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Author Topic: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?  (Read 23699 times)

Sir Douglas

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"Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« on: 2015-01-10, 02:29:29 »
Just what it says on the tin. Would anybody happen to know how one would properly render "Order of the Marshal" in Latin? I wanted to incorporate it in a project I'm working on, but I don't know much Latin, and I don't trust Google translate to get it right. :P

Ordo....something?
Per pale azure and argent, an eagle displayed per pale argent and sable, armed and langued or.

So a Norman, a Saxon, and a Viking walk into England....

Sir James A

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #1 on: 2015-01-10, 14:05:00 »
Possession in latin is a rough one. I took two years, and didn't completely grasp it. Found a page that might help some, since it isn't a one-for-one translation: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/learning-translating-latin/21014-showing-possession-with-genitive-case/
Knight, Order of the Marshal
Sable, a chevron between three lions statant Argent

Sir Wolf

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #2 on: 2015-01-10, 15:09:07 »
ordera ofa thea marshala

Lord Dane

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #3 on: 2015-01-10, 20:07:53 »
ordera ofa thea marshala

Is that an attempt at the feminine form of Spanish, ancient Greek (in a fraternal dialect), or your native language of GOAT Latin (or was it pig - I forget the animal)?? :P
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Sir Wolf

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #4 on: 2015-01-10, 23:05:05 »
piga latina

Sir Douglas

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #5 on: 2015-01-10, 23:34:01 »
Isn't Pig Latin where you take the first letter or a word, stick it on the end of the word and add "ay"? Like, Igpay Atinlay. I'm pretty sure this
ordera ofa thea marshala
is Goat Latin. ;)

Anyway, if I understand that website correctly (which I probably dont') I think it might be Ordo Marescalli.....maybe.
Per pale azure and argent, an eagle displayed per pale argent and sable, armed and langued or.

So a Norman, a Saxon, and a Viking walk into England....

SirNathanQ

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #6 on: 2015-01-10, 23:46:30 »
It depends really upon the declension of "Marshal" if it's 2nd declension (the most common masculine form) it would be "Ordo Marshali". If 3rd declension (the most common declension for masculine and feminine non-Roman names) it would be "Ordo Marshalis", although that is dependent on the stem change of Marshal (3rd declension nouns have a stem change from the nominative form to the other forms). If someone found the latin lexical entry for the name "Marshal" I could get that title for you.
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Sir Nate

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #7 on: 2015-01-12, 21:55:57 »
I took latin for two years as well. So the order of the marshal in german is
Der Ordner am der Marshal?
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Aiden of Oreland

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #8 on: 2015-01-13, 01:08:12 »
It depends really upon the declension of "Marshal" if it's 2nd declension (the most common masculine form) it would be "Ordo Marshali". If 3rd declension (the most common declension for masculine and feminine non-Roman names) it would be "Ordo Marshalis", although that is dependent on the stem change of Marshal (3rd declension nouns have a stem change from the nominative form to the other forms). If someone found the latin lexical entry for the name "Marshal" I could get that title for you.

Wouldn't it be masculine noun since it is a male that it is referring to?
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Sir Edward

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #9 on: 2015-01-13, 21:41:16 »
Wouldn't it be masculine noun since it is a male that it is referring to?

I have no idea with Latin, but I know that's definitely not the case in some other languages. For instance, French, which is Latin in origin, has specific genders for words regardless of the gender of the person/animal it's referring to. And using the wrong gender can have unfortunate consequences, slang-wise. ;)
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Sir Nate

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #10 on: 2015-01-14, 01:36:58 »
« Last Edit: 2015-01-14, 01:37:51 by Sir Naythan »
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Mike W.

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #11 on: 2015-01-15, 19:21:38 »
We can finally end this discussion now that I, the Order's resident Latin scholar, is here to bestow upon my humble and expansive knowledge of the universe.

William Marshal is the Anglicized version of the Old French name (and title), Willame (or Guilliame) le Mareschal. Mareschal (a masculine French noun) stems from the Old Frankish "marhskalk" which means "Stable keeper". Bear in mind, this is a title, not a name. The late Romans had a similar title, "Comes Stabuli" or "Count of the Stable" from which we get the English derivative "Constable". In translating this title, we are presented with two options: use the literal Roman title, or latinize the French title.

Because William was not Roman, giving him the Roman title would be inappropriate. There is no precedent that I have seen in medieval scholarship to correlate titles. Instead, his title would have been Latinized to the Medieval Church Latin, rather than to the Roman Classical or Vulgar Latins.

In this situation, using the third declension would be most appropriate. The third declension is the Latin "Island of misfit toys". Irregular nouns and adjectives all get dumped in the third declension. (Irregular verbs get dumped into the third conjugation). It's the most flexible in terms of its construction.

In Latin, we cannot use direct translation of the English words, as there are no words for "of" or "the". And instead of using word order to determine a word's role in a sentence, Latin uses endings.

In the (regular, masculine/feminine) third declension we have the following endings
                     Singular         Plural
Nominative         -                 -es
Genitive             -is               -um
Dative                -i                -ibus
Accusative         -em             -es
Ablative             -e                -ibus
Vocative             -                  -es

Since "Order" is the subject, we'll give it Nominative ending (which is none at all). We end up with Ordo

The next part is "Marshal", the tricky word. It is masculine in Old French, so we're safe giving it a masculine gender in Latin. Therefore, we can use the regular third declension endings instead of the neuter or irregular i-stem endings. That gives us an ending of "-is" - so we get Marshlis

Voila!! Order of the Marshal = Ordo Marshalis

BONUS TRANSLATION!!!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOO!!!
Because I FUCKING LOVE LATIN, we're going to translate the motto, too! Besides, every cool country and organization has a Latin motto, why not us?

"Chivalry our Strength, Brotherhood our Sword"

This isn't a full sentence, but a fragment. However, a verb of being ("is") is implied: Chivalry (is) our Strength, Brotherhood (is) our Sword. In our translation, we're free to include or exclude this implied verb. I'll exclude it. We'll be using the first and second declensions for this one, so those are given below:

First declension
                     Singular         Plural
Nominative        -a                 -ae
Genitive             -ae               -arum
Dative               -ae                -is
Accusative         -am              -as
Ablative             -a                 -is
Vocative            -a                 -ae

Second declension
                     Singular         Plural
Nominative        -us               -i
Genitive             -i                 -orum
Dative                -o                -is
Accusative         -um             -os
Ablative             -o                -is
Vocative            -e                 -i


"Chivalry" presents us with our first problem. There's no Latin word for it, because the Romans didn't have that concept. The most relatable concept is "virtue" or virtus. This comes from the word vir, viri m. meaning "man". Virtue literally means manliness according to the Romans. Other words could be nobilitas or magnanimitas, however neither of those quite conveys the proper sentiment. So virtus, virti m. it is. This is a regular, masculine second declension noun.

"Our" is the possessive form of the word "we". In Latin, this translates to the adjective "nostrus, -a, -um". It is either first declension feminine, second declension masculine, or second declension neuter based on the noun it will be modifying. Adjectives and nouns must always agree in gender, number, and case. Before we can translate "our", we need more info from the next word - "strength".

"Strength" is another tricky word. Latin has several words that could mean "strength". There's vis which means strength (physical), power, violence, virility. There's potestas which means strength, ability; rule, force. There's robur potency, force, rigor, robustness, vitality. There's nervus which means sexual prowess, masculine virility, power, and force (and is Latin slang for penis) - we'll skip this one. And there's fortitudo which means courage, fortitude, stability, strength, standfastness. That last word conveys the best sense of what this Order is all about, while the others have more physical and violent connotations. Fortitudo, fortitudonis f. is a feminine third declension noun. This means that "our" will also have to be feminine (even though most of the order are male). the feminine form for "our" - nostra - falls into the first declension.

Chivalry will be masculine singular nominative(subject), while "our" and "strength" will be feminine singular accusative (direct object). The translation of the first half will be:

Virtus nostram fortitudonem

Using the same process we can get the second half:
Brotherhood our sword

"Brotherhood" also has several meanings in Latin. There's collegium but that has a societal connotation. There's contubernium but that literally means "tent mates" (we're not on campaign together, so we'll skip this one too). Congregatio and hetaeria both have more tangible connations, whereas our motto implies an ideal or a virtue of brotherhood. So we'll go with fraternitas, which like fortitudo is a feminine third declension noun. (hint: third declension feminine noun stems end in -s, -o, or -x)

We already know how to translate "our" so on to the next word - "sword". This one's easy - gladius! It's masculine second declension.
So we'll use the same cases as before to translate the second half.

The motto in Latin reads:

Virtus nostra Fortitudonem, Fraternitas nostrum Gladium

There you have it!
« Last Edit: 2015-01-15, 19:31:11 by Baron de Magnan »
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Sir Douglas

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #12 on: 2015-01-15, 20:34:23 »
HOLY COW YOU ARE AWESOME!

Most of that stuff went clear over my barely literate head, but darn interesting nonetheless. I was actually wondering what our motto would be in Latin, too, but thought it might be too much to ask.

I doff my coif to you, good sir!
Per pale azure and argent, an eagle displayed per pale argent and sable, armed and langued or.

So a Norman, a Saxon, and a Viking walk into England....

Mike W.

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #13 on: 2015-01-15, 20:53:17 »
This is what happens when you take 6 years of Latin. I use it so rarely that I get carried away on the few chances I do get to use it.
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Mike W.

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Re: "Order of the Marshal" in Latin?
« Reply #14 on: 2015-01-15, 21:07:58 »
If anyone needs translations for personal mottos, scripture texts, or epic poems I can accomodate.
D’azur à trois fasces d’argent, et au chef gueule chargé de trois étoiles d’or.

"The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth." - Marcus Tullius Cicero