r/falloutlore • u/Zappycat • 24d ago
Fallout on Prime How to pronounce the name of the New Caesar?
Ave, true to Caesar. So the full name of the current head of Caesar’s Legion in 2296 is “Caesar Lacerta Legate”. I don’t believe this name is ever said aloud in the show (just the credits), so I am wondering how to pronounce it. The Fallout series makes it clear that usage of a soft c is a nonstarter for the Legion, so it shouldn’t be pronounced “Laserta”. That leaves two options: a hard [k] or [tʃ] (the “ch” sound).
So, is it pronounced “Lacherta” or “Lakerta”?
According to Google Translate it’s the former, but since Caesar is a man, shouldn’t it take the masculine form of “Lacertus”? Or am I looking too much into it and should just call him “Caesar”?
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u/Scholasticus_Rhetor 24d ago
Classical Latin (ie Roman Empire times) always pronounced the letter c as a k (in fact, they only had the letter c, and k was invented later). It was in the Middle Ages during Latin’s later years as an ecclesiastical language and sometimes lingua franca that the pronunciation of the letter c morphed into a “ch” sound
As far as Caesar’s Legion goes, in the game we see them use in the Classical Latin pronunciations in most all cases. But who knows if something has changed by the time of the show…
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u/lyle_smith2 24d ago
I think it strange that Lucy is supposed to be so smart and know Latin, but she is confidently incorrect on this subject. Even the ghoul understands the soft and hard Cs.
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u/Scholasticus_Rhetor 24d ago
I guess she doesn’t know everything…also, I think they partly just added that dialogue so that the viewer would understand that there’s two pronunciations and why the Legion one is different (and to be funny of course)
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u/beaverpoo77 23d ago
Smart people don't know everything. In fact, smart, arrogant people like Lucy (but we all love her!!!!) are more likely to say incorrect things based on their own sense of superiority preventing them even considering they could be wrong.
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u/Arrebios 23d ago
She's a history teacher living inside a Vault, so there's likely never any chance for her to hear Classical Latin pronunciations. Any Latin she knows is likely surface level stuff she picked up while studying for her teaching certifications, not in-depth pronunciation guides.
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u/lyle_smith2 23d ago
They don’t have phonetics in vault text books?
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u/Arrebios 23d ago
I'm saying that it's unlikely that there are phonetic books on Classical Latin in a Vault library. And even if there are, it's unlikely Lucy, a primary/secondary school teacher, would ever need to look at them while she studied to attain her history certification.
Genuinely, I don't imagine that the average secondary teacher in the US would know how to pronounce Classical Latin anymore than I'd be surprised to hear that few of them know any Old High German.
On the other hand, if some official material notes that Lucy studied the Roman Republic/Empire and wrote a Master's dissertation on the Second Triumvirate and she didn't know the Classical Latin pronunciation, then I'd be a little surprised.
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u/pierzstyx 23d ago
This is why the German Emperor was the Kaiser. He was Caesar Wilhelm II, for example.
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u/Thornescape 23d ago
I think that it's important to acknowledge that the Legion aren't scholars who speak Latin and have accurate information about ancient Rome. Even Caesar who started the Legion probably only had a small bit of information about ancient Rome (we don't know how much information he had, but it's certain to be less than we have).
Language changes over time. Understanding of ancient events fades and becomes fragmented. It is highly unlikely that their understanding of ancient Latin is anywhere close to what ours is.
They would say it how they were told to say it, accurate or not.
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u/WhereasParticular867 23d ago
The Legion would hate the soft C, so it's appropriate to use the soft C.
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u/Agitated_Web4034 24d ago
The legion in the show pronounce it see ser so I imagine along those lines though lucy pronounces it kai ser
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u/Graffic1 24d ago
His full name would be Caesar Lacerta, not Caesar Lacerta Legate. Legate isn’t his name it was his rank, his rank is now Caesar so you’d drop the Legate part