he whose course is set towards aataat - harps seals'. Thus belonging to the category of invocational names given to the bearer, in order for him to be close to seals throughout the course of his life. Aataaliannguaq is a well-known myth about a bachelor. He acquired a wife that turned out to be a fox who had shape-shifted to a human being. When the wife fled to the mountains, he pursued her and was made to fall asleep in its burrow, only to wake up the next spring. In some variants of the myth some scholars suggests that the name means "the small one fathomed in the likeness of a harp seal", from which a poor hunter wishes to identify himself with the seals and dies or falls into a death-like sleep and become a seal, but is caught by humans and return once again among humans to become a good hunter. Abel Kristiansen (1900-1975) wrote a very popular song about the myth. This song resulted in the the changing of the name of the marine gastropod Aataasaq (Sea Angel) to Aataaliannguaq, due to a mix-up with another song among children (Kaatungiiaa). | ||||||