The word "Phantasy"

[Patraw]

I've been reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft lately, and he used the spelling "phantasy" for "fantasy" a lot. Reading more about him, it seems he liked to use archaic English in his writings quite a bit, and "phantasy" is how "fantasy" used to be spelled in English. I always thought SEGA just made that spelling up in Phantasy Star to be cool/edgy; it's neat to know that there's actually some history behind it. Just thought I'd share.

[BenoitRen]

Yeah, this gets re-discovered every few years.

Is that avatar from Final Fantasy Legend III/SaGa III?

[Patraw]

Yes, my avatar is an Orb Rat/Maitie/Jerrit/Spectrat/TomTom from SaGa III: Jikuu no Hasha. I did all the animation, as the actual game's battle sprites are static. I started sculpting an Orb Rat action figure in 2010, but I never finished it, so that animation got left over from what would have been the web page on my site for the figure.

[Spite]

Interesting I didn't know that it could be spelled that way. I always assumed it was just some bad engrish kept to be unique, like to a japanese person they see "fone" spelled "phone" so it would stand to reason fantasy would be spelled the same way. Although I doubt the japanese really knew that H.P.Lovecraft spelled it that way, so its probably just a lucky mistake.

[bragatyr]

Yeah, "phantasy" is actually the more original spelling, at least etymologically. It's from the Greek "phantazomai", meaning to show or appear, from whence was derived "phantasia" (or "phantasy") and "phantasma" ("phantasm"). It's also fun to keep in mind that in Ancient Greek the "ph" sound was more of an aspirated "p" than an "f", so the word sounded more like "pantasia" (with maybe a slight, somewhat separate "h" sound after the "p"). Of course, it's pronounced as an "f" in modern Greek, and has been for a while, so I'm guessing that accounts for the modern pronunciation in English; English speakers pronounced it as it was currently pronounced.

It would make sense that Lovecraft would use the etymological spelling; he was a bit of an ancient languages nut, even as a young kid.