A Galeb Duhr By Any Other Name Would Be Just As Rocky; Or: Galeb Duhrs & Galeb Don'ts

Today we are getting to the bottom of a mystery. We're getting the mystery to bottom. We are going to get gay with mystery.

That mystery? The name of the galeb duhr.

For context: a galeb duhr is a rock monster from D&D. It was invented by the esteemed Mike Smith for the 1982 Monster Cards - premiering alongside the thri-kreen - and made its way into full D&D monsterdom in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' Monster Manual II. The galeb duhr is able to animate rocks, and enjoys deep-toned music.

The greatest minds of the greatest game have, to this day, been unable to discern why they're called "galeb duhr" - an apparently-nonsense appellation - yet sometimes when you send the biggest trucks under a bridge, all you get is a sheared-off cab. Sometimes, when you're faced with a real pickle, you need a pickled brain to figure it out. Without further ado, let's break it down:

The first part, "Galeb" - in Macedonian, galeb means "seagull". If you've ever been to the ocean, you know that seagulls like to perch on rocks. The very similar Serbo-Croatian "golub" means pigeon - further, "gileni golub" means "clay pigeon", as in those used for skeet shooting. Clay is a type of rock.

 

Two ships which saw use in Yugoslavia were named Galeb - the Galeb-class minelayer, which originally served in the imperial German navy, and the Peace Ship Galeb, a banana boat which made its way from Italian hands to the Germans, and finally, like the minelayers, to the Yugoslavians. In the geological cycle as well, all stones return to the magma from which they were born. The molten mantle within the Earth then is the burning heart of Yugoslavia, which may yet erupt again.

Could Michael Smith have been hinting that he is truly a Michal Kovac?.. maybe... maybe even probably...

 

The second part, the omega to galeb's alpha - "Duhr" - the closest match, a truly fortuitous match, is the Pohnpeian duhr, meaning to ring, to reverberate, for ears to ring, to make skin crawl. Recall that the galeb duhr enjoy deep-toned music, which would do all those things. Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands - and is also homophonous with "Pompeiian"... relating to the city of Pompeii, a city transformed to stone by a volcano...

 

To those still doubting - fresco research performed by the Fresco Research Institute discovered that the famous "Pompeiian red" used in Pompeiian art was actually, originally yellow, transmuted by time and obscurity into its current form. So too must the etymologically-unveiled galeb duhr seem unintuitive, logically-leaped to our eyes - and yet no less brilliant for it.

And onwards, always onwards, to the less-perfect though no less-harmonized possibilities - dürr is both Azerbaijani for pearl, and German for desiccated, barren, scrawny, haggard - suggesting the simultaneously organic and mineral nature of the pearl and the galeb duhr, as well as the stony hills which the creature is likely to inhabit.

 

Dour, a fitting word for the sullen, solitary lifestyle of the galeb duhr - an English word, derived from either or both of the Latin durus - meaning hard - and the Sottish Gaelic dùr, meaning dull, obstinate, stupid, and also stiff, rigid (again suggesting stone). From the latter we also get the modern English "duurrrrrr" - an exclamation for stupidity, and then on to Homer Simpson's famous "d'oh!". Perhaps, continuing on this English tangent, duhr is also simply "dirt" with the t shorn off the end. Simple as stone.

Anagrammatically, "duhr" becomes "hurd" - a surname for the descendants of herdsmen. Recall too that the galeb duhr are the herdsmen of stones.

 

In Sanskrit (not totally dissimilar to "sand-grit") a dhur is one-twentieth of a katha, which is a unit of land measurement somewhat like the Japanese koku. Katha can also mean a recitation of a Hindu religious story and a genre of such storytelling - this meaning is believed to have inspired the Tagalog katha, which in that language means story, invention, creation, idle talk - even though the Philippines are quite the swim from India. The foundation of the land is stone, and the galeb duhr are no doubt lovers of talk and long stories to pass their geological lives.

 

In Maltese there's a dhur too - there meaning to appear, to seem, and also the back - as in the anatomical back. To seem to be a back, to appear from the back - is this not evocative of the stony camouflage of the galeb duhr, passed by when imagined to be a mere boulder? Truly, the detective's work is simply to see, to see without preconception and distortion. 

 

Dhuhr in Arabic means the noon prayer. I don't have anything for this one - however! dhuhr refers specifically to the Islamic noon prayer, and I found this post on reddit.com which suggests that the jinn are stones: https://www.reddit.com/r/Quraniyoon/comments/1283okw/i_had_a_crazy_idea_jinns_are_rocks/... and need I even say at this point what else are made of stone..?

 

Uhh English class essay writing closing paragraph: I'm right about the etymology of the galeb duhr. Mystery solved. You're welcome.