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Mohawk language

Mohawk (Kanienʼkéha, "[language] of the Flint Place") is an Iroquoian language currently spoken by around 3,500 people of the Mohawk nation, located primarily in current or former Haudenosaunee territories, predominately Canada (southern Ontario and Quebec), and to a lesser extent in the United States (western and northern New York). The word "Mohawk" is an exonym. In the Mohawk language, the people say that they are from Kanien:ke ('Mohawk Country' or "Flint Stone Place") and that they are Kanienʼkehá꞉ka "People of the Flint Stone Place" or "People of the Flint Nation".

The Mohawks were extremely wealthy traders, as other nations in their confederacy needed their flint for tool-making. Their Algonquian-speaking neighbors (and competitors), the People of Muh-heck Heek Ing ("food-area place"), a people called by the Dutch "Mohicans" or "Mahicans", called the People of Ka-nee-en Ka "Maw Unk Lin" or Bear People. The Dutch heard and wrote that as "Mohawks" and so the People of Kan-ee-en Ka are often referred to as Mohawks. The Dutch also referred to the Mohawk as Egils or Maquas. The French adapted those terms as Aigniers or Maquis, or called them by the generic Iroquois.

History
The Mohawks were the largest and most powerful of the original Five Nations, controlling a vast area of land on the eastern frontier of the Iroquois Confederacy. The North Country and Adirondack region of present-day Upstate New York would have constituted the greater part of the Mohawk-speaking area lasting until the end of the 18th century.

Current status
The Mohawk language is currently classified as threatened, and the number of native speakers has continually declined over the past several years.

Mohawk has the largest number of speakers among the Northern Iroquoian languages, and today it is the only one with more than a thousand remaining speakers. At Akwesasne, residents have founded a language immersion school (pre-K to grade 8) in Kanienʼkéha to revive the language. With their children learning it, parents and other family members are taking language classes, too.

A Mohawk language immersion school was established. Mohawk parents, concerned with the lack of culture-based education in public and parochial schools, founded the Akwesasne Freedom School in 1979. Six years later, the school implemented a Mohawk language immersion curriculum based on a traditional cycle of fifteen seasonal ceremonies, and on the Mohawk Thanksgiving Address, or Ohén꞉ton Karihwatékwen, "The words before all else." Every morning, teachers and students gather in the hallway to recite the Thanksgiving Address in Mohawk.

An adult immersion program was also created in 1985 to address the issue of intergenerational fluency decline of the Mohawk language.

Kanatsiohareke (Gah-nah-jo-ha-lay-gay), meaning "Place of the clean pot", is a small Mohawk community on the north bank of the Mohawk River, west of Fonda, New York.[1] Kanatsiohareke was created to be a "Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Reverse", teaching Mohawk language and culture.[2] Located at the ancient homeland of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk), it was re-established in September 1993 under the leadership of Thomas R. Porter (Sakokwenionkwas-"The One Who Wins").[3] The community must raise their own revenue and frequently hold cultural presentations, workshops, and academic events, including an annual Strawberry Festival.[4] A craft shop on site features genuine handmade Native crafts from all over North America.

The primary mission of the community is to try to preserve traditional values, culture, language and lifestyles in the guidance of the Kaienerekowa (Great Law of Peace).[5] Kanatsiohareke, Inc. is a non-profit organization under IRS code 501c3.

In 2006, over 600 people were reported to speak the language in Canada, many of them elderly.

Kahnawake is located at a metropolitan location, near central Montreal, Quebec, Canada. As Kahnawake is located near Montreal, many individuals speak both English and French, and this has contributed to a decline in the use of Mohawk language over the past century. The Mohawk Survival School, the first immersion program was established in 1979. The school's mission was to revitalize Mohawk language. To examine how successful the program had been, questionnaire was given to the Kahnawake residents following the first year. The results indicated that teaching towards younger generation have been successful and showed an increase in the ability to speak the language in private settings, as well as an increase in the mixing of Mohawk in English conversations were found.

Current number of speakers
In 2011, there were approximately 3,500 speakers of Mohawk, primarily in Quebec, Ontario and western New York. Immersion (monolingual) classes for young children at Akwesasne and other reserves are helping to train new first-language speakers. The importance of immersion classes among parents grew after the passage of Bill 101, and in 1979 the Mohawk Survival School was established to facilitate language training at the high school level. Kahnawake and Kanatsiohareke offer immersion classes for adults. In the 2016 Canadian census, 875 people said Mohawk was their only mother tongue.

Usage in popular culture
Mohawk dialogue features prominently in Ubisoft Montreal's 2012 action-adventure open world video game Assassin's Creed III, through the game's main character, the half-Mohawk, half-Welsh Ratonhnhaké꞉ton, also called Connor, and members of his native Kanièn꞉ke village around the times of the American Revolution. Ratonhnhaké꞉ton was voiced and modelled by Crow actor Noah Bulaagawish Watts. Hiawatha, the leader of the Iroquoian civilization in Sid Meier's Civilization V, voiced by Kanentokon Hemlock, speaks modern Mohawk.

The stories of Mohawk language learners are also chronicled in 'Raising The Words', a short documentary film released in 2016 that explores personal experiences with Mohawk language revitalization in Tyendinaga, a Mohawk community roughly 200 kilometres east of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The film was set to be shown at the 4th annual Ethnografilm festival in Paris, France.

The Mohawk language is used in the 2017 film Mohawk, the 1991 film Black Robe, and the 2020 television series Barkskins.

The language was used throughout in the Marvel Studios animated series What If...?, in the season 2 episode "What If... Kahhori Reshaped the World?", where they introduce an original Mohawk superhero named Kahhori.

Dialects
Mohawk has three major dialects: Western (Ohswé:ken and Kenhté:ke), Central (Ahkwesáhsne), and Eastern (Kahnawà꞉ke and Kanehsatà꞉ke); the differences between them are largely phonological. These are related to the major Mohawk territories since the eighteenth century. The pronunciation of and several consonant clusters may differ in the dialects.

Phonology
The phoneme inventory of Mohawk is as follows (using the International Phonetic Alphabet).

Consonants
An interesting feature of Mohawk (and Iroquoian) phonology is that there are no labials (m, p, b, f, v), except in a few adoptions from French and English, where and  appear (e.g., mátsis "matches" and aplám "Abraham"); these sounds are late additions to Mohawk phonology and were introduced after widespread European contact.

Consonant clusters
The Central (Ahkwesáhsne) dialect has the following consonant clusters. All clusters can occur word-medially; those on a tinted background can also occur word-initially.

and are pronounced as consonant clusters, not single sounds like in English thing and  she.

Consonant voicing
The consonants and the clusters  are pronounced voiced before any voiced sound (i.e. a vowel or ). They are voiceless at the end of a word or before a voiceless sound. is voiced word initially and between vowels.

 * kà꞉sere "car"
 * thí꞉ken "that"
 * shé꞉kon "still"

Vowels
Mohawk has oral and nasalized vowels; four vowel qualities occur in oral phonemes, and two only occur as nasalized vowels. Vowels can be long or short.

Stress, length, and tone
Mohawk words have both stress and tone, and it can be classified as a restricted tone system (aka pitch-accent system). Stressed vowels carry one of four tonal configurations, two of which are contour tones: high, low, rising and falling tones. Contour tones only occur in syllables with long vowels.

Stress, vowel length and tone are connected in Mohawk phonology.
 * High tone usually appears in closed syllables containing a short vowel, or before . It is written with an acute accent: káhi fruit, oháha  road.
 * Rising tone generally occurs in open syllables. It is written with a combination acute accent and colon: kaná꞉ta town, rón꞉kwe man. Notice that when it is one of the nasal vowels which is long, the colon appears after the $⟨n⟩$.
 * Long-falling tone is the result of the word stress falling on a vowel which comes before a or  + a consonant (there may be, of course, exceptions to this and other rules). The underlying  or  reappears when stress is placed elsewhere. It is written with a grave accent and colon: onekwèn꞉ta  stomach.

In the standard spelling, a colon is placed after a vowel to lengthen it. There are 4 tones: mid, high, mid-low falling and mid-high rising, the latter two appear on long vowels (marked as V:).

Orthography
Mohawk orthography uses the following letters: along with  and. The orthography was standardized in 1993. The standard allows for some variation of how the language is represented, and the clusters, , and are written as pronounced in each community. The orthography matches the phonological analysis as above except: The low-macron accent is not a part of standard orthography and is not used in the Central or Eastern dialects. In standard orthography, is written before  to create the  or : kehnhó꞉tons 'I am closing it'.
 * The glottal stop is written with an apostrophe, but is often omitted at the end of words, especially in Eastern dialect where it is typically not pronounced.
 * Written in the Eastern dialect (reflecting pronunciation), as in tsá꞉ta  "seven".
 * Written in the Central dialect, as in tsiá꞉ta  "seven".
 * Written in the Western dialect, as in tsyá꞉ta  "seven".
 * Typically written with in the Central and Eastern dialects, as in ià꞉iaʼk [ˈjâːjaʔk]}} "six".
 * Typically written with a in the Western dialect, as in yà꞉yaʼk  "six".
 * The nasalized vowel is written as, as in énska  "one".
 * The nasalized vowel is written, as in shaʼté꞉kon  "eight".
 * In cases where the vowel or  is followed by an  in the same syllable, the  is written with an under-macron diacritic: keṉhó꞉tons "I am closing a door". If the  did not have the diacritic, the sequence  would be pronounced . Another convention is to write the nasal vowel with an ogonek, e.g..
 * The nasalized vowel is written, as in shaʼté꞉kon  "eight".
 * In cases where the vowel or  is followed by an  in the same syllable, the  is written with an under-macron diacritic: keṉhó꞉tons "I am closing a door". If the  did not have the diacritic, the sequence  would be pronounced . Another convention is to write the nasal vowel with an ogonek, e.g..

Grammar

Mohawk words tend to be longer on average than words in English, primarily because they consist of a large number of morphemes.

Mohawk expresses a number of distinctions on its pronominal elements: person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, dual, plural), gender (masculine, feminine/indefinite, feminine/neuter) and inclusivity/exclusivity on the first person dual and plural. Pronominal information is encoded in prefixes on the verbs; separate pronoun words are used for emphasis. There are three main paradigms of pronominal prefixes: subjective (with dynamic verbs), objective (with stative verbs), and transitive.

There are three core components to the Mohawk proposition: the noun, the predicate, and the particle.

Mohawk words can be composed of many morphemes. What is expressed in English in many words can often be expressed by just one Mohawk word, a phenomenon known as polysynthesis.

Nouns
Nouns are given the following form in Mohawk:

Noun prefixes give information relating to gender, animacy, number and person, and identify the word as a noun.

For example:

1) oʼnenste  "corn"

2) oienʼkwa "tobacco"

Here, the prefix o- is generally found on nouns found in natural environments. Another prefix exists which marks objects that are made by humans.

3) kanhoha    "door"

4) kaʼkhare "slip, skirt"

Here, the prefix ka- is generally found on human-made things. Phonological variation amongst the Mohawk dialects also gives rise to the prefix ga-.

Noun roots are similar to nouns in English in that the noun root in Mohawk and the noun in English have similar meanings.

(Caughnawaha)

5) –eri- "heart"

6) –hi- "river"

7) –itshat- "cloud"

These noun roots are bare. There is no information other than the noun root itself. Morphemes cannot occur individually. That is, to be well-formed and grammatical, -eri- needs pronominal prefixes, or the root can be incorporated into a predicate phrase.

Nominal suffixes are not necessary for a well-formed noun phrase. The suffixes give information relating to location and attributes. For example:

Locative Suffix:

8) i. onuʼtaʼ             "hill"

ii. onutaʼke "on the hill"

9) i. onekwvhsaʼ      "blood"

ii. onekwvhsaʼke  "in the blood"

Here the suffix < -ke > denotes location.

Attributive Suffix:

10) kvjyʼ                 "fish"

11) kvjaʼkoʼwa      "sturgeon" or "big fish"

Here, the suffix -koʼwa denotes an augmentative suffix, which increases the attribute of the noun in question.

Verbs
Mohawk verbs are one of the more complex parts of the language, composed of many morphemes that describe grammatical relations. The verb takes the following structure: Mohawk grammar allows for whole prepositions to be expressed by one word, which we classify as a verb. The other core elements (subjects, objects, etc.) can be incorporated into the verb. Well-formed verb phrases contain at the bare minimum a verb root and a pronominal prefix. The rest of the elements are not necessary.

Tense, aspect and modality are expressed via suffixes on the verb phrase as well.

Some examples:

k- atorat- s

1SG- hunt HAB

"I hunt"

This is composed of three parts; the pronominal prefix, the verb root and a suffix which marks aspect. Mohawk seems to prefer aspect markers to tense to express grammaticalisation in time.

n- yaʼ- t-  v-   s-    ha-   yahyaʼk- eʼ

PTV TRLOC DU- FUT- ITER- noun- verb-  {root suffix}

"…where he will cross over again from here to there…"

This example shows multiple prefixes that can be affixed to the verb root, but certain affixes are forbidden from coexisting together. For example, the aorist and the future tense affix will not be found on the same well-formed sentence.

v- se- natahr- aʼ

FUT NOM-PRO VB-ROOT {momentary ASP suffix}

"You will make a visit"

a- se-     natahr-  aʼ

COND NOM-PRO VB-ROOT {momentary suffix}

"You should make a visit"

sa-   natahr- u-   hneʼ

ACC-PRO VB-ROOT STAT {momentary suffix}

"You were visiting"

Here, different prefixes and suffixes are used that mark tense, aspect and modality.

Most grammatical relations in Mohawk are expressed through various different affixes onto a verb. Subjects, objects, and relationships between subjects and objects are given their own affixes. In Mohawk, each transitive relationship between subjects and objects are given their own prefix. For example:

ku- noruhkwa

I-you love

"I love you"

ri- noruhkwa

I-him love

"I love him"

ke- noruhkwa

I-it/her love

"I love it/her"

Each of these affixes are denoting a transitive relationship between two things. There are more affixes for denoting transitive relationships like "we-they", they-us (inclusive/exclusive), etc.

Noun incorporation
One of the features of Mohawk called noun incorporation allows a verb to absorb a noun into it. When incorporation happens, an epenthetic a can appear between the noun root and the verb root. For example:

Owiraʼa wahrakeʼ ne oʼwahru

Baby    ate        the  meat

With noun incorporation:

Owiraʼa wahaʼwahrakeʼ

Baby   meat-ate

waʼe -ks -ohareʼ

{} dish wash

"She dish-washed"

waʼke -nakt -a -hninuʼ

{} bed increment buy

"I bed-bought"

waha -naʼtar -a -kwetareʼ

{} bread increment -cut

"He bread-cut"

Most of these examples take the epenthetic vowel a; it can be omitted if the incorporated noun does not give rise a complex consonant cluster in the middle of the word.

Education
Six Nations Polytechnic in Ohsweken, Ontario, offers Ogwehoweh language diploma and degree programs in Mohawk or Cayuga.

Since September 2017, the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Offers a credit course in Mohawk; the classes are given at Renison University College in collaboration with the Waterloo Aboriginal Education Centre, St. Paul's University College.

Resources are available for self-study of Mohawk by a person with no or limited access to native speakers of Mohawk. Here is a collection of some resources currently [as of when?] available:

 * Talk Mohawk, an iPhone app and Android app, includes words, phrases, and the Thanksgiving Address from Monica Peters
 * Rosetta Stone levels 1 and 2 (CD-ROM) edited by Frank and Carolee Jacobs and produced by the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka Onkwawén꞉na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Center at Kahnawà꞉ke (secondary/high school level)
 * A collection of 33 vocabulary lessons provided by the Mohawk Language Custodian Association. Lesson Collection at KanehsatakeVoices.com
 * David Kanatawakhon Maracle, Kanyenʼkeha Tewatati (Let's Speak Mohawk), ISBN 0-88432-723-X (book and 3 companion tapes are available from Audio Forum) (high school/college level)
 * Nancy Bonvillain, A Grammar of Akwesasne Mohawk (professional level)
 * Nancy Bonvillain and Beatrice Francis, Mohawk–English, English–Mohawk Dictionary, 1971, University of the State of New York in Albany (word lists, by category)
 * Chris W. Harvey, Sathahitáhkhe' Kanienʼkéha (Introductory Level Mohawk Language Textbook, Eastern Dialect), ISBN 0-9683814-2-1 (high school/college level)
 * Josephine S. Horne, Kanienʼkéha Iakorihonnién꞉nis (book and 5 companion CDs are available from Kahnawà꞉ke Cultural Center) (secondary/high school level)
 * Nora Deering & Helga Harries Delisle, Mohawk: A Teaching Grammar (book and 6 companion tapes are available from Kahnawà꞉ke Cultural Center) (high school/college level)
 * On October 8, 2013 Daryl Kramp, Member of Parliament for Prince Edward-Hastings announced, on behalf of Shelly Glover, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, support for the Tsi Kionhnheht Ne Onkwawenna Language Circle (TKNOLC) to develop Mohawk language-learning tools.
 * Tom Porter and Dorothy Lazore, Nobody Can Do It Better Than Wariso꞉se: Language Guide and Dictionary
 * FirstVoices, a free online learning tool, includes videos, text entries, pictures, games, an iPhone app and Android app to facilitate language learning, teaching and revitalization.
 * Speak Mohawk, an app that can be downloaded from iTunes or Google Play, facilitates language by teaching words and phrases

Keyboards
There are software packages available for both the Microsoft Windows and Mac operating systems to enable typing of the Mohawk language electronically. Both packages are available through FirstVoices, a web-based project to support Aboriginal peoples' teaching and archiving of language and culture.

title: Mohawk language


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Lady of the Lake

The Lady of the Lake (Dame du Lac, Demoiselle du Lac, Arglwyddes y Llyn, Arloedhes an Lynn, Itron al Lenn, Dama del Lago) is a name or a title used by several either mermaid or mermaid-like but human enchantresses in the Matter of Britain, the body of medieval literature and mythology associated with the legend of King Arthur. She plays several important roles in many stories, including providing Arthur with the sword Excalibur, eliminating Merlin, raising Lancelot after the death of his father, and helping to take the dying Arthur to Avalon. Different sorceresses known as the Lady of the Lake appear concurrently as separate characters in some versions of the legend since at least the Post-Vulgate Cycle and consequently the seminal Le Morte d'Arthur, with the latter describing them as a hierarchical group, while some texts also give this title to either Morgan or her sister.

Names and origins

Today, the Lady of the Lake is best known as the character called either Nimue, or several scribal variants of Ninianne and Viviane. French and foreign medieval authors and copyists since the early 13th century produced various forms of the latter two, including: Nymenche (in addition to Ninianne / Ninienne) in the Vulgate Lancelot; Nim[i]ane and Ui[n/ui]ane (in addition to Viviane) in the Vulgate Merlin (Niniane in the version Livre d'Artus); Nin[i]eve / Nivene / Niviène / Nivienne and Vivienne in the Post-Vulgate Merlin (Niviana in the Spanish Baladro del Sage Merlin); and Nimiane / Niniame and Vivian / Vivien in Arthour and Merlin and Henry Lovelich's Merlin. Further variations of these include alternate spellings with the letter i written as y, such as in the cases of Nymanne (Nimanne as in Michel le Noir's Merlin) and Nynyane (Niniane). According to Lucy Paton, the most primitive French form of this name might have been Niniane.

The much later form Nimue, in which the letter e can be written as ë or é, was invented and popularized by Thomas Malory through his 15th-century English Le Morte d'Arthur and itself has several variations: her name appears as Nymue, Nyneue, Nyneve and Nynyue in William Caxton's print edition, but it had been rather Nynyve (used predominantly ) and Nenyve in Malory's original Winchester Manuscript. Even though 'Nymue' (with the m) appears only in the Caxton text, the modernized and standardized 'Nimue' is now the most common form of the name of Malory's character, as Caxton's edition was the only version of Le Morte d'Arthur published until 1947. Nimue is also sometimes rendered by modern authors and artists as either Nimüe and Nimuë, the forms introduced in the 19th century (in Tennyson's poem and a painting by Burne-Jones, respectively), or Nimueh.

Arthurian scholar A. O. H. Jarman, following suggestions first made in the 19th century, proposed that the name Viviane used in French Arthurian romances, was ultimately derived from (and a corruption of) the Welsh word chwyfleian (also spelled hwimleian and chwibleian in medieval Welsh sources), meaning "a wanderer of pallid countenance", which was originally applied as an epithet to the famous prototype of Merlin, a prophetic wild man figure Myrddin Wyllt in medieval Welsh poetry. Due to the relative obscurity of the word, it was misunderstood as "fair wanton maiden" and taken to be the name of Myrddin's female captor. Others have linked the name Nymenche with the Irish mythology's figure Niamh (an otherworldly woman from the legend of Tír na nÓg), and the name Niniane with the Welsh mythology's figure Rhiannon (another otherworldly woman of a Celtic myth), or, as a feminine form of the masculine name Ninian, with the likes of the 5th-century (male) saint Ninian and the river Ninian.

Further theories connect her to the Welsh lake fairies known as the Gwragedd Annwn (including a Lady of the Lake unrelated to the legend of Arthur ), the Celtic water goddess Covianna (worshipped in the Romano-British times as Coventina), and the Irish goddess of the underworld Bé Finn (Bébinn, mother of the hero Fráech). It has been also noted how the North Caucasian goddess Satana (Satanaya) from the Nart sagas is both associated with water and helps the Scythian hero Batraz gain his magic sword. Possible literary prototypes include two characters from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini: Merlin's one-time wife Guendoloena and Merlin's half-sister Ganieda. Another possibility involves Diana, the Roman goddess of hunt and nature, a direct or spiritual descent from whom is actually explicitly attributed to Viviane within some French prose narratives. It has also been speculated that the name Viviane may be a derivative form of Diana (French Diane).

The mythical Greek sea nymph Thetis, mother of the hero Achilles, similarly provides her son with magical weapons. Like the Lady of the Lake, Thetis is a water spirit who raises the greatest warrior of her time. Thetis' husband is named Peleus, while in some tales the Lady of the Lake has the knight Pelleas as her lover; Thetis also uses magic to make her son invulnerable, similar to how Lancelot receives a ring that protects him from evil magic. The Greek myth may therefore have inspired or influenced the Arthurian legend, especially since The Iliad involving Thetis was well known across the former Roman Empire and among the medieval writers dealing with Celtic myths and lore. The Roman fort Aballava, known to the post-Roman Britons as Avalana and today seen by some as the location of the historical Avalon, had been also curiously dedicated the Roman water goddess Dea Latis. Laurence Gardner interpreted the supposed (according to medieval authors) Biblical origins of Lancelot's bloodline by noting the belief about Jesus' purported wife Mary Magdalene's later life in Gaul (today's France) and her death at Aquae Sextiae; he identified her descendant as the 6th-century Comtess of Avallon named Viviane del Acqs ("of the water"), whose three daughters (associated with the mothers of Lancelot, of Arthur, and of Gawain) would thus become known as the 'Ladies of the Lake'.

Chrétien de Troyes's French Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, the first known story featuring Lancelot as a prominent character, was also the first to mention his upbringing by a fairy in a lake. If it is accepted that the Franco-German Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven contains elements of a more primitive version of this tale than Chrétien's, the infant Lancelot was spirited away to a lake by a water fairy (merfeine in Old High German) known as the Lady of the Sea and then raised in her Land of Maidens (Meide lant ). The fairy queen character and her paradise island in Lanzelet are reminiscent of Morgen (Morgan) of the Island of Avallon in Geoffrey's work. Furthermore, the fairy from Lanzelet has a son whose name Mabuz is an Anglo-Norman form of Mabon, son of Morgan's early Welsh counterpart Modron. According to Roger Sherman Loomis, "it seems almost certain" that Morgan and the Lady of the Lake have originally began as one character in the legend. In a related hypothesis, the early Myrddyn tradition could have merged with the fairy lover motif popular in medieval stories, and such role would later split into Merlin's two fairy mistresses, one of them 'good' and the other 'bad'.

Lancelot's guardian

Following her early, unnamed appearances in the 12th-century poems of Chrétien and Ulrich, the Lady of the Lake began being featured by this title in the French chivalric romance prose by the 13th century. As a fairy godmother-type foster mother of the hero Lancelot, she inherits the role of an unnamed aquatic fairy queen, her prototype in the earlier texts. However, while Ulrich's Lanzelet uses the changeling part of the fairy abduction lore for the background of Lancelot as having been swapped with her son Mabuz, the figure of Lancelot's supernatural foster mother has no offspring of her own in neither Chrétien's Lancelot nor any of the later texts.

In the Lancelot-Grail (Vulgate) prose cycle, the Lady resides in an otherworldly enchanted realm, the entry to which is disguised as an illusion of a lake (the Post-Vulgate explains it as Merlin's work ). There, she raises Lancelot from his infancy having stolen him from his mother following the death of his father, King Ban. She teaches Lancelot arts and writing, infusing him with wisdom and courage, and overseeing his training to become an unsurpassed warrior. She also rears his orphaned cousins Lionel and Bors after having her sorcerous damsel Seraide (also written Saraïde, later called Celise) rescue them from King Claudas. All this takes her only a few years in the human world. Afterwards, she sends off the adolescent Lancelot to King Arthur's court as the nameless White Knight, due to her own affinity with the color white.

Through much of the Prose Lancelot Propre, the Lady keeps aiding Lancelot in various ways during his early adventures to become a famed knight and discover his true identity, usually acting through her maidens serving as her agents and messengers. She gives him her magical gifts, including a magic ring of protection against enchantments in a manner similar in that to his fairy protectoress in Chrétien's poem (the same of another of her magic rings also grants Lancelot's lover Queen Guinevere immunity from Morgan's power in the Italian Prophéties de Merlin). Later on, she also works to actively encourage Lancelot and Guinevere's relationship and its consummation. That includes sending Guinevere a symbolically illustrated magic shield, the crack in which closes up after the queen finally spends her first night with Lancelot. She furthermore personally arrives to restore Lancelot to sanity during some of his recurring periods of madness, on one occasion using the above-mentioned shield to heal his mind.

Merlin's beloved and captor
The Vulgate Cycle is first to tell of either a different or the same Lady of the Lake in the Prose Merlin-derived section. It takes place before its main Vulgate Lancelot section but was written later, linking her with the disappearance of Merlin from the romance tradition of Arthurian legend. She is given the name Viviane (or similar) and a human origin, although she is still being called a fairy. In the Vulgate Merlin, Viviane refuses to give Merlin (who at this time is already old but appears to her in the guise of a handsome young man) her love until he has taught her all his secrets, after which she uses her power to seal him by making him sleep forever. The Post-Vulgate revision changes it into Viviane causing Merlin's death out of her hatred and fear of him. Though Merlin knows beforehand that this will happen due to his power of foresight, he is unable to counteract her because of the 'truth' this ability of foresight holds. He decides to do nothing for his situation other than to continue to teach her his secrets until she takes the opportunity to get rid of him.

Consequently, she entraps and entombs her unresisting mentor within a tree, in a hole underneath a large stone, or inside a cave, depending on the version of this story as it is told in the different texts. In the Prophéties de Merlin, for instance, Viviane is especially cruel in the way she disposes of Merlin and then takes Tristan's brother Meliadus the Younger as her actual lover. There she is proud of how Merlin had never taken her virginity, unlike what happened with his other female students such as Morgan. The Prose Lancelot explains this by a spell she put "on her groin which, as long as it lasted, prevented anyone from deflowering her and having relations with her." The Lancelot too has Viviane leave Merlin for another lover, in this case the evil king Brandin of the Isles, whom she teaches some magic that he then applies to his terrible castle Dolorous Gard; in the Vulgate Merlin, an incognito Viviane abortively turns King Brandegorre's son Evadeam into the deformed Dwarf Knight for refusing her love. Conversely, the Livre d'Artus, a late variant of the Prose Lancelot, shows a completely peaceful scene taking place under a blooming hawthorn tree where Merlin is lovingly put to sleep by Viviane, as it is required by his destined fate that she has learned of. He then wakes up inside an impossibly high and indestructible tower, invisible from the outside, where she will come to meet him there almost every day or night (a motif reminiscent of Ganieda's visits of Merlin's house in an earlier version of his life as described by Geoffrey in Vita Merlini ). In any case, as a result of their usually final encounter Merlin almost always either dies or is never seen again by anyone else. Only in the recently found, alternative Bristol Merlin fragment, she resists his seduction with the help of a magic ring during the week they spend together; this particular text ends with him reuniting with Arthur.

According to her backstory in the chronologically later (but happening earlier plotwise) Vulgate Merlin, Viviane was a daughter of the knight Dionas (Dyonas) and a niece of the Duke of Burgundy. She was born in Dionas' domain that included the fairy forests of Briosque (Brocéliande) and Darnantes, and it was an enchantment of her fairy godmother, Diana the Huntress Goddess, that caused Viviane to be so alluring to Merlin when she first met him there as a young teenager. The Vulgate Lancelot informs the reader that, back "in the time of Virgil", Diana had been a Queen of Sicily that was considered a goddess by her subjects. The Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin describes how Viviane was born and lived in a magnificent castle at the foot of a mountain in Brittany as a daughter of the King of Northumbria. She is initially known as the beautiful 12-year-old Damsel Huntress (Damoiselle Cacheresse) in her introductory episode, in which she serves the role of a damsel in distress in the adventure of the three knights separately sent by Merlin to rescue her from kidnapping; the quest is soon completed by King Pellinore who tracks down and kills her abductor. The Post-Vulgate rewrite also describes how Diana had killed her partner Faunus to be with a man named Felix, but then she was herself killed by her lover at that lake, which came to be called the Lake of Diana (Lac Diane). This is presumably the place where Lancelot of the Lake (du Lac) is later raised, at first not knowing his real parentage, by Viviane. Nevertheless, in the French romances only the narration of the Vulgate Lancelot actually makes it clear that its Lady of the Lake and Viviane are in fact the one and same character. There, she also uses other names, including Elaine.

Giver of Excalibur

Another, unnamed Lady of the Lake appears in the Post-Vulgate tradition to bestow the magic sword Excalibur from Avalon to Arthur in a now iconic scene. She is presented as a mysterious early benefactor of the young King Arthur, who is directed and led to her by Merlin. Appearing in her lake, she grants him Excalibur and its special scabbard after his original (also unnamed) sword breaks in the duel against King Pellinore. She is a mysterious character who is evidently neither Morgan nor the Damsel Huntress, but may possibly have a connection to the Lady of Avalon (Dame d'Avalon) from the Propheties de Merlin. Later in the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin, this Lady of the Lake is suddenly attacked and beheaded at King Arthur's court by Sir Balin as a result of a kin feud between them (she blames Balin for the death of variably either her brother or her lover, while he blames her for the death of his mother, who had been burned at the stake) and a dispute over another enchanted sword from Avalon; her body later vanishes.

All this takes place during the time when Merlin is still at Arthur's side and prior to the introduction of the young Viviane in the same branch of the Post-Vulgate Cycle. Modern retellings, however, usually omit the episode of her apparent killing by Balin and at the same time often make her the same character as Viviane.

Le Morte d'Arthur
In Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a 15th-century compilation of Arthurian stories that is often considered definitive in much of the world today, the first Lady of the Lake remains unnamed besides this epithet. When the young King Arthur, accompanied by his mentor Merlin, comes to her lake, she holds the replacement Excalibur (the original sword-from-the-stone having been recently broken in battle) out of the water and offers it to Arthur if he promises to fulfill any request from her later, to which he agrees. Later, when the Lady comes to Camelot to receive her end of the bargain, she asks for the head of Sir Balin the Savage, whom she blames for her brother's death. However, Arthur refuses this request. Instead it is Balin, claiming that "by enchantment and sorcery she has been the destroyer of many good knights", who swiftly decapitates her with his own magic sword (a cursed blade that had been stolen by him from a mysterious lady from Avalon just a moment earlier) in front of Arthur and then sends off his squire with her severed head, much to the distress and shame of the king under whose protection she should have been there. Arthur gives the Lady a rich burial, has her slayer banished despite Merlin telling him Balin would become Arthur's greatest knight, and gives his permission for Sir Launcenor of Ireland (an Irish prince similarly named but entirely unrelated to Malory's "Launcelot" Lancelot) to go after Balin to avenge this disgrace by killing him.

The second Lady of the Lake is sometimes referred to by her title and sometimes referred to by name, today best known as Nimue (rendered Nynyve in Malory's original Winchester Manuscript of Le Morte). Malory does not use Nimue's name for the Lady of the Lake associated with Lancelot, who remains unnamed as well, described as only "one of the ladies of the lake", and she may thus be considered a third one. It is also possible that Malory had only access to the Suite du Merlin part of the Post-Vulgate Cycle as a relevant source.

Nimue, whom Malory describes as the "chief Lady of the Lake", plays a pivotal role in the Arthurian court throughout his story. The first time the character named Nimue appears is at the wedding of Arthur and Guinevere, as the young huntress rescued by Pellinore. She then proceeds to perform some of the same actions as the Lady of the Lake of his sources but is different in some ways. For instance, in the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin, Malory's source for the earlier parts of Le Morte d'Arthur, the Lady of the Lake traps Merlin in a tomb, which results in his death. She does this out of cruelty and a hatred of Merlin. In Le Morte d'Arthur, on the other hand, Nimue is still the one to trap Merlin, but Malory gives her a sympathetic reason: Merlin falls in love with her and will not leave her alone; Malory gives no indication that Nimue loves him back. Eventually, since she cannot free herself of him otherwise, she decides to trap him under rock and makes sure he cannot escape. She is tired of his sexual advances, and afraid of his power as "a devil's son", so she does not have much of a choice but to ultimately get rid of him.

After enchanting Merlin, Malory's Nimue replaces him as Arthur's magician aide and trusted adviser. When Arthur himself is in need in Malory's text, some incarnation of the Lady of the Lake, or her magic, or her agent, reaches out to help him. For instance, she saves Arthur from a magical attempt on his life made by his sister Morgan le Fay and from the death at the hands of Morgan's lover Accolon as in the Post-Vulgate, and together with Tristan frees Arthur from the lustful sorceress Annowre in a motif taken from the Prose Tristan. In Malory's version, Brandin of the Isles, renamed Brian (Bryan), is Nimue's evil cousin rather than her paramour. Nimue instead becomes the lover and eventually wife of Pelleas, a gentle young knight whom she then also puts under her protection so "that he was never slain by her days."

In an analysis by Kenneth Hodges, Nimue appears through the story as the chivalric code changes, hinting to the reader that something new will happen in order to help the author achieve the wanted interpretation of the Arthurian legend: each time the Lady reappears in Le Morte d'Arthur, it is at a pivotal moment of the episode, establishing the importance of her character within Arthurian literature, as she transcends any notoriety attached to her character by aiding Arthur and other knights to succeed in their endeavors, subtly helping sway the court in the right direction. According to Hodges, when Malory was looking at other texts to find inspiration, he chose the best aspects of all the other Lady of the Lake characters, making her pragmatic, compassionate, clever, and strong-willed. However, Nimue's character is often seen as still very ambiguous by other scholars. As summarized by Amy S. Kaufman,

In the end, a female hand emerging from a lake reclaims Excalibur in a miraculous scene when the sword is thrown into the water by Sir Bedivere just after Arthur's final battle. Malory's narration then counts Nimue among the magical queens who arrive in a black boat with Morgan (in the original account in the Vulgate Cycle's Mort Artu, the chief lady in the boat, seen holding hands with Morgan and calling for Arthur, is not recognised by Girflet who is the scene's witness instead of Malory's Bedivere ). Together, they bear the mortally wounded Arthur away to Avalon.

Other identities and relations

In some cases, it is uncertain whether Morgan and the Lady of the Lake are identical or separate characters. Richard Cavendish wrote: "It may be that the two sides of Morgan's nature separated into two different characters and that the Lady of the Lake is an aspect of Morgan herself. If so, the two fays represent the two aspects (...) fertile and destructive, motherly and murderous, loving and cruel."

According to Anne Berthelot, Morgan herself should be considered "the Lady of the Lake", as compared to the "upstart magician" Viviane in the French prose cycles. The 13th/14th-century English poem Of Arthour and of Merlin explicitly gives the role of Lady of the Lake to Morgan, explaining her association with the name "Nimiane" by just having her residing near a town called Nimiane (Ninniane). Morgan is also depicted as a fairy from a lake (with an underwater and invisible castle that can be accessed only with a guide water dragon) in the Italian tale Cantari del Falso Scudo, and as a former student of her fellow fairy Viviana in the French romance Claris et Laris.

The 15th-century Italian prose La Tavola Ritonda (The Round Table) makes the Lady a daughter of Uther Pendragon and thus a sister to both Morgan (Fata Morgana) and Arthur. Here she is a character mischievous to the extent that her own brother Arthur swears to burn her at the stake (as he also threatens to do with Morgan). This version of her briefly kidnaps Lancelot when he is an adult (along with Guinevere and Tristan and Isolde), a motif usually associated with Morgan; here it is also Morgan herself who sends the magical shield to Guinevere in an act recast as having malicious intent. The Lady is also described as Morgan's sister in some other Italian texts, such as the 13th-century poem Pulzella Gaia. Mike Ashley identified Viviane with one of Arthur's other sisters, the otherwise obscure Elaine.

In the 14th-century French prose romance Perceforest, a lengthy romance prequel to the Arthurian legend, the figures of the Lady of the Lake and of the enchantress Sebile have been merged to create the character of Sebile [the Lady] of the Lake (Sébil[l]e [la Dame] du Lac, named as such due to her residence of the Castle of the Lake later known as the Red Castle), who is depicted as an ancestor of Arthur himself from her union with King Alexander (Alexander the Great). The later Lady of the Lake who raises Lancelot is also mentioned in Perceforest, where both hers and Merlin's ancestry lines are derived from the ancient Fairy Morgane (Morg[u]ane la Faee / la Fée, living in a castle on the Isle of Zeeland). Here, their shared ancestors have been born from an illicit love between her beautiful daughter Morg[u]anette and Passelion, an amorous young human protégé of the spirit Zephir, hundreds years earlier when Morgane cursed them so that one of their descendants would one day kill the other.

The lake

A number of locations are traditionally associated with the Lady of the Lake's abode. Such places within Great Britain include the lakes Dozmary Pool and The Loe in Cornwall, the lakes Llyn Llydaw and Llyn Ogwen in Snowdonia, River Brue's area of Pomparles Bridge in Somerset, and the lake Loch Arthur in Scotland.

In France, Viviane is also connected with Brittany's Paimpont forest, often identified as the Arthurian enchanted forest of Brocéliande, where her lake (that is, the Lake of Diana) is said to be located at the castle Château de Comper. The oldest localization of the Lake is in the Lancelot en prose, written around 1230: the place where Lancelot is raised is described there as to the north of Trèves-Cunault, on the Loire, in the middle of the (now extinct) forest of Beaufort-en-Vallée (the "Bois en Val" of the book).

Modern culture
Walter Scott wrote an influential poem, The Lady of the Lake, in 1810, drawing on the romance of the legend, but with an entirely different story set around Loch Katrine in the Trossachs of Scotland. Scott's material furnished subject matter for La donna del lago, an 1819 opera by Gioachino Rossini. Franz Schubert set seven songs from Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake, including the three "Ellen songs" ("Ellens Gesang I", "Ellens Gesang II", and "Ellens Gesang III" ), although Schubert's music to Ellen's third song has become far more famous in its later adaptation, known as "Ave Maria".

William Wordsworth's 1831 poem, The Egyptian Maid or The Romance of the Water-Lily features the Lady of the Lake Nina, who, inverting Nimue's role in Malory, brings Merlin out of his cave and back to Arthur's court. Alfred, Lord Tennyson adapted several stories of the Lady of the Lake for his 1859–1885 poetic cycle Idylls of the King. He splits her into two characters: Viviane is a Circe-like deceitful villain and an associate of King Mark and Mordred who ensnares Merlin, while the Lady of the Lake is a guardian angel style benevolent figure who raises Lancelot and gives Arthur his sword.

The full French name of the University of Notre Dame, founded in 1842, is Notre Dame du Lac. This is translated as "Our Lady of the Lake", making reference to Mary, mother of Jesus as the Lady of the Lake in a fusion between Arthurian legend and French Catholicism.

Popular culture
20th- and 21st-century authors of Arthurian fiction adapt the legend of the Lady of the Lake in various ways, sometimes using two or more bearers of this title while others choose to emphasize a single character. Typically influenced by Thomas Malory's telling of the story, fantasy writers tend to give their version of Merlin a sorcerous female enemy, usually either Nimue, Morgan (often perceived as more plausible in this role due to her established enmity with Arthur in much of the legend), or Morgan's sister Morgause. Various characters of the Lady (or Ladies) of the Lake appear in many works, including poems, novels, films, television series, stage productions, comics, and games. Though her identity may change, her role as a significant figure in the lives of Arthur and Merlin usually remains consistent. Some examples of such works are listed below.

 * Nimue appears in T. H. White's book series The Once and Future King as a water nymph and Merlin's enchantress. True to the legend she traps Merlin in a cave, but White's Merlyn does not convey it as negative, and even refers to it as a holiday. They thus disappear together near the beginning of The Ill-Made Knight (1940), however Merlyn later returns in The Book of Merlyn.
 * Nineue ferch Afallach, "Tennyson's Vivien", is a fairy enchantress in John Cowper Powys's novel Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951). In Welsh mythology, Modron ("divine mother") was a daughter of Avallach; she was derived from the Gaulish goddess Matrona and may have been the prototype of Morgan. The novel ends with the protagonist Porius saving the wizard Myrddin (the story's Merlin figure ) from his entombment by Nineue on the summit of Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain.
 * The 1960 musical Camelot includes the character Nimue who has a song called "Follow Me" performed in Act I. In the play, Nimue, a beautiful water nymph, has come to draw Merlyn into her cave for an eternal sleep. He begs Nimue for answers, as he has forgotten if he has warned Arthur about Lancelot and Mordred, before his memories fade permanently and he is led away. She does not appear in the film adaptation, but "Follow Me" is echoed in the notably similar "Come with Me" sung by the Lady of the Lake for Galahad in the later musical Spamalot (2005).
 * The Lady of the Lake is satirized off-screen in the 1975 comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which late 20th century notions are inserted into a mythic tale for comical effect. In a famous scene, a peasant named Dennis says, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony." Arthurian scholar N. J. Higham described this iconic dialogue line as ever "immortal" in 2005.
 * In the DC Comics Universe, Vivienne is the Lady of the Lake. Nimue is the good Madame Xanadu (introduced in 1978), her youngest sister, and their middle sister is the evil Morgaine le Fey (given name Morgana); their surname is Inwudu. The Lady of the Lake has appeared in Hellblazer, Aquaman, and her sister's own series. In the 1983 DC Comics series Camelot 3000, an unrelated Lady of the Lake is referred to as Nyneve, depicted as a woman with a beautiful body but wearing a mask, who is sent to confront the heroes of Camelot. When Nyneve removes the mask, Merlin, upon seeing her face, is unable to resist her and departs, thus removing him from Morgan's path. Later, when he escapes her control, it is revealed that her only facial feature is a gigantic mouth with a long serpentine tongue, vagina dentata style, which Merlin turns against her.
 * Mary Stewart's 1979 novel The Last Enchantment in her Arthurian Saga series radically recasts the story of Merlin and Niniane (Nimue), completely removing the aspect of malicious seduction and treachery dominant in the traditional version; it is the witch Morgause, the mother of Mordred (with Mordred notably undergoing a similarly revisionist treatment as Nimue ), who takes Nimue's traditional role and then continues as the chief villain. In this depiction, after she saves him from being poisoned by Morgause, Merlin takes Niniane on as an apprentice, with her at first disguised as a boy named Ninian, and willingly teaches her his magic, which he had refused to Morgause. When her identity as a woman is discovered, they fall in love despite their age difference. Their love is peaceful and idyllic; even when Nimue marries Pelleas, this is not a betrayal of Merlin. As Merlin gives her the secrets of his power and how to control it, he seems to lose them himself, which he does not mind. In a depleted, weakened condition, he falls into a coma, and is believed to be dead. Nimue has him buried within his "crystal cave", from which he escapes after a few weeks, through a combination of chance luck and ingenious planning, and travels incognito to let Arthur know he is still alive and can help him against Morgause and Morgan. Nimue takes Merlin's place as the court enchanter, while Merlin retires to the crystal cave and lives a quiet and happy life as a hermit. Niniane takes his place and role to the degree she even proclaims "I am Merlin", thus creating a 'Nimue-Merlin' character.
 * In John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur, an uncredited actress plays the Lady of Lake, twice holding up the fabled sword, once for Merlin to give to Uther Pendragon, and once to return to Arthur. Separately, the film's Morgana (Helen Mirren) takes on other parts of the traditional Lady of the Lake story, learning the occult arts from Merlin and ultimately trapping him with his own powerful "Charm of Making", the magic of shapeshifting.
 * Marion Zimmer Bradley's 1983 novel The Mists of Avalon, a feminist retelling of the legend, expands on the tradition of multiple Ladies, with Viviane, Niniane and Nimue all being separate characters. Furthermore, in Bradley's works, both the 'Lady of the Lake' and the 'Merlin' are names of offices in the Celtic pagan hierarchy: the Lady of the Lake is the title of the ruling priestess of Avalon, and the Merlin is a druid who has pledged his life to the protection of Britain. Various tragic characters assume the title of the Lady of the Lake, including Viviane, the initial High Priestess of Avalon, Arthur's aunt, and Lancelot's mother who ends up killed by Balin (here as her other son Balan's foster-brother); Niniane, Taliesin's daughter and yet another of Arthur's half-sisters who reluctantly becomes the Lady of the Lake after Viviane is slain and becomes Mordred's lover until he kills her; the main protagonist and narrator Morgaine (Morgan), portrayed similar as in the medieval romances but more sympathetically; and Nimue, a sympathetic and tragic young priestess who falls in love with the Merlin but is duty bound by Morgaine to seduce and lure him to his death – following which she drowns herself. Their ancestors (the previous priestesses of Avalon and, before that, of Atlantis) are subjects of Bradley's extended Avalon universe novels, among them the direct prequel Lady of Avalon (1997), the third part of which follows the young Viviane. A 2001 television adaptation of The Mists of Avalon starred Anjelica Huston as Viviane, and Julianna Margulies and Tamsin Egerton as Morgaine.
 * In his Christian-themed 1987–1999 book series The Pendragon Cycle, Stephen Lawhead takes up the figure of the Lady of the Lake under a different name: the Faery princess Charis, daughter of Avallach, the king of Atlantis and later of Avalon. Married to the Breton prince Taliesin, she gives birth to Merlin. After Taliesin's death, Charis takes care of Merlin at Lake Logres, hence her name "Lady of the Lake". She is the protagonist and narrator of the first book in the cycle, Taliesin. The traditional figure of Nimue belongs to Charis' shapeshifting evil sister Morgian (Morgan), the main antagonist through the entire series, including the modern-day-set Avalon: The Return of King Arthur.
 * In Bernard Cornwell's 1995–1997 novel series The Warlord Chronicles, more historically grounded and realistic than usual treatments of Arthurian legend, Nimue is an Irish orphan adopted by the British druid Merlin. She is a prominent character in the books, being a childhood friend of, a major love interest for, and finally an adversary to the series' main protagonist, Arthur's warrior Derfel Cadarn. She begins as Merlin's most adept priestess and lover, but as she grows ever more brutal and fanatical, by the time of the final novel she turns against him and imprisons him, torturing him to reveal the last of his magical secrets in her desperate obsession to bring back the Old Gods of Britain at any price. Eventually, she brings Merlin to total madness before ultimately sacrificing him to their lost gods, whose return she believes would rid the island of the Saxons and the Christians alike. As Nimue believes the key to her goal is to sacrifice Gwydre, Arthur's son with Guinevere using Excalibur (as she already did with Gawain), Derfel's final act of casting the sword away is not to return it to her but to hide it from her forever. Stephen Thomas Knight, commenting on Cornwell's vicious Nimue, with her tunnel-vision ruthlessness, vindicativeness, and frequent use of prolonged torture, opined the "pro-Celtic quasi-historian" author "links her to the Saxons as part of her hostility to decent people, including Merlin." Symbolically, both Nimue and the hypocritical Bishop Sansum, representing the Christian side of the books' major theme of the danger of religious extremism, remain still alive as the story comes to the end. Nimue is due to be portrayed by Ellie James in the upcoming television adaptation The Winter King.
 * In the 1995–1996 animated series Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, the name of the first season's antagonist Lady Kale (voiced by Corinne Orr), an evil twin sister of the Queen of Avalon and a former student of Merlin who magically imprisons him, was created as an anagram of Lady of the Lake. Lady Kale seeks to steal Merlin's magic so she can rule Avalon forever, later working together with the also evil Morgana. However, a good character of the Lady of the Lake (called the Spirit of Avalon in an alternate version Starla and the Jewel Riders) herself briefly appears during the second seasons's finale in the eponymous episode "Lady of the Lake" ("Spirit of Avalon") to help Princess Gwenevere and Merlin defeat Lady Kale and Morgana.
 * In the 1998 television miniseries Merlin, the characters of the Lady of the Lake (Miranda Richardson) and Nimue (Isabella Rossellini) are separated, with the former being a goddess-like beneficent fae who is the twin sister of the evil Queen Mab, and the latter being a noblewoman damsel in distress with no supernatural powers who is the object of Merlin's affections. In the motif evoking Edwin Arlington Robinson's 1917 poem Merlin, Nimue and Merlin live together in another world until he leaves in order to help Arthur; in the end, however, Merlin returns to her and makes them both young again with the last of his magic. In the 2006 pseudo-sequel Merlin's Apprentice, Miranda Richardson reprises her role as the Lady of the Lake, as the only returning cast member aside of Merlin's Sam Neill, though she portrays a much different characterization: the Lady is the main antagonist seeking to destroy Camelot. It also depicts Merlin's sleep in the cave; as he slept, the Lady used her magic to conceive a son with Merlin and then enchanted him to sleep for 50 years.
 * In the 2005–2009 television series Kaamelott, the Lady of the Lake (Audrey Fleurot) is an angel sent to help King Arthur progress in the quest for the Grail. Upending the established connections, the series' Lancelot not only never interacts with the Lady but cannot even see her.
 * The 2008–2012 television series Merlin also features two characters based on the Lady of the Lake. Nimueh (Michelle Ryan) serves as the primary antagonist of the show's first season, which includes the episode titled "The Mark of Nimueh". The character has no connection to Merlin beyond his opposition to her plans, and her only connection to a lake is her use of a location called the Isle of the Blessed (Thomas Wentworth Higginson's 19th-century name for Avalon ). She ends up killed by Merlin in a showdown on her Isle of Nimueh in the season's last episode, "Le Morte d'Arthur". The ninth episode of the second season is titled "The Lady of the Lake", wherein a sorceress named Freya (Laura Donnelly) dies and vows to repay Merlin for his kindness to her. In the third season finale, Freya, now a water spirit, returns Excalibur to Merlin so that he can give it to Prince Arthur Pendragon.
 * Nimue, the Blood Queen, appears as one of the primary antagonists in the Hellboy comic book series by Mike Mignola, influenced by the classic comics series Prince Valiant. Here she was introduced in 2008 as a witch who driven mad after the powers she acquired from Merlin, gave her knowledge of the Ogdru Jahad, prompting the witches of Britain to dismember her and seal her away underground. Resurrected in the present day by Arthur's last descendant, Hellboy, she assumes the mantle of the Irish triple war goddess the Morrígan and assembles an army of legendary and folkloric beings to eradicate mankind, only to stopped by Hellboy at the cost of his own life. Although having been turned into an evil creature trying to destroy the word, Nimue still had a human part "that hated and feared what she had become."
 * She is portrayed by Milla Jovovich as the main antagonist in the 2019 film adaptation Hellboy. Just when massing a plague throughout London, Nimue was thwarted and dismembered by Arthur with his Excalibur before her pieces were separately concealed. After Gruagach recovered all her pieces, Nimue is resurrected for revenge and seeks Hellboy to create the apocalypse. Later in the climax, she betrays and kills Gruagach, and then Trevor to enrage Hellboy to pull Excalibur from Arthur's tomb and releases all demons throughout England. However, Alice Monaghan channels Trevor's spirit to encourage Hellboy, who decapitated Nimue, and send her and all demons back into hell.
 * Nimue is featured in the 2010s television series Once Upon a Time in which Arthurian characters live in the land inhabited by other fairy tale characters. She appears as a secondary antagonist in the first half of Season 5, portrayed by Caroline Ford. She is introduced in the eponymous episode "Nimue" when, fleeing from Vortigan who sacked and burned her village, she meets Merlin and they fall in love; with Merlin being immortal, Nimue drinks from the Holy Grail so they can be together forever. Afterwards, she kills Vortigan, which darkens her magic and turns her into the very first Dark One. Nimue breaks Excalibur but Merlin cannot bring himself to kill her and ends up being trapped in a tree. At some point, Nimue dies but she manages to live on in all of the following Dark Ones, appearing to them as a vision. She forms an alliance with Captain Hook, manipulating him into casting the Dark Curse and reviving her and the Dark Ones, and then leads a Dark One invasion in Storybrooke, which ultimately leads to her demise at the hands of Hook, who betrays her to redeem himself and destroy her and the Dark Ones forever using Excalibur. The separate character of the Lady of the Lake is referenced as Lancelot's mother, but she never appears; even the episode titled "The Lady of the Lake" does not feature her and its title instead refers to Prince Charming's mother.
 * The 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword features the Lady of the Lake (Jacqui Ainsley) bound Excalibur to the Pendragon bloodline after Merlin used it to destroy the Mage Tower and appears to catch the sword underwater after Arthur throws it into the lake in shame at his failures; she pulls Arthur underwater and motivates him to fight Vortigern before returning the sword to him. This good Lady of the Lake has her mirror image in the film's monstrous character "Syren" that replaces the two dragons in the film's revision of the legend of Vortigern's Tower.
 * In the 2020 television series Cursed, a feminist re-imagining of the Arthurian legend based on an illustrated novel of the same title, Nimue is the protagonist, portrayed by Katherine Langford in the adaptation. Writer and showrunner Tom Wheeler said he was inspired by "this really evocative image of this young woman’s hand reaching out of this lake and offering the sword to Arthur, so that image is what captivated us. And it's a really mysterious, magical, sad image, and it begged all of these questions: Why is she giving the sword to Arthur? What was their relationship? Why him? Why does she have the sword?" (Contrary to Wheeler's stated belief, it is not Nimue who gives the sword in Malory's unrevised telling.) In Cursed, before becoming the Lady of the Lake, Nimue, also known as the "Wolf-Blood Witch", is a young woman coming into her Fey abilities, but whilst her home was ravaged by the Christian fanatics called the Red Paladins she is sent on a mission by her dying mother to deliver "The Sword of Power" (Excalibur but never named) to Merlin. Taking great liberties from the source materials, Cursed's Lancelot (known until the finale as only "The Weeping Monk") is already adult when Nimue first meets him and is for most part just one of her enemies, Merlin is revealed to be her father, and she is instead Arthur's love interest. The story of Cursed ends abruptly when Nimue is shot with arrows by a nun named Iris (an original character with no counterpart in the legend) and falls with the sword into a body of water, where she (or her spirit, as her exact fate is left unexplained) will guard the sword until "a true king rises to claim it." Albeit the TV series adapted the entire original book, it was supposed to continue in the canceled second season.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Lady of the Lake


text:
They Call Me Trinity

They Call Me Trinity (Lo chiamavano Trinità...) is a 1970 spaghetti Western comedy film written and directed by Enzo Barboni (under the pseudonym of E.B. Clucher) and produced by Italo Zingarelli. The film stars the duo of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer as half-brothers Trinity and Bambino, who help defend a Mormon settlement from Mexican bandits and the henchmen of the land-grabbing Major Harriman. It was filmed on location in Campo Imperatore, Abruzzo, Italy, with financial backing from West Film.

A sequel, Trinity Is Still My Name, was more successful than They Call Me Trinity. In 1995, Sons of Trinity, starring Heath Kizzier and Keith Neubert, was released as a continuation of the Trinity series.

Plot
Trinity, a lazy, ne'er-do-well gunfighter with unnaturally fast drawing ability and marksmanship, is dragged on a travois by his horse to a way station and restaurant. There, he encounters a pair of bounty hunters with an injured Mexican prisoner. Trinity calmly takes the Mexican away from the two men, killing them before they can shoot him in the back. The pair reach a small town, where they witness the local sheriff, a large, burly man with a similarly fast drawing ability to Trinity, gunning down three men after they harass him for not allowing one of their criminal friends to be released.

It becomes apparent that Trinity and the man, Bambino, are brothers. Bambino is merely posing as the new sheriff of the small town while he awaits the arrival of his gang from the penitentiary from which he escaped, following a run-in with the actual sheriff who incidentally took the same way as Bambino on his way to his new post. Bambino is not happy to see his trouble-making brother. However, the two form a temporary partnership to deal with Major Harriman, who is attempting to run a group of pacifist Mormon farmers off their land with the intention of using their property to graze his own horses. The fact that these horses are valuable and unbranded explains Bambino's grudging willingness to work with his little brother, even though he considers Trinity to be a shiftless bum without ambition.

Trinity has fallen in love with two Mormon sisters and is genuinely concerned with the Mormon settlers' welfare. He persuades Bambino and Bambino's henchmen to help train the pacifistic Mormons to fight, and in the final battle, the Mormon leader finds in the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible that "there is a time for fighting" and the Mormons are unleashed against Major Harriman's goons, using the dirty fighting tricks that they have just learned.

Bambino is flabbergasted and infuriated to learn that Trinity has given the Major's horses to the Mormons. Trinity is about to be happily married to the two Mormon sisters when he learns that being a married Mormon means actually having to work, causing him to hurry after Bambino, who angrily sends him off in the opposite direction. After Bambino departs for California, the real sheriff appears, and Trinity points him in Bambino's direction. Trinity then reclines in his travois and brings up the rear with his horse, following them all.

Cast

 * Terence Hill as Trinity, "The Right Hand of the Devil"
 * Bud Spencer as Bambino, "The Left Hand of the Devil"
 * Farley Granger as Major Harriman
 * Steffen Zacharias as Jonathan
 * Dan Sturkie as Tobias
 * Gisela Hahn as Sarah
 * Elena Pedemonte as Judith
 * Ezio Marano as Weasel
 * Luciano Rossi as Timid
 * Michele Cimarosa as Drunken Mexican
 * Ugo Sasso as crippled Sheriff
 * Remo Capitani as Mezcal
 * Riccardo Pizzuti as Jeff
 * Paolo Magalotti as Harriman Henchman
 * Antonio Monselesan as Bounty Hunter
 * Gaetano Imbrò as Blond Bounty Hunter
 * Gigi Bonos as Ozgur, the Bartender

Production
Director Enzo Barboni wrote the original story and screenplay for the film. Initially, the script only included the Trinity character and not Bambino but producer Italo Zingarelli suggested the inclusion of a brother. When the film was first announced, Peter Martell was set to play Trinity and George Eastman as Bambino. The two characters were later portrayed by Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, who were then a popular comic duo following the release of Western film God Forgives... I Don't! in October 1967 in Italy, where they were cast as comedic and violent characters. Hill and Spencer did their own stunts in the film with the rest of the supporting cast being portrayed predominantly by stuntmen.

Interiors and the towns in the film were shot at Incir De Paolis Studios in Rome. The stage station was shot at Magliana quarry in Lazio, while the valley locations were shot at Parco Dei Monti Simbruini. The waterfall scene was shot at Treja Valley Park.

The main title song was written by Franco Micalizzi and Lally Stott. It is sung by Annibale Giannarelli "Trinity: Titoli" was later used as the closing theme for Quentin Tarantino's 2012 Western Django Unchained.

Release
They Call Me Trinity was released in Italy just before Christmas 1970. It proved very popular abroad, such as in Spain, where it outgrossed all previous Italian Westerns, save for For a Few Dollars More. The film further proved foundational for future German dubs of Hill and Spencer films: the main dialogue was rewritten to be more humorous, with initially silent areas of the original film receiving additional dialogue from characters with their back to the camera. The film was released in the United States and United Kingdom in 1971. As of 2004, They Call Me Trinity was the 22nd most successful Italian film, one position below The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Critical reception
Howard Thompson of The New York Times praised the film's sense of humour, as did Roger Ebert, who gave the film two-and-a-half out of four stars. In a review published by Time Out, the film is called "first and best in the Trinity series of spaghetti Westerns, rare in that it is successful in combining laughter and some degree of interest in the action". In his book Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers' Guide to Spaghetti Westerns, author Howard Hughes writes "They Call Me Trinity is Hill and Spencer's finest vehicle".

Legacy
Following initial popularity, a variety of derivatives were released, such as Two Sons of Trinity and the Carambola! series, the latter of which featured Hill and Spencer lookalikes Michael Coby and Paul L. Smith. Other films using the They Call Me... title include They Call Me Hallelujah (1971), They Call Me Cemetery (1971), and They Call Me Holy Ghost (1972). In 1987, Enzo Barboni directed a contemporary "remake", entitled They Call Me Renegade.

title: They Call Me Trinity


text:
Niigata Prefecture

Niigata Prefecture (新潟県) is a prefecture in the Chūbu region of Honshu of Japan. Niigata Prefecture has a population of 2,131,009 (1 July 2023) and is the fifth-largest prefecture of Japan by geographic area at 12,584.18 sqkm. Niigata Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture and Nagano Prefecture to the southwest, Gunma Prefecture to the south, Fukushima Prefecture to the east, and Yamagata Prefecture to the northeast.

Niigata is the capital and largest city of Niigata Prefecture, with other major cities including Nagaoka, Jōetsu, and Sanjō. Niigata Prefecture contains the Niigata Major Metropolitan Area centered on Niigata with a population of 1,395,612, the largest metropolitan area on the Sea of Japan coast and the twelfth-largest in Japan. Niigata Prefecture is part of the historic Hokuriku region and features Sado Island, the sixth largest island of Japan in area following the four main islands and Okinawa Island.

History
Until after the Meiji Restoration, the area that is now Niigata Prefecture was divided into Echigo Province (on the mainland) and Sado Province. During the Sengoku period, the Nagao clan, who were at times vassals to the Uesugi, ruled a fief in the western part of modern Niigata from Kasugayama Castle. The most notable member of the Nagao clan was Nagao Kagetora, later and better known as Uesugi Kenshin. He unified the leaders of Echigo Province and became its sole ruler. By taking the surname Uesugi, he also became the head of the Uesugi clan and effectively brought their realm under his control.

The city of Niigata is now the third largest Japanese city facing the Sea of Japan, after Fukuoka and Kitakyushu. It was the first Japanese port on the Sea of Japan to be opened to foreign trade following the opening of Japan by Matthew Perry. It has since played an important role in trade with Russia and Korea. A freighter from North Korea visits Niigata once a month, in one of the few forms of direct contact between Japan and that country.

The Etsuzankai organization, led by the politician Kakuei Tanaka, was highly influential in bringing infrastructure improvements to Niigata Prefecture in the 1960s and 1970s. These included the Jōetsu Shinkansen high-speed rail line and the Kanetsu Expressway to Tokyo.

On October 23, 2004, the Chūetsu earthquake struck Niigata Prefecture and was measured at Shindo 6+ at Ojiya.

On January 9, 2006, a heavy winter storm struck the prefecture and its neighbors. At least 71 people died and more than 1,000 were injured. Also in 2006, a massive tsunami and earthquake damaged homes and caused casualties in the maritime areas of Niigata Prefecture, especially near Sado Island.

On July 16, 2007, another earthquake hit the area.

Niigata Prefecture hosts the Fuji Rock Festival, an annual event held at the Naeba ski resort. The three-day event, organized by Smash Japan, features more than 200 Japanese and international musicians. It is one of the largest outdoor music events in Japan, with more than 100,000 people attending in 2005.

Geography
Niigata Prefecture stretches about 240. km along the Sea of Japan, from the southwest to the northeast, with a coastal plain between the mountains and the sea. It also includes Sado Island. Niigata Prefecture could be placed in either the Hokuriku or the Kōshinetsu, both of which are considered parts of the Chūbu region. The prefecture is generally divided into four geographical areas: Jōetsu region (上越) in the south, Chūetsu (中越) in the center, Kaetsu (下越) in the north, and Sado Island. The mouth of the Shinano River, the longest river in Japan, is located in Niigata Prefecture.

As of 1 April 2014, 25% of the total land area of the prefecture was designated as Natural Parks, namely Bandai-Asahi, Chūbu-Sangaku, Nikkō, and Oze National Parks; Echigo Sanzan-Tadami and Sado-Yahiko-Yoneyama Quasi-National Parks; and thirteen Prefectural Natural Parks.

Cities
Twenty cities are located in Niigata Prefecture:

Towns and villages
These are the towns and villages in each district:

List of governors of Niigata Prefecture (from 1947)

 * Shohei Okada (岡田正平) - from 15 April 1947 to 29 April 1955
 * Kazuo Kitamura (北村一男) - from 30 April 1955 to 30 November 1961
 * Toichiro Tsukada (塚田十一郎) - from 7 December 1961 to 28 March 1966
 * Shiro Watari (亘四郎) - from 8 May 1966 to 30 April 1974
 * Takeo Kimi (君健男) - from 1 May 1974 to 19 April 1989

 * Kiyoshi Kaneko (金子清) - from 4 June 1989 to 9 September 1992
 * Ikuo Hirayama (平山征夫) - from 25 October 1992 to 24 October 2004
 * Hirohiko Izumida (泉田裕彦) - from 25 October 2004 to 24 October 2016
 * Ryuichi Yoneyama (米山隆一) - from 25 October 2016 to 27 April 2018
 * Hideyo Hanazumi (花角英世) - from 12 June 2018 to present

Agriculture, forestry and fishing
The major industry in Niigata Prefecture is agriculture. Rice is the principal product, and among the prefectures of Japan Niigata is second only to Hokkaidō in rice output. The area around Uonuma is known for producing the Koshihikari variety, widely considered to be the highest-quality rice produced in Japan.

Rice-related industries are also very important to the prefectural economy. Niigata Prefecture is known throughout Japan for its high-quality sake, senbei, mochi, and arare. In sake production, the prefecture comes third after Gunma and Kyoto prefectures.

The prefecture was also the place of origin of the ornamental carp known as koi.

Niigata Prefecture produces the highest volume of azaleas and cut lilies in Japan, and is increasing the production of cut flowers and flower bulbs. Along with Toyama Prefecture, it produces the highest volume of tulips in the country.

Mining and manufacturing
Crude oil is produced in Niigata Prefecture, although Japan relies heavily on petroleum imported from other countries. Kerosene heaters are also produced for use in the cold Niigata winters.

Kinzan, on Sado Island, was an active gold mine until it was closed in 1989.

Sanjō and Tsubame produce 90 percent of all the silverware made in Japan. The two cities are second after Osaka in the production of scissors, kitchen knives, nail clippers and wrenches.

Niigata Prefecture may have been the first area in Japan to produce knitted textiles, although the earliest products may have been imported from China. A nuclear power plant, which formerly had the highest energy output in the world, is located in the tiny village of Kariwa. It has been closed since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Demographics

In the Census of 2003, Niigata ranked as the 14th most populous.

Food
Niigata is known for the following regional specialities:
 * Uonuma Koshihikari rice
 * Shōyu (soy sauce) and Yofu (western-style) katsudon
 * Shōyu sekihan
 * Noppe stew
 * Wappa-meshi (seafood and rice steamed in a bamboo basket)
 * Sasa-dango (mochi balls filled with red bean paste, seasoned with mugwort and wrapped in bamboo leaves)
 * Poppo-yaki (steamed bread flavored with brown sugar)
 * Hegi-soba (soba from the Uonuma and Ojiya areas, which uses a special kind of seaweed)
 * "Tsubame-Sanjō ramen" (ramen made using thick udon-style noodles)
 * Tochio aburage (aburaage is called "aburage" in Tochio)
 * Kirazu (dishes using okara)
 * Kakinomoto (edible chrysanthemums)
 * Kanzuri (a fermented paste from Myōkō made by leaving chili peppers exposed on snow, then adding salt, yuzu, and kōji mold)
 * Yasuda yogurt

Niigata in popular culture

 * Snow Country (1947): a novel by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata set in Yuzawa
 * "Niigata Snow": a track on the LP Aida, released by Derek Bailey in 1980
 * Kura: a film and TV series (1995) based on the 1993 book by Tomiko Miyao, an award-winning period piece about a Niigata family and its sake brewery
 * Blue (1996): a manga about high school girls, set in Niigata City, adapted as a film in 2001
 * Whiteout: an action film based on a novel published in 1995
 * United States of Tara (2011): a comedy-drama series on Showtime; Kate is about to embark on a trip to teach English in Niigata when a flight attendant tells her that the only thing she will hopefully find in Niigata is "a life lesson and a bullet train back to Tokyo."

Tourism and sports
Much of the tourism in Niigata centers around skiing, especially in the alpine areas of Myōkō and Yuzawa, and going to onsen. Sado Island off the west coast of Niigata is accessible via ferry (taking one to two and a half hours) from Naoetsu or Niigata City.

Professional sports clubs include Albirex Niigata, a J-League Division 1 Football Club, and Niigata Albirex BB, a BJ (Basketball Japan) League team.

Festivals

 * Tokamachi Snow Festival- February
 * Murakami Taisai – July 6–7
 * Iwafune Taisai – October 18–19, in Murakami
 * Niigata Festival – August
 * Niigata General Dancing Event -September 21–25
 * Shirone Kite Festival – June
 * Sanjo Kite Festival – June
 * Nagaoka Festival (with fireworks) – August
 * Niigata Tanrei Sake-no-Jin - March
 * Echigo-Tsumari Festival - August and September (every third year)

Universities

 * Niigata University
 * Niigata University of International and Information Studies
 * Niigata Sangyo University (Niigata Industrial University)
 * Niigata University of Health and Welfare
 * Niigata University of Pharmacy and Applied Life Sciences
 * Niigata Institute of Technology
 * Niigata University of Management
 * Niigata College of Nursing
 * Nippon Dental University
 * Nagaoka University
 * Nagaoka University of Technology
 * Nagaoka Institute of Design
 * International University of Japan
 * Keiwa Gakuen University

Rail

 * JR East
 * Jōetsu Shinkansen
 * Hokuriku Shinkansen
 * Shin'etsu Line
 * Hakushin Line
 * Yahiko Line
 * Echigo Line
 * Jōetsu Line
 * Uetsu Line
 * Ban'etsu West Line
 * Tadami Line
 * Iiyama Line
 * Yonesaka Line
 * JR West
 * Hokuriku Shinkansen
 * Ōito Line
 * Hokuetsu Express
 * Hokuhoku Line
 * Echigo Tokimeki Railway
 * Myōkō Haneuma Line
 * Nihonkai Hisui Line

Expressways

 * E17 Kanetsu Expressway
 * E18 Jōshinetsu Expressway
 * E8 Hokuriku Expressway
 * E49 Ban-etsu Expressway
 * E7 Nihonkai Tōhoku Expressway

National highways

 * Route 7 (Niigata—Shibata—Murakami—Sakata—Akita—Noshiro—Hirosaki—Aomori)
 * Route 8 (Niigata—Nagaoka—Kashiwazaki—Jōetsu—Toyama—Kanazawa—Tsuruga—Kyoto)
 * Route 17 (Nagaoka—Ojiya—Minamiuonuma—Takasaki—Nihonbashi of Tokyo)
 * Route 18 (Jōetsu—Myōkō—Nagano—Karuizawa—Takasaki)
 * Route 49 (Niigata—Aizuwakamatsu—Kōriyama—Iwaki)
 * Route 113 (Niigata—Arakawa—Nan'yō—Shiroishi—Sōma)
 * Route 116 (Niigata—Tsubame—Izumozaki—Kashiwazaki)
 * Route 117 (Ojiya—Tōkamachi—Iiyama)
 * Route 148 (Itoigawa—Ōmachi)
 * Route 252
 * Route 253
 * Route 289
 * Route 290
 * Route 291
 * Route 292
 * Route 345
 * Route 350 (Sado Island)
 * Route 351
 * Route 352
 * Route 353
 * Route 402
 * Route 403
 * Route 404
 * Route 405
 * Route 459
 * Route 460

Ports

 * Niigata Port – Ferry route to Sado Island (Ryotsu), Tsuruga, Akita, Otaru and Tomakomai, with International Container hub port
 * Ryotsu Port – Ferry route to Niigata
 * Ogi Port - Ferry route to Naoetsu
 * Naoetsu Port in Joetsu - Ferry route to Ogi
 * Iwafune Port in Murakami- Ferry route to Awashima

Airports

 * Niigata Airport
 * Sado Airport

Politics and military

 * Masako, Empress of Japan, former registered domicile (Honseki) was Murakami
 * Uesugi Kenshin (1530–1578), daimyō in the Sengoku period
 * Naoe Kanetsugu (1559–1620), samurai in the Sengoku period
 * Horibe Yasubei (1670–1703), samurai in the Edo period
 * Hachirō Arita (1884–1965), foreign minister, from Sado Island
 * Maejima Hisoka (1835–1919), founder of the Japanese postal service, from Joetsu
 * Masuda Takashi (1848–1938), creation of a general trading company, Mitsui Bussan. established a newspaper, Nihon Keizai Shimbun. from Sado Island
 * Kita Ikki (1883–1937), nationalist author and intellectual, from Sado Island
 * Sakae Ōsugi (1885-1923), anarchist, lived in Shibata
 * Honma Masaharu (1887–1946) World War II lieutenant-general executed by the United States for war crimes committed in the Philippines
 * Hitoshi Imamura (1886–1968) World War II General in the Imperial Japanese Army, from Shibata high school
 * Isoroku Yamamoto (1884–1943), commander of the Japanese Imperial Navy, from Nagaoka
 * Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), Chinese political and military leader, served in the Imperial Japanese Army from 1909 to 1911 in Joetsu (Takada)
 * Ba Maw (1893-1977), Burmese political leader, active during the interwar and World War II, lived in Minamiuonuma (Ichiuchi)
 * Kakuei Tanaka (1918–1993), prime minister, from Kashiwazaki
 * Hisashi Owada (born 1932), diplomat and father of Crown Princess Masako, from Shibata
 * Makiko Tanaka (born 1944), first female foreign minister, from Kashiwazaki

Arts and culture

 * Zeami Motokiyo (1363– 1443), aesthetician, actor, and playwright, exile to Sado Island
 * Ryōkan (1758–1831), Zen Buddhist monk and poet, from Izumozaki
 * Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, (1874–1950), autobiographer and novelist, Professor of literature and taught Japanese language, culture and history at Columbia University, from Nagaoka
 * Yaichi Aizu (1881–1956), poet, calligrapher and historian, from Niigata City
 * Kokei Kobayashi (1883–1957), Nihonga painter, from Joetsu
 * Mimei Ogawa (1882–1961), author of short stories, children's stories, and fairy tales, from Joetsu
 * Koganei Yoshikiyo (1859–1944), anatomist and anthropologist, from Nagaoka
 * Kyusaku Ogino (1882-1975), doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, Niigata Takeyama Hospital
 * Kinichiro Sakaguchi (1897 – 1994), agricultural chemist and microbiologist, from Joetsu
 * Takashi Amano (1954-2015), photographer and aquarist, from Niigata
 * Tetsuji Morohashi (1883– 1982) chief editor of the Dai Kan-Wa jiten, a comprehensive dictionary of Chinese characters, from Sanjo
 * Tetsuo Harada (born 1949 Niitsu-shi), sculptor working in Paris France
 * Tsuchida Bakusen (1887–1936), Japanese painter, from Sado
 * Fubō Hayashi (1900–1935), novelist from Sado Island
 * Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), Buddhist philosopher, from Nagaoka
 * Junzaburō Nishiwaki (1894–1982), Japanese poet and literary critic, from Ojiya
 * Daigaku Horiguchi (1892-1981), poet and translator of French literature, from Nagaoka
 * Makoto Aida (born 1965), Artist, from Niigata City
 * Donald Keene (born 1922), Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature, Honorary Citizen of Kashiwazaki
 * Kodo (taiko group), Based in Sado

Actors, Actresses, Singers
 * Ken Watanabe (born 1959), stage, TV and film actor, from Uonuma
 * Princess Tenko (born 1959), magician, from Joetsu
 * Mina Fujii (born 1998), actress
 * Mikie Hara (born 1987), gravure idol and actress, from Murakami
 * Fumika Baba (born 1995), actress and model, from Niigata City
 * Maya Kobayashi (born 1979), journalist and newscaster, from Ojiya
 * Mao Kobayashi (actress) (born 1982), newscaster and former actress, from Ojiya
 * Miyuki Koizumi (born 1982), Model
 * Kazuyuki Sekiguchi (born 1955), bass player for the rock group Southern All Stars, from Agano
 * Makoto Ogawa (born 1987), former member of Morning Musume, actor and model, from Kashiwazaki
 * Koharu Kusumi (born 1992), former member of Morning Musume, actor and model, from Washima
 * Hitomi Saito (born 1981), former singer of leader of Melon Kinenbi, from Niigata City
 * Suneohair (born 1971), singer, from Nagaoka
 * Yasuyuki Okamura (born 1965), from Niigata Higashi High School
 * Double (singer), Japanese R&B singer
 * Negicco, based in Niigata City, Niigata
 * NGT48 based on Niigata City, Niigata
 * Rina Sawayama, singer and model, born in Niigata City, Niigata

Pop culture, manga, voice actors
 * One (manga artist) (1986), mangaká, from Niigata City
 * Yoshifumi Kondō (1950–1998), animator, from Gosen
 * Hiroyuki Yamaga (born 1962), anime director and producer, and a founding member of the animation studio Gainax, from Niigata City
 * Daisuke Hirakawa (born 1973), voice actor
 * Ryō Hirohashi (born 1977), voice actress, from Nagaoka
 * Yoko Ishida (born 1973), singer, from Niigata City
 * Rumi Kasahara (born 1970), voice actress, from Itoigawa
 * Makoto Kobayashi (born 1958), manga artist, from Niigata City
 * Közi (born 1972), rock musician
 * Haruo Minami (1923–2001), enka singer, from Nagaoka
 * Hitomi Nabatame (born 1976), voice actress, from Sado Island
 * Tatsuyuki Nagai (born 1976), anime director
 * Kazuto Nakazawa (born 1968), animator
 * Kenichi Suzumura (born 1974), voice actor
 * Kiriko Nananan (born 1972), manga artist, from Tsubame
 * Yukari Nozawa (born 1957), actor and voice actor
 * Takeshi Obata (born 1969), manga artist, from Niigata City
 * Etsushi Ogawa (born 1969), manga artist
 * Ikue Otani (born 1965), voice actress, from Kashiwazaki
 * Ango Sakaguchi (1906–1955), novelist and essayist, from Niigata City
 * Daisuke Sakaguchi (born 1973), voice actor, from Kashiwazaki
 * Shuichi Shigeno (born 1958), manga artist, from Tōkamachi
 * Bin Shimada (born 1954), voice actor, from Niigata City
 * Kunio Shimizu (1936–2021), playwright from Niigata
 * Motoei Shinzawa (born 1958), manga artist, from Kashiwazaki
 * Yōko Sōmi (born 1965), voice actress
 * Rumiko Takahashi (born 1957), manga artist, from Niigata City
 * Kazuya Tsurumaki (born 1966), animator, from Gosen
 * Hajime Watanabe (born 1957), animator
 * Nobuhiro Watsuki (born 1970), manga artist, from Nagaoka
 * Hiroki Yagami (born 1967), manga artist, from Kashiwazaki
 * Akiko Yajima (born 1967), voice actress, from Kashiwazaki
 * Kimio Yanagisawa (born 1948), manga artist, from Gosen
 * Keiko Yokozawa (born 1952), voice actress, from Niigata City

Sports

 * Shiro Saigo (1866 – 1922), Judo, lived in Aga (Tsugawa), lived in 1869-1882
 * Haguroyama Masaji (1914–1969), sumo wrestler from Nakanokuchi who was yokozuna for 12 years and three months; an all-time record
 * Shohei Baba (1938–1999), Japanese professional wrestler, from Sanjō
 * Sawao Kato (born 1946), winner of 12 Olympic medals in gymnastics
 * Killer Khan (born 1947), professional wrestler, from Tsubame
 * Ayumu Hirano (born 1998), snowboarder, from Murakami
 * Ayana Onozuka (born 1988), freestyle skier, from Minamiuonuma
 * Kentaro Minagawa (born 1977), alpine skier, from Yuzawa
 * Junko Hoshino (born 1989), freestyle skier, from Nagaoka
 * Reruhi Shimizu (born 1993), ski jumper, from Myoko
 * Mai Nakamura (born 1979), swimmer, from Nagaoka
 * Gōtoku Sakai (born 1991), footballer (2015– Hamburger SV), from Sanjo
 * Yujiro Takahashi (born 1981), professional wrestler from Niigata City.

title: Niigata Prefecture


text:
William Ouchi

William G. "Bill" Ouchi (born 1943) is an American professor and author in the field of business management. He is the Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizations, Sanford and Betty Sigoloff Chair in Corporate Renewal at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Early years and education
He was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He earned a BA from Williams College in 1965, and an MBA from Stanford University and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Chicago. He was a Stanford business school professor for 8 years and has been a faculty member of the Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles for many years.

Theory Z
Ouchi first came to prominence for his studies of the differences between Japanese and American companies and management styles.

His first book in 1981 summarized his observations. Theory Z: How American Management Can Meet the Japanese Challenge and was a New York Times best-seller for over five months.

His second book, The M Form Society: How American Teamwork Can Recapture the Competitive Edge, examined various techniques implementing that approach.

Ouchi also came up with his three approaches to control in an organization's management:
 * Market control
 * Bureaucratic control
 * Clan control

Research regarding schools
In recent years Ouchi has turned his attention to the challenges posed for local schools by a top-down management style at the central office. He published an overview in 2003 in Making Schools Work. He chaired an education reform panel for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and some of his proposals are being considered currently. In the 1990s, he served as advisor and chief of staff to former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.

In 2009 his book, The Secret of TSL: The Revolutionary Discovery That Raises School Performance was published which explores the revolutionary potential of reducing total student load, the number of students a teacher interacts with on a daily basis over the course of a semester.

Other activities
In the larger community, Ouchi serves on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Commission on Presidential Debates, on the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum, and on the Board of Directors of The Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools - an operator of inner-city charter schools in Los Angeles.

He previously served on the boards of Williams College, KCET Public Television, The California Community Foundation, Leadership Education for Asian-Pacifics, the Consumer Advisory Committee of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and of the Harvard-Westlake School.

In the business community, he serves on the boards of directors of The Hilton Foundation, AECOM, FirstFed Financial, Sempra Energy, and Water-Pik Technologies.

External links and further reading

 * "Beware of the Easy School Fix" opinion by Jay Mathews in The Washington Post September 26, 2009

title: William Ouchi


text:
Talk:Descriptive statistics

Define primary data
Define this Rohidas8308 (talk) 06:01, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Summary statistics into Descriptive statistics
As per lead: "A descriptive statistic (in the count noun sense) is a summary statistic". fgnievinski (talk) 03:25, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

 * A descriptive statistic is a kind of summary statistic. But there are plenty of summary statistics that are inferential, not descriptive. An example from genetics is GWAS summary statistics. Inferential statistics are based on probability models, whose usual intent is to model a larger population. I suppose one could create a summary statistic article that is subdivided into inferential and descriptive sections. But I think the field of descriptive statistics is broad and deep enough that it warrants its own article. -- 17:15, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose As per Mark viking. 2001:8003:913E:5D01:C8F0:E933:7B8F:4260 (talk) 13:13, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose As per Mark viking. Libcub (talk) 07:09, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Descriptive statistics