Kotnelbyotke (Kotke)
Age: 15
One of Enrie’s two roommates.

Kotke is from the far far North, where a group of Bitrani refugees have been living for hundreds of years. She’s got hair so blonde it’s almost white, ice-blue eyes, and snow-pale skin. The red, teal, and purple of the Diplomacy and Law uniform makes her look even paler.

She wears her hair in the low-on-the-neck looped braids that are as much a mark of her township as the pale coloration is; ribbons of her House colors are woven through the braids.

She is short, barely over 5′ tall, and a little more stocky than Calenyena norm, being built like a small tank, designed to survive the frigid winters and barely-better summers. She’s soft-spoken by native habit, and a little lost here at school.

Homesickness plagues Kotke through her year at school. She perseveres, however; she is attending the Academy and majoring in Diplomacy because she knows the remote townships like her own need representation, and thinks that this is the best way to get it. She is not the most brilliant student, but she may be the most devoted.

Ledryainryie (Ledryie)
Age: 15
The other of Enrie’s two roommates

Like Taikie, Ledryie has the ethnic Calenyena look. She has a short nose with a bit of an upturn, a very pointed chin, and a high forehead ; she wears two narrow braids looped low on her forehead to differentiate herself from dozens of other girls in her home city who looked much the same.

She’s about 5’6 and broad-hipped, broad-shouldered, and slender in between. She has the best-tailored clothes of anyone in her dorm, because she tailors them herself.

Ledryie is a bit vain, in a conscious-about-her-appearance sort of way. She was a scholarship girl from primary into secondary school, and earned money working for the school to pay for clothing to look as nice as the more affluent girls.

She was born Lyedra; the Academy allowed her to change her name to reflect the status she is working towards.

She’s a brilliant student, and sometimes forgets to concentrate on her work.

Names in Calenyen culture
(Note to self: cement when Calenyen and when Calenyena. The people are Calenyena. The Language is Calenyen. The country is Calenta. The culture…?

About Lyedra/Ledryainryie – this is mostly a matter of affectation in length. She is doing her best to “pass” as a daughter of affluent parents, merchant princes, if you will, a family of skilled trades. They tend to give their children longer names, where farmers, unskilled laborers, tend to give their children short names. Rin. Noni. Lyedra.

Secondly, nouns with a palatalized first consonant are classified as “not-useful, unskilled, crap.” (Ly vs. L.) (NON palatalized first-consonant nouns are “Useful, skilled.”)

As others have pointed out, an initial vowel is saved for royalty and the children thereof, Enarienarie, Arinyanka, Edaledalendu (and thus the tendancy for going for very long names. The translation of many of these things is lost in an old variant of Calenyen, where the name might mean something like The-stars-shined-down-brightly-shining. (yes, with the redundancy.)

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