Re: Soul of a dead person?

At 15:43:39 on Thu, 24 Jan 2008, FCS <sipston_777@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in 
<106e69fe-cc30-4251-bef2-5ca81054484b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:

>Moving into a Tolkein-esque reading of the words
>were Wraiths, as in the Ring Wraiths, ever but
>wraiths? Or were they, too, the intangible essences
>of once-living but now dead life?
>
>If so then no fair treatment of the subject would
>omit "Wights", after which I surmise the Isle of
>Wight is named and presumed the most haunted place
>in Britain. As its Latin name was "Ventnor" there
>is no obvious link to Lingua Romanes.

I would venture to suggest that you should move out of 
Tolkien(sic)-esque mode.  JRRT was deeply immersed in the cultural 
linguistics of many languages, and in LOTR he played fun games with that 
knowledge, for his enjoyment and ours.

Wight means man, person, living being.  Nothing more, nothing less.  The 
fact that Tolkien used it for his own purposes in LOTR does not mean 
that the word relates in any way whatsoever to the dead or to the 
undead.

And the Isle of Wight means pretty much "the Isle of Man" - except that 
the Isle of Man may well, accordingly to etymologists, not mean that at 
all.

(In very fond memory of Mike Stevens:  No man is an island.  So is Man.)
-- 
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little tem****ary
safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)