Reaper Man

23

Count Notfaroutoe refers to Count Nosferatu, the vampire from Friedrich Murnau’s classic 1922 movie Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (remade in 1979 by Werner Herzog, starring Klaus Kinski). ‘Lupus’ is Latin for wolf, so ‘Lupine’ means ‘wolfish’, similar to e.g. ‘feline’. Finally, there exists a mineral called ixiolite. Note, by the way, that banshees are traditionally supposed to be female creatures.

When someone on a.f.p. asked if Reg Shoe was based on Reg, the leader of the Judean Peoples‘ Front in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Terry answered:

“No. Not consciously, anyway.

As with other ‘real world’ Discworld names, like Susan, Victor, Albert, etc, I picked the name because of… er… associational harmonics. Albert is an ‘old’ name. Reg is a good working class name and has a post-war feel to it. It’s hard to explain it further, but all popular names carry a burden of associations. The best examples in the last decade have been Sharon and Tracy; whatever the truth, the perception is that these are working-class, Essex bimbo names, although twenty or thirty years ago they’d have been considered glamorous (which is why, the myth runs, the kids got given them). Any Brit would probably associate a type or age with names like, say, Victoria, Emma, Kylie, Sid, Wayne and Darron. Reg is a good name for a dependable guy, the sort who runs the skittles league (I know this, ‘cos my Uncle Reg did…)”