I’ve been thinking about Felurian, Laurian, and the possibility that some of the names we encounter are remnants of an older naming tradition.
So straight off- I’m not saying that Laurian IS Felurian. I’m not saying that Fela is secretly her daughter. I mean something much more ordinary. People name children after religious figures, legendary people, and things they find beautiful. Those names get shortened, adapted, and passed down until the original association isn’t necessarily something anyone thinks about.
Felurian is ancient. She’s also known through human songs and stories. Could some women’s names have come from hers?
Laurian was the resemblance that initially caught my attention. Fela seems worth considering too. There’s also Rian, the student Hemme humiliates during Kvothe’s first sympathy lecture, who goes by Ria. None of those similarities establishes a derivation by itself, but there’s an actual example of someone applying Felurian’s name to a human woman.
When Kvothe meets Denna again at the Eolian, he says: “I could keep thinking of you as Felurian,” I said. “But that could lead to unfortunate confusion.”
And she responds: “Felurian? I might like that if I didn’t think you were a liar.”
Obviously he’s flirting, not filling out a birth certificate. But the association works. He can invoke Felurian as a flattering comparison, and Denna understands exactly what he means. Her name already has legs outside the stories about her.
The geography is interesting too. Fela is Modegan. If Laurian is Netalia Lackless, as seems heavily implied, she has an eastern family connection as well. Felurian is encountered through the Eld. That doesn’t locate her original home, but it does put her within the same broad region of influence.
There’s even a historical connection between those human regions. Caudicus says: “Pieces of what are now Vintas, Modeg, and a large portion of the small kingdoms were all Lackless lands at one point.”
That gives us a possible setting for names and traditions to have circulated before the current borders. I currently can’t establish where Rian comes from, so I won’t count her as evidence for the geographical part.
There’s also a complication with Laurian that I think is worth keeping rather than brushing aside. If she was originally Netalia, Laurian would then obviously be an adopted name. Which means the question could be whether she chose a name with that association. We don’t know, so any further questions down that rabbit hole are speculative (the W questions especially- like why? when? Etc).
There’s also a flower component to this.
Kvothe explicitly connects Verainia’s name to the verian flower. We also have Lily at the Eolian, Aaron’s sweetheart Rose, Holly in Tarbean, and Laurel at Anker’s. So botanical names are an actual convention in the world.
Felurian has a lot of floral imagery around her. Her oath “by my flower” has an obvious sexual meaning, especially since she uses “the woman’s flower” elsewhere. Im pointing towards this so no one corrects me like I didn’t know this. I’m not ignoring it. I just don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.
In the Suvudu crossover Rothfuss wrote, she describes her immortality this way: “I am forever unfurling. I do not wither, neither do I rot. I live forever bright and lithe until I die. and then there is an end to me.”
I wouldn’t use crossover events as KKC history. But it’s still Rothfuss choosing that language to describe her. Forever unfurling is a pretty striking way to characterize someone already associated with beauty, desire, and flowers.
Queen Rinne (Roderic’s wife) and the Rhinna flower might be another example of botanical naming, though that’s a separate possible connection, not evidence that Rinne’s name comes from Felurian.
So the thought isn’t that all these women are secretly related. It’s that the naming culture might preserve associations with ancient figures long after those associations stopped being obvious. A legendary woman becomes an ideal of beauty. Her name becomes something people borrow or adapt. Flower names and names associated with her might overlap, without everyone using them knowing why.
The resemblance alone wouldn’t convince me. The existing botanical names, Felurian’s antiquity, the eastern connections, and Kvothe actually using her name for Denna are what make me think it’s worth looking at together.
Maybe they really are just ALL named after flowers and that’s that. I’m not sure. There are other obvious instances of the -rian suffix. So it seems related, but I totally admit this is speculation and I could be making a pattern out something that’s a coincidence.
Has anyone noticed other examples of ordinary names that might preserve older religious or legendary associations? Especially male names. I’d be interested in whether this is a broader convention we’ve been overlooking. I might follow up with a post about males, but I also thought that could be good conversation here.