Tintin Forums

Levent wrote: Look, what I have found, not Vargese but Varghese means George in Malayalam [India] language. Ring a bell?

It certainly does! In the 1920s, the young Georges Rémi was walking both in the Alps and the Pyrenees with his scouts. Considering his later interest in eastern philosophies, it's very fitting that both Valley of Cobras and Tintin in Tibet starts in a fictional town near the highest mountain in Europe, named after an Indian version of Hergés real first name.

Levent
Your find about Varghese meaning George sounds is quite interesting, but I could find a small link only.
see http://www.literacyrules.com/definitionpoems.htm

Was it yours? Does anyone have more links to confirm this?

Wikipedia tells about Varghese, but doesn't give any meaning to it:

It should be observed that many of the so-called Christian surnames such as Varghese or Kuruvilla are in fact, properly speaking, not surnames at all. They are just given names. Due to the modern shift in procedure for complete names (as mentioned in the preceding paragraph) these have become de facto surnames in many cases.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_name

I found it in Wikipedia. Here is all we need:

"George or Georges may refer to:
Malayalam: Varghese, Verghese, Varkey, Jiju, Jiji, Jijo, Jeejo, Joju, Joji

Malayalam is the language spoken predominantly in the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 22 official languages of India, spoken by around 36 million people. A native speaker of Malayalam is called a "Malayalee" (or sometimes a "Keraleeyan" or "Keralite") and the slang "Mallu" refers to both the language and to the native speakers. Malayalam is also spoken in Union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry (in Mahe/Mayyazhi)."

Georges Remi !!!! Billions of blue blistering barnacles !!!!!!!

Here is the link to Levent's fascinating discovery about what seems Georges' avatar, Indian Varghese!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George

Congratulations, Levent!
Do you think it is a conscious, or an unconscious pun? Anyway, it matches rather well Tintin in the Tibet being Herge's 'most eminently personal album'...

Do you think it is a conscious, or an unconscious pun? Anyway, it matches Tintin in the Tibet being Herge's 'most eminently personal album'...

I think it must be an intentional pun. I think a lot of the story can be seen as a metaphor for Hergé's condition at the time. Could Vargèse represent where he was mentally before he had to go and face his ‘demons’? (Up in the clouds on a cosy resort). Just a thought.

And well done to Levent for working out the meaning of Vagèse!

I really love that Varghese/Georges pun.
Maybe there are more of them, and Levent could help us to find other such cross-cultural puns?

I thought that Vargese could not be a meanless word. Most of the names have a mean like Hemed, Kalish bin Azab and others. I searched different anagrams about that town name, added or dropped some letters. Then at last I found it and understood why I and some translators made the mistake to spell the Vargese as Vargen. Vargese was not considered as a western or central European town, so it was spelled as Vargen in some translations!

"Bienvenue a Vargese" means "Bienvenue a Georges", you know Herge completed the story in some personal difficulties.

Dear father Herge, rest in peace.

Not that it may have any meaning but,
I put forward that since Varkey is a Malayalam name for George (or Georges), might Tharkey also be a Nepalese derivation of George(s)? From trawling the 'net Tharkey seems to be a genuine Sherpa name (here's one).

It's a bit tenuous (and slightly off-topic) but I couldn't help noticing!

Harrock n roll wrote: I think it must be an intentional pun. I think a lot of the story can be seen as a metaphor for Hergé's condition at the time. Could Vargèse represent where he was mentally before he had to go and face his ‘demons’? (Up in the clouds on a cosy resort).

Very likely, I think. But then the next question is how "old" Vargèse is. We know that Hergé also used the town in the colour version of Valley of Cobras (which is where Vargèse is established as a place in the French Alps close to Mont Blanc) from the mid-50s but was it already in the first, unfinished version Jo and Zette au pays du Maharadjah from 1939?

Mikael Uhlin wrote: but was it already in the first, unfinished version Jo and Zette au pays du Maharadjah from 1939?

It was - evident in a page from the French Coeurs Vaillants, 9 April 1939.

The spelling in the introductory text is different here - “Vargèze” - but it mentions it being in the Haute Savoie region.