Nick meme - with useful pronunciation guide ;-)

[sigune]

Yesterday I got a mail message from _vocalion_, who asked me to please repeat how my nickname is pronounced, to prevent her calling me names at Lumos ::grins::. It did make me realise that if I meet people at Lumos and introduce myself with my nickname, chances are they won't recognise it, and if anybody were to ask for me (supposing that they would), I probably wouldn't recognise my own name in it :D. So I thought, now that the nickname meme is going around, I might as well gack it from _grainne_ and use it as an excuse to tell you how I sound ;)...



In the days when I first wanted an e-mail address (that would be eight years ago, I just calculated), I opted for Sigune because my own name wasn't available and, having no affinity whatsoever with numbers, I didn't want to remedy the situation with a solution of that kind. It so happened that at that time I was reading a wonderful novel called Der Rote Ritter. Eine Geschichte von Parzivâl by Adolf Muschg, an ingenious rewriting of Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval Parzivâl. The first part of it is written from the point of view of a young girl called Sigûne, a Grail Maiden who lives in the Grail Castle with her aunt Herzeloyde. I greatly identified with Sigûne - mainly because in the story she read all the romances of courtly love on which she could lay her hands and, inspired by them, got all kinds of fanciful ideas about true love and what it should be like. (I was eighteen; I did so too :D.)

Unfortunately Sigûne's story did not have a happy ending. She met the young man of her dreams (he had the impossible name of Schiônatulander) and, in the spirit of courtly love, she felt compelled to educate him in the ways of perfect knighthood, telling him to fight other knights in her name. However, poor Schiônatulander was better at singing songs and telling tales, and the first knight he challenged was a brute who killed him in one stroke. Sigûne was unspeakably sad and felt very guilty; in her sorrow she lost all her hair - she is known in Grail lore as the Bald Lady - and swore never to let go of her Schiônatulander again. Whenever Parzivâl or Gâwân meet her later in the story, she is carrying the corpse of her beloved.

Rather sad, isn't it? Of course I picked the name when I was still incurably romantic; I have turned rather more cynical since.

Anyway - even though I no longer fancied myself a Sigûne by the time I started writing fan fiction, I had to use a nickname of some kind, and this was the one I was used to as the username for my e-mail address. Because I rather frown upon nicks of the "Snapeluvrr" kind, I thought I'd stick to my medieval German - a decision I rue to some extent, because nobody outside of Germany (and I'm not even German myself!) has a clue as to how it should be pronounced. The pronunciation goes somewhat like this: Zee-'goo-nuh.

I have recently discovered (rather to my surprise) that it's not as weird a name as I used to assume; apparently there are quite a few German women who are called Sigune, one of them a famous classical singer.

And what happened to the novel that started it all? Well...
Der Rote Ritter has 992 very closely printed pages, and I had arrived at page 795 when the new academic year started (now seven years ago). The reading was so labour-intensive that I decided to put off reading the ending, and I never picked the book up again. One of my projects for quieter days is to start all over again :D...

Comments

[veradee.livejournal.com]

How funny is that? I've often wondered about your name and since I couldn't come up with any reasonable English pronunciation, I just pronounced it as if it were German although I sometimes was tempted to pronounce it French.

It never occurred to me that the name actually is German, if medieval German. Therefore, I have to disagree and say that it is a weird name. Of course, I could admit that I don't have a clue about medieval literature, but I don't intend to. ;)

In any case, I enjoyed learning about Sigune (sorry, I don't know how to make that accent) and her story.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have Googled it again, and a lot of hits are links to the same people: a soprano called Sigune Von Osten and an artist by the name of Sigune Siévi. I guess I was just surprised to find so many hits :D.

Because I found the name in a German book, the pronunciation was always obvious to me, but as I passed on that early e-mail address, I noticed that all my friends were creative with it in different ways ;). I didn't make a choice that had universal possibilities, apparently!

Glad you like the story! :)

[veradee.livejournal.com]

I didn't intend to imply that the name doesn't exist here, but it has to be extremely rare because I've never come across it before.

I think it was a good choice. It's unique so that you can't be mistaken for someone else.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that at least this name is always free wherever I make an account, but guess what: safakus, who is Turkish, once translated my HBP Snape essay for her Turkish Potter fansite, and when she wanted to make me an account, she discovered that "Sigune" had already been claimed - in Turkey, of all places! :D

[veradee.livejournal.com]

I can't say that I would have guessed that. Perhaps someone who studied German literature at the university.

The only time when I was on holiday in Turkey, I realised that almost everyone seems to know the German language and the country. One man asked me where I was from and when I answered, he said "Grönemeyer" and "Kortumstraße". The first is a German rock singer who grew up in my town and the second the main shopping street. That came as a surprise as well.