Gnomes and Fairies

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

There's no "k" in classic Latin And "Y" becomes "I" so the name then would become "HicIacet" or "Hic Iacet" …

The letter K was used in Old Latin and survived in Classic Latin in the word kalendae, after the 5th century B.C.E., which referred to the first day of each month, and in the praenomen Kaeso, used by the Julian clan. The word and name were both abbreviated as K. Accordingly K remains as a letter in standard Latin, though used seldom.

Y was in origin the Greek letter upsilon ‘plain y’ (Υ) which was originally pronounced in Greek as [u] but later pronounced as [i] but with the lips rounded, like u in modern French and ü in German. The Romans used this letter only when borrowing Greek words and names. Since the Greek sound was not a native Latin sound, the letter was generally pronounced as [i] in late Latin and in Romance languages.

Gorey’s use of the name Hickyacket is an intentional modernized misspelling of Hic iacet, replacing i with y and c with ck.

The supposed quotation Hic Iacet Arturus Regina Temus Regina Mors makes no sense to me. I think the intended quotation is the famous Hic Iacet Arturus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus to be translated something like “Here lies Arthur, former king, and king to be”.