Klingon Fan Names [Recasting-Transliiterating-Translating]

[Kaz Son of Maktan]

Greetings.  I am Kaz Son of Maktan. When I joined this forum a couple of years ago, I spent a good deal of time to come up with my name.  I did not have the Klingon Dictionary with me then, so I did my best to make a Terranized name, ej. Kang for qeng. Now that I have just started learning tlingan Hol, and especially since I wish to write my name in piqaD, I see I have run into some difficulty- mainly with the letter z.
To be sure, though I saw it wasn't in the Klingon alphabet, I distinctly recall Kor using the sound z when, in the DS9 episode "The Sword of Kahless",in which he referred to the sword being more legendary "than Sabak's armor". He pronounced the name as Zaibek (as in Klinzhai). Also, I just found out, a female warrior (mentioned in the script only) of the TNG episode "A Matter of Honor" was named Zegov.  Long story short, could one of we more learned and esteemed Klingons please help me find the proper spelling of my full name in tlingan Hol?  I thought of a combination of gh, s, v or j for z, and of course the easiest would be s, but I thought I'd pose the question out here for the experts.

Kaz Son of Maktan

[Qunchuy]

Coming up with a tlhIngan Hol spelling of a Terran name is rarely simple, and "Kaz" is about as difficult a task as there is. None of the three sounds can be rendered faithfully. Any suggestions other people give are likely to be no better than what you can come up with yourself.

That said, I think I'd probably end up with something like qeyeS.

qeyeS maqtan puqloD Kaz, son of Maktan

[Kesvirit]

I agree with {S} being an approximation of “z”, but transliteration from English to thlIngan Hol is complicated by the three “a’s” in the name. Kaz and Maktan. Kaz, how do you pronounce each one? “A” as in:

father   {a}
bad   nearest approximation would be {e}
ape   {ey}

etc. That will effect the thlIngan Hol spelling of your name.

[Kaz Son of Maktan]

Ah, yes, I did forget to describe my intended pronunciation. To be sure, I pronounce all a's as in father.
Your info and inquiry help a lot. Thank you both for the fast replies!

[Kesvirit]

Ah, yes, I did forget to describe my intended pronunciation. To be sure, I pronounce all a's as in father.

That makes it easier, since that pronunciation of “a” has a direct equivalent. I would go with {qaS maqtan puqloD}.

(As for the speed of replies -- well, shorter, simpler questions tend to be easier to respond to than longer, more complicated ones... I for one have too many partially composed posts that have been sitting on my hard drive for far too long. }}: \  )

-=- Kesvirit

[Klythe]

    I have seen Z transliterated a number of ways.  Depending on how lexical you wish to be.. After all names can violate violate the morphological and phonetic rules of a language.   I perfer transliterating Z in names to HS to distingusih it from S or making it a full syllable a la H'IS if you want to hold to the no consonant cluster rule.

[Qunchuy]

I perfer transliterating Z in names to HS to distingusih it from S

I don't hear much resemblence between the sounds /z/ and HS. The /z/ sound seems about midway between j and S to me, and depending on the surrounding sounds I could transliterate it either way.

or making it a full syllable a la H'IS if you want to hold to the no consonant cluster rule.

Um...the apostrophe ' is a consonant, so that "full syllable" has an initial consonant cluster. No examples of initial consonant clusters exist in the tlhIngan Hol canon.

[Klythe]

    You are right... I don't know what I was thinking with the apostrophe...  Trying to shorten the vowel...  I think I meant to break it into two syllables qaH  -  'IS, but that seperates the two sounds way too much, so again.. Dunno what I was thinking there...  probably just go with HIS...

    The 'z' in English is an 's' with buzzing from the vocal cords. That is a 'z' is a "voiced" 's'.  Klingon doesn't have the 's' sound exactly, the closest thing they have is S, so I added a distinctly voiced consonant to it to approximate it.  Perhaps there might be a better choice that adds the voice without changing the sound as much, maybe gh?  I dunno, H sounds more neutral to my ear...

   I don't see how you associate the sound with j, as this is describe as a hard 'j' as in English "juDGe" or "Jeep" and never as the French 'j' as in 'jour'.  I could see this more if it was a French 'j' as that is often voiced, but the Klingon one as far as I have read just isn't voiced at all.

    The IPA which describes actual phonemes pronounced when speaking.  Note that /s/ and /z/ share a box indicating an unvoiced/voiced pair.  The next box to the right contains /ʃ/ (which Klingon's S  and /ʒ/ which is the French 'j'.  Klingon j is two boxes up, while Klingon H is two boxes to the right.   So I suppose H and j are both equidistant to the sound we want to make.  One emphasizes the voiced fricative the other emphasizes the Post-alveo­lar sound.

    So I reckon pairing S with either H or j would be valid ways of transliterating this "foreign" sound.   If we go that route, and place the consonant cluster rule above perserving the original meter and syllable count, we have four choices, HIS, jIS, SIH and SIj.  Frankly though, I'd be more prone to accepting that this is a 'foreign' sound in a name and just form the consonant cluster and preserve the syllable structure.   Which is odd comming from me, because I usually tend towards adding extra syllables to get all the sounds in.

   

[Kaz Son of Maktan]

Thank you all very much for the help and perspective!  When it comes down to it, I have ended up sticking to what I began with, which is qaS.
For the while, I am chalking up my own mispronunciation of the S as z as a regional dialect thing- for the while.