The Bantam Conan Series: Hyborian Names

by Gary Romeo

“Hyborian Names” is an article by L. Sprague de Camp that appeared in Conan the Swordsman, Bantam Books, 1978. This was an expansion of earlier pieces published in various issues of the Robert E. Howard/Conan fanzine Amra. The first installment appeared in Amra V2, No. 4.

De Camp makes some good observations. “Many of the personal names used by Howard in his Conan stories are ordinary Latin personal names (Publius, Constantius, Valeria) or Greek names (Dion, Pelias, Tiberias) or modern Italian versions of these (Publio, Tito, Demetrio). Others are modern Asiatic or Arabic names, sometimes modified (Aram Baksh, Yar Afzal, Jungir Khan, Bhunda Chand, Shah Amurath) while others are apparently made up (Thak, Thaug, Thog, Yara, Yog, Yogah, Zang, Zogar Sag). In “Red Nails” occur a number of Aztec or pseudo-Aztec names; in [other stories] pseudo-Iroquois names.” “It is interesting to note that the three made up names above, beginning with “Th,” are all names of monsters.”

“When [REH] graduated from the Kull stories to the Conan stories, he seems to have sworn off made-up names in favor of real names from history and geography, sometimes slightly modified. These borrowed names are usually well-chosen and euphonious. They convey the glamor of antiquity by their near familiarity without being too difficult for the modern reader, who, having been taught to read by sight-reading methods, is apt to boggle at any name more exotic than “Smith.”

De Camp goes on to compliment REH’s wide reading. De Camp mentions Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy as major influences. “Howard’s Stygia and Vendhya are essentially Mundy’s Egypt and India.” De Camp goes on to mention Rudyard Kipling as well as Frederick Faust, A. D. Howden Smith, and Sax Rohmer. Jack London and Edgar Rice Burroughs are obvious influences as well.

The rest of de Camp’s article is a list of names with a brief description. I’ve decided to reproduce the pages for the names “Cimmeria” and “Conan” below. As a bonus, I’m including an excerpt by REH about Cimmerians and a poem by Thomas Gray written in 1775.

The days of non-fiction articles about Conan and the Hyborian Age appearing in affordable mass-market paperbacks are over. This was an era when fan immersion into REH’s world was at its height. We have gamebooks today with this level of detail (and more) but at a far higher price.

Finally, just to add some color… (https://hyborian-age.bandcamp.com/album/hyborian-age).

All music is entirely composed, played, mixed and mastered by Wulf Von Reifenstein.
Album cover illustrated by Daniel Bechthold.

This ends my look at Conan the Swordsman. All in all, I found this to be a pretty good collection of Conan adventures. The last page of the book has a nicely informative page “About the Authors.”