"Michael Schartau" m_schartau@hotmail.com said:
> Ther are not many words that have female "endings"in English. 
> The ones that comes to my mind is lion/lioness, priest/priestess
> and of course socerer/sorceress.
> Accordingly Duck Avengeress or Duck Avengess would be fine. 
> Technicaly the languages get new words all the time.

I don't disagree that you can tack on "-ess" to any noun and make is feminine,
and yes the American English language is evolving all the time.  However, the
word "Avengeress" *might* be fine from a purely technical standpoint, but it
fails on several other levels... the two most basic being: 1) It's a made-up word
that that doesn't need to be created when so many words are already available, 2)
It doesn't have the essential "feel" of a good word for the application it is
being specific to, namely Daisy's superhero monicker.   "Duck Avengeress" just
doesn't roll off the tongue or settle in the mind comfortably.  Plus its not very
clever.  As I recall David's earlier comments, and I'm totally inclined to agree
with that train of thought, Daisy is VERY INDEPENDENT as a superhero(ine) and
just tacking on the feminine for of "-ess" to Donald's monicker would probably be
very contrary to her character.  Yes, she is in the same vein as Duck Avenger,
but she's not just a female variant of him... she would want something that set
her apart, but something that, at the same time, would harken back to Duck
Avenger.  The comparison between "Batman" and "The Huntress" still works here
because there is a certain harkening back to Batman in The Huntress, but the
character, herself, is very independent, but both David and Gary gave extensive
reasons (even if I don't totally agree with them based on the specifics they
chose to focus on, nor in light of other publications in American Disney comics
of late) why they wouldn't want to use "Duck Huntress."  So, IMHO, "Duck
Avengeress" isn't fine because it doesn't work except to in the most simple,
basic, lazy and automatic way which is to take the easiest, least creative way,
of making "Duck Avenger" feminine.  There's no "life" in that aspect and Daisy
comes off as simply a Duck Avenger wannabe.  As much as I'd love to see Daisy in
her superhero form appear in the USA, I think the name Duck Avengeress is not a
good choice.

Thanks,

Rich 
xephyr@cwnet.com

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