Article Detail - World of Warcraft News

Plural form of Shaman: Shamans or Shamen?

Posted Jun 02, 2007 at 12:35PM by Enrico S. Listed in: Off Topic Tags: Blizzard, Anglo-Saxon, Nethaera

What is the plural form of Shaman? This is a question that has bothered me and my fellow World of Warcraft gamers. It got to the point where we would have awkward conversations regarding this as we conducted various raids or played the TCG.

While most people would find this conversation inane, it is necessary for WoW players to know this so you can refer to your enemies (or allies) without embarrassing yourself. So is it Shamans or Shamen? Blizzard poster/ Forum Moderator Nethaera was kind enough to share some knowledge on this in the forums. "Both Shaman and Shamans are deemed acceptable as the plural though we use Shaman."

It was also pointed out by Blogger Max that Shaman is not an Anglo-Saxon word. After some research, its etymological background shows that it might have originated from either a Turkic-Mongol or Turkic-Tungus word. That said, next time you go on a raid with your buddies, you can now say "Shamans attack!" without looking dumb.

[Via WoW Forums] Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Digg It!

Bookmark / Find this article on:

4 Comments

Sort by:

last added

highest rated

by meh (Unregistered) - 2007-06-02

» wtf?

This was such an unnecessary post. Why did you make it QJ?

Really, really stupid.

by Advertising -

by well duh (Unregistered) - 2007-06-02

» you idiots

everyone knows the plural for SHAMAN is SHAMMIES.

by Webster (Unregistered) - 2007-06-03

» ha ha

A little fight even broke out over this, but the word Shaman is, of course, derived from the word Man, and the plural form of Man is Men, so of course it is Shamen, but that little comment of Shammies made me laugh...

by JasmoVT (Unregistered) - 2007-06-12

» Shamans

Actually the root of Shaman is Sramana which is sanskrit and the correct plural form is Shamans.

The QJ.net Network
Site	Feed
QJ.NET	RSS
Nintendo DS	RSS
PlayStation 3	RSS
PSP Updates	RSS
Wii	RSS
Xbox 360	RSS
MMORPG	RSS
Personal Computer Games	RSS
iPhone - iPod Touch	RSS
QJ.NET Forums	RSS