What's in a name?

I'm not particular about restricting my knowledge of the Mythos to only Lovecraft's writing. That just...well, wouldn't work. Lovecraft's work laid a foundation, but the Mythos really exists because other writers added to it. Even that oversimplifies things. There are things commonly accepted as "part of the Mythos" that inspired Lovecraft. Does that make them "pre-Mythos"? Is it really that simple? Should any of it be seen as so simple?

And yes, there are folks out there who do not accept the works of certain authors as being "true Mythos" because they feel those authors went too far from what Lovecraft intended. I disagree. There are works in the Mythos I don't like. Sometimes the focus of the work is boring to me. Sometimes the writing style doesn't appeal to me. I don't judge whether or not it belongs in the Mythos, though. Lovecraft isn't known for being the most accepting and inclusive person to walk the earth, but it does seem he tried to encourage creativity in writing. Oh, he was judgemental there, too! Rewrote some of the works of authors he mentored or collaborated with, and judged them as people based on what he saw as flaws in their writing. But he did encouraging sharing settings and other elements - sort of collaborative worldbuilding - and the Mythos has grown to be so much larger than just direct literary descendents of his writing.

So, because I don't have tight limits on what I accept as valid in the Mythos, I don't have tight limits on where I find inspiration in Yog-Sothothery. I can find significance and meaning in games, movies that make subtle references to Mythos-related things, synchronicity of things that play a small roll in a story I'm reading starting to pop up repeatedly in the physical world, and many other sources. The Muses often sing when I wasn't listening for them.

Languages fascinate me, and it nags at me that R'Lyehian isn't a fully constructed language. I can see many reasons why a fully constructed language would actually work against so much of the feeling Lovecraft was communicating, and that nagging feeling I get from having so little to work with actually goes very well with what he was creating. I'm not giving the win to him, though. The man would probably be horrified by how his work has inspired so many and what we pursue with it, so why only go halfway? I say it can still grow into a whole language!

This all somehow comes around to me wandering onto the Yog-Sothoth wiki page for the language , which seems to mostly have been figured out from various Mythos works in order to be used by people who play the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. As I was reading through it, I really like some of the explanation of how the small vocabulary they have to work with allows for translating, "Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn." There's how Lovecraft said it would translate, a more poetic translation from following the vocabulary list on that page (flows from the tongue, but doesn't really change anything), and then there's this:

"Dead (beyond the threshold) yet alive (working), Cthulhu [in Its] palace at R’lyeh sleeps/waits/dreams."

Oh, I do like that! Those explanations of "dead" and "alive" make sense. Normally, I'd read "sleeps/waits/dreams" as "can be any of these, depending on context". Here, I like the idea that it can be all of those simultaneously.

I was scrolling back and forth, up and down, playing with some ideas. I wasn't just reading it all straight through. It jumped out at me that "shoggoth" would break down into "shogg = realm of darkness" and "-oth = native of". A shoggoth as a native of the realm of darkness certainly fits. 

I'm not even conversationally fluent in any language other than my native language, but I catch onto bits and pieces quickly and have casually studied German, Norwegian, and Esperanto. I grew up in an area where Spanish is spoken enough that I picked up on more of it than I have other languages. I've devoted myself to studying Welsh. I had Deaf friends in high school and learned enough ASL that I wasn't just fingerspelling everything. I know enough to know that simple word-for-word translations aren't really how languages work. Culture matters. Loan words are a whole thing. Trying to explain something to someone when their language has no word for it because the very thing is unknown to them is difficult enough when everybody in the conversation is human and existing in the physical world at the same time. The things Lovecraft left missing from R'Lyehian would make expanding the language very realistic if some of those things remained missing.

I was looking at the list of word parts and trying to figure out if I could find that "Yog-Sothoth" translates into anything after seeing "-oth = native of". And, while scrolling back and forth, I did eventually see the author of the explanations say they can't currently translate the "Yog-Soth" part. I have an idea, though.

-oth = native of

y- = I/my

There isn't really a translation for "-og". It says, "(emphatic)". So I'm taking that as being verbal punctuation. You can hear the ! in the word or name.

That would leave "soth", and...yeah, nothing for that.  What I noticed, though, is that all of the S words translate into words that are related to either time, place (including one for "share space"), or communication. Not just any kind of communication. There are words for "pact", "notify/contact", "invite", and "ask/pray for". Sacred communication.

Putting all of those pieces together, what I get is something like, "I am all time and space", leaving out the parts about communication. 

Yog (I/my, with the emphasis of -og)

S words (various forms of time and space)

-oth (native of)

I'm interpreting "native of" in this case not to be "this is the point of origin", but more like "this is the very nature of". Yog-Sothoth is, after all, a bit more unique than pretty much any of the other Old Ones, with the exception of Azathoth. And that's just a different kind of uniqueness that, maybe, isn't all that different in the bigger picture, and I could get easily sidetracked here.

Why the emphasis of -og on "I/my"? That's part of why I'm interpreting "native of" the way I am. I have a feeling it puts the focus on Yog-Sothoth's very existence. If I say, "I am a native of (specific state in the US)", it puts the focus on the state, or possibly distributes the focus pretty evenly over the state and my existence. Putting the -og emphasis on "Yog" may be a way of saying, "Don't mistake this for where I come from. It is what I am."

Adding in the concepts that come from S words that translate as forms of sacred communication magnifies this, in my opinion. These aren't just things like calling a friend to let him know you'll be running a little late for the book club meeting. Pacts. Prayers. Invitations. These are little flickers of divine knowledge and wisdom, hints of hope for divine intervention.

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. 

Yog-Sothoth is the gate. 

Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. 

Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth.

All that may be contained in just three syllables. Yog. Soth. Oth.