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In The Left Hand of Darkness chapter 2, "The Place Inside the Blizzard" is a historical or legendary tale of a man (*) whom we learned is named "Getheren". In the story we learn he has committed what is seen as a moral transgression and was outcast as a result.

I find it striking that this character's name is "Getheren" of the planet "Gethen". The story's meaning within the context of the book seems formative and complicated as it is. What is the purpose of this specific choice of name similarity?

(*) Not sure what gender to use here

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    I don't think there is as much meaning in his name as the planet might be named after him - he was an important mythological/quasi-religious figure
    – Yasskier
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 2:44
  • @Yasskier the planet taking its name from him seems significant to me. Did we ever learn if "Gethen" meant "Winter" literally (the name used by the Ekumen)?
    – StayOnTarget
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 11:29
  • Genly uses "man" throughout; as he explains in the first chapter "man I must say, having said he and his" and in "The Place Inside the Blizzard" it says of Getheren "being a young man and unhardened"
    – DavidW
    Commented Sep 7, 2019 at 1:51
  • @DaveInCaz most likely "Gethen" or "Getheren" doesn't translate directly to "Winter". The latter name has been given by outsiders as a description of the cold climate of the planet. In a similar fashion, Europeans called a group of islands east from Australia as "New Zealand" even while it had a local name "Aotearoa" (the land of a long, white cloud).
    – Yasskier
    Commented Sep 9, 2019 at 23:42

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Getheren is apparently an eponym, that is, a person who was the founder of a place or custom or discovery. Other examples include Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, and Charles Darwin, the very real founder of Darwinism. Sometimes eponyms were created in order to explain how a city originated, as may be the case for Romulus. Ursula Le Guin was the daughter of two anthropologists and her fiction shows a deep awareness of anthropological and linguistic concepts. Evidently, Le Guin wanted to underscore the significance of this tale-within-a-tale by implicating that the planet Gethen was named for the legendary Getheren of Shath.

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    +1. Getheren was a significant historical figure, hence he was used as a name for the planet. The colloquial name "Winter" is given by outsiders (probably because "Snowball" was taken) and it is very unlikely that those two names have similar meaning.
    – Yasskier
    Commented Sep 9, 2019 at 23:54
  • Eponyms are thought to have been created, in many cases, to explain the origin of a placename. For example, it's possible that Romulus was invented in order to explain the name Roma (Rome), whose meaning the Romans might not have known. It was satisfying to explain the name as coming from a folk-hero Romulus, but no one today knows whether Romulus existed, let alone whether he founded Rome. If Le Guin intended Getheren as an eponym of Gethen, she may also have intended Getheren to be a legendary character who never existed. (cont.)
    – Invisible Trihedron
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 0:33
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    (cont.) In that case, the name Getheren may have been derived from Gethen rather than the reverse. By leaving it unexplained, Le Guin made the Getheren tale feel legendary, and by making the barest suggestion of a connection with the whole world Gethen, she indicated to the reader that the tale was important. She also made sure that the tale's moral was hard for readers/outworlders to understand, raising a bit of tension. Hats off to DavelnCaz for asking an interesting, and as it turns out rather significant question.
    – Invisible Trihedron
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 0:42
  • If you want to follow up on Romulus, here's a brief discussion of the origin of the name Rome. My best guess is that "Rome" comes from the older name of the Tiber, the river that flows through Rome. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Etymology
    – Invisible Trihedron
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 0:42

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