My kingdom for a word!

[clarentine]

I need a title for a person whose job it is to guard a royal personage with the intent of scaring away anyone who might want to do harm to said royal personage. Guardian is not scary enough. Protector has other specific meanings with regard to royal personages that I am not interested in invoking. Paladin, suggested by Bartleby.com, is associated in my mind with people of shiny good character (thanks so much, Gary Gygax), which need not apply here.

So: what might you suggest for this person encouraged to be a bully, a Doberman (reputation, smarts, capability), a dispenser of warning glares?

(Gosh, it would be nice to be able to just call him a Doberman, but I think he might object.)

Words of foreign derivation are fine if I can make the connotation work. The society in question is not-French, if that helps jog anything loose.

Comments

[brni.livejournal.com]

perhaps something derived from wolves. there's a long history in a number of languages of wolf==protector. and the wolf avoids connotations of domesticity that you get with dogs - the wolf is wild and, essentially, dangerously uncontrolled.

for southern slavs, the word for wolf is vuk (pr vook), and was adopted throughout history by kings and such who sought to expand their lands. And of course, there's many a celtic and gaelic name that's derived from "wolf."

[clarentine]

Oh, cool. So Vukovic is something like "son of the wolf," assuming the -vic part works similar to the Russian construction it looks like?

(I know so little about so many languages.)

And you are closer than you know: in addition to being a protector, Canum's also a shapeshifter whose favorite alternate shape is the wolf. You give me ideas for what his own people might call him.

[brni.livejournal.com]

yup, Mr Wolfson it is. :)

[clarentine]

Yay grammar! *g*

[garwalf.livejournal.com]

Wolf related, eh? Should I put in a plug for "Garwalf"? And add a link to one of my favorite sites, while I'm at it: http://www.etymonline.com/wolf.php
Those of you who occasionally find yourselves reading encyclopedias for fun may loose a few hours following the histories and relations of words on the "Online Etymology Dictionary".

[clarentine]

I'll bookmark it! *g*