Casting mis-steps

[Carol]

Miles:
> >> Wictionary identifys "gard" as a slavic word for town or city.
> 
> > zanooda:
> > No, this is a mistake :-). There is no "gard" in Slavic languages, but there is "grad" - this is an abbreviated form of the word "gorod", which in fact means "town" or "city". It is often used in the names of the towns - Volgograd, Stalingrad, Leningrad etc. :-).
> 
Miles again:
> My quote was incorrect - it's said to be a word from the proto-slavic language, the ancient (and lost) ancestor of the modern slavic languages. I'm neither a linguist nor do I know any slavic language, but it seems to be possible for a tiny "r" to wander from the right to the left of the vowel "a" ;).
> 
> Miles, whose knowledge of Russian does not exceed ras, dwa or tri words :)

Carol:
I still think that "gard" in "Nurmengard" relates to the French (Old French?) term for a castle keep, which would be fitting for a prison. (Anyone familiar with Sir Lancelot's Joyous Gard, formerly Dolorous Gard? and "garde" = "guard" in modern Frendh.) JKR might have had that in mind--or JKR might have been subconsciously thinking of Isengard.

Carol, whose knowledge of Russian consists of "da" and "nyet"! (well, okay, I know what a patronymic is <smile>)