'The Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns', by David Malki of Wondermark
That’s right. The WORST kind.
David P posted this a few weeks ago on Facebook, and I’m only just now getting around to posting it. Retrosexual David Malki has composed a list of fictional collective nouns for supernatural entities, and some of them are religious. I’ll let you work out which ones. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
I have one bone to pick with Malki, however, about some of his collectives. “A chimney of djinns”? Really? When the English ‘genie’ is so commonly known, which comes from the Arabic plural djinni?
It’s not all bad, though. I’m a big fan of “A solace of Babas Yaga”. As far as I know there’s only ever been one Baba Yaga, despite what some authors may assume. I also dig the pluralisation of the title, as in ‘Attorneys-General’. And let’s not even raise the hilarity of “An itself of Yahwehs”.
This also gives me an excuse to link to the blog of a colleague of mine, Fall of Mythos, which concerns religion and popular culture. In this post she discusses the various summonable deities in the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, which I’ve been dabbling in on-and-off myself.
David Malki ‘Supernatural Collective Nouns‘, Wondermark (30/10/09)
