From The Languages of David J. Peterson
Etymology
| From an invisible proto-language.
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| The etymology of this word comes from an invisible proto-language. If you're confident you know the etymology, feel free to add it, but reader beware should the etymology be added by someone other than the creator of the language!
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Pronunciation
IPA(key): /mahˈɾaʒ/
Noun
mahrazh (nominative singular, animate, plural mahrazhi)
- man
Inflection
Translations
| Sense: male person (man) [edit]
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Creation and Usage Notes
| In A Game of Thrones, there are a group of people referred to as the jaqqa rhan or "mercy men". After a battle, they go through and kill whoever is not yet dead but is critically wounded and suffering. Based on everything I knew about Dothraki at the time, if I were to accept "mercy men" as a direct translation, rhan would mean "mercy" or "merciful", or something like that, and jaqqa would mean "men". With a geminate uvular stop. You have to figure a word like "man" is going to enjoy some frequent use in dialogue, so there was no way I could possibly let jaqqa mean something as basic as "man", even if it made textual sense to let it be so. Consequently, I gave to jaqqa a meaning rather like "executioner": a bit literal, but I did what I felt I had to.
Having done so, I was now free to do whatever I wanted with the word for "man". Given that freedom, I felt I owed Dothraki something cool. I've long been a fan of post-vocalic [h], as you have it in Arabic, and my favorite sound is [ʒ], so I decided to throw them both in. To my mind, mahrazh is one of the coolest sounding words I've ever created. I still like it. I always hoped the fans of the books would be okay with it.
-David J. Peterson 01:23, 25 May 2020 (PDT)
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