Lichame and haugbúi

In prior posts I discussed the etymology of monster names lich and wight as well as how they are misused by fantasy gaming. This post will be an addendum to that.

The word wight originates from Norse and meant various things including "supernatural being" and "wretch." Tolkien used it in the compound "barrow-wight" (translating to "grave-men") to refer to some malevolent ghosts haunting a burial mound. In Norse mythology, such undead tied to their burial mounds were referred to as haugbúi (“mound-dweller”). Other types of undead included draugr (“revenant”) and aptrgangr (“again-walker”).

The word haugbúi is a compound of the accusative singular of haugr (“burial mound”) plus third-person singular present subjunctive of búa (“to reside”). Literally, “(s/he) that resides (in/at) the burial mound.” A hypothetical English cognate would be the compound howe-bound that I just invented as of this writing.

In German translations of elf-games, liches are referred to as Leichnam because the cognate Leiche is already the German word for "corpse." Leichnam is a respectful way of referring to corpses. (I suspect the respectfulness originates from the tradition of shrouding both holy objects and corpses.) The English cognate is lichame, equivalent to lich (“corpse”) + hame (“covering”). This fits oddly well with phylactery, originally meaning “reliquary, safeguard.”

As something of a grammar nazi, I dislike the misuse of lich and wight to refer to specific undead monsters. So I would prefer to refer to the monsters as, for example, lichame “no life king” (a la Dungeon Seeker manga) and draugr “grave-man” or “crypt horror”. This would free up the words lich and wight to be used in broader contexts as with their dictionary definitions.

ADDENDUM 7/9/2019: The German translation of D&D renders “wight” as Gruftschrecken, from Gruft + Schrecken meaning “crypt horror.” The German translation of Tolkien renders “barrow-wight” as Grabunhold, from Grab + Unhold meaning “grave monster/fiend.”