First off, the Bartimaeus Trilogy is my favorite series ever! And i've read a lot of books. thank you so much for writing them, they're amazing! i first started reading AoS in Feb 07 and just a week ago i opened up GE cuz i didn't have a book to read, and the book seemed just as good as ever, unlike some books/series that i tire of after awhile :D anyway, just a few questions...

1) How is Bartimaeus pronounced? or at least, how do you pronounce it? Bartimaeus is my favorite character out of all the books and movies i've ever seen. He's mysterious, dark, dangerous, and has been abused in thousands of years of slavery but he covers it up with sarcasm (i LOVE humor). He's great, but i'd like to know how to say his name... (In the British books at least, after listing the characters there is a note on pronunciation: 'Bartimaeus is pronounced 'Barti-im-ay-us') - gladstone-admin

2) I named my gerbil Queezle (it was a girl so i couldn't name is Bartimaeus). do you have any pets that you've named after any characters from books you've written or haven't written?

3) In your books, is there a difference between a genie and a djinni? i looked up genie and djinni and they're basically synonymns (sp?). and throughout almost all of the trilogy, u call them djinn, but in the play kitty attends in GE, suddenly the demon is called a genie. did i totally miss something obvious or is there a mistake?
Thanks so much for reading this. Really hope you could make a book with Bartimaeus in it again.

Hello gingerale -

I was very pleased to hear about Queezle the gerbil.

1. Gladstone's right - the way I pronounce it is Bart-im-ay-us. Mind you, since I read the name in the N Testament without ever hearing anyone actually pronounce it, there may be other ways of saying it that are (almost) as valid.

2. An interesting question... I had cats when I was young. One of them, a fine striped ginger fellow, almost got a literary name. I wanted to call him Sherlock, but my family outvoted me and went for Tigger, which I suppose is just about literary too.

3. Djinni/genie: yep, they're the same word, but I used djinni because it's less anglicised and closer to the Arabic. It also seems harder and a bit more dangerous. Genie, to me, summons up images of pantomimes and animated cartoons: that's why I use the term deliberately in Makepeace's populist play.

Best wishes,

J

i pronounce it as bar-tee-ma-yus. :D

Bar-tee-may-us is much harder to say quickly than Bar-tih-may-us. Which is how I pronouce it.

Now if you can say it quickly, you can say it more smoothly. And that is what the character of Bartimaeus is like.

Kudos to you, Stroud. Not only did you write a great book, but with great character names. That is a very difficult thing to do.

hmmm i put the emphasis on the MAE as in: bart-ih-MAE-us

Personally, I take a quicker approach to the pronunciation. BART-i-mus. No ay in my version. lol :P

DougBuchanan wrote:Personally, I take a quicker approach to the pronunciation. BART-i-mus. No ay in my version. lol :P

me too :D