On the "spine" of the bag, the bad Latin "title."
I am always disappointed when I have to do a Bad Latin post, but this time is especially tough for me because I really like Brooklyn brand Hayden-Harnett. They teamed up with Disney to produce a line of accessories inspired by the 70-year-old film Fantasia. Among these is the Veneficus Libri bag, a beautifully detailed design meant to look like a book. The name is an attempt at Latin, and is supposed to mean “magic book,” according to the description. This phrase is printed on the bag itself, as if the title on the binding.
When I first saw the bag, I wanted to give Hayden-Harnett the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that the phrase veneficus libri was an attested term meaning “book[s] of the sorcerer.” This would be fitting for a bag inspired by Fantasia with its “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence. A cursory Google search confirmed that the phrase veneficus libri appears a lot on the web. I figured that veneficus was a fourth declension noun and libri was plural because there were several “books” in the tome in question.
When I looked it up, though, this idea was shot down. Veneficus is a first/second declension adjective that can be used substantively to mean “sorcerer,” so it can only be nominative singular. Realizing that the Latin was therefore “sorcerer of the book,” I looked further into that Google search, and found that the term only appears on websites devoted to magic and social networking games and the like, and doesn’t appear in a book or scholar search.
The source of this term is most likely our old friend, the online translator. Put “magic book” into one, and you get veneficus libri. I’d like to reiterate what Dennis said in his recent post, Good Psych, Bad Latin: Those who would like to use Latin in their movie, jewelry, comic, or whatever, contact a Latinist– it only takes a moment longer to contact us than to input something into an online translator, but the payoff is not having something absurd printed on your commercial product.
Update:
A gracious and witty response from Hayden-Harnett.
http://twitter.com/#!/hayden_harnett/status/14453711849918465
Hi there,
I am writing a fantasy series and want to include some Latin.
‘En veneficus nos fides’ was what I thought would be the Latin for ‘In Magic we trust.’ However, having done some more research I am wondering if it should be, ‘En magus nos fides.’
Do you know which is correct?
I would appreciate any advice.
Thank you for your time.
Emma Pullar
Hi Emma,
Veneficus really means “poisoner” (literally “poison maker”), and would have been used of sorcerers as stereotypical wicked figures bent on destruction by underhanded means. Magus means a magical man, so a sorcerer.
What you want is “magica,” which is short for the phrase “ars magica,” the art of sorcerers. This is how Latin formulates the names for all sorts of skills. Poetry is “ars poetica” (the poetic art) medicine is “ars medica” (the doctor’s art), and grammar is “ars grammatica” (grammatical art). The noun “ars” is feminine in gender, and it’s often omitted, leaving just the feminine adjective instead. So poetry can be “poetica” and grammr “grammatica.” In the same way, we can say “magica,” understanding that we mean “ars magica.”
“Nos” means “us” or “we” but “fides” is the noun “faith, trust.” It isn’t a verb. “En” isn’t Latin for “in.”
There’s another idea within the phrase “we trust,” and that’s “we put our hope into.” Modeling your phrase on an established Latin motto, “in Deo speramus” (“in god we trust”), we arrive at this:
in magica speramus
Written in the told Roman way, all caps and with V for U, it would be inscribed like this:
IN MAGICA SPERAMVS
“In magica” is a prepositional phrase using the ablative case of “magica”, which differs in pronunciation in that final A is elongated (it should take about twice as long to pronounce the A than it would if “magica” were the subject of a sentence).
Thank you for answering, Dennis, before I had a chance. Emma, I hope Dennis’s advice was helpful, and best of luck on your fantasy series! Feel free to let us know if you have other questions.
Oh wow, thank you so much Dennis.
This is so helpful. I am grateful you took the time to explain it in such detail. I shall use those words and be mindful of using Latin in the future when I don’t fully understand the language. I think it is important to be authentic even when writing fiction.
I have an agent now so things are moving forward. Thank you Sarah, I’ll definitely keep this page as a favourite.
Best,
Emma Pullar