View new posts | View your posts Spengler's first name

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Hi, Does anyone know how Egon got his name? I know what Harold Ramis said about the name but from a Canon point of view.
Thanks.

I think he was named after his brother... Elon Spengler.

His family probably lives in a remote, rural area, so they pick uncommon names. The names are common to them, but not to anyone from the social main stream.

It's German so probably supposed to tie into that whole Einstein motif.
it also means "strong with sword" thank you google.

From Wikipedia:



In the deleted scenes of GB2, Egon mentions his grandparents as being Polish, so it's the right part of the world, more or less. Maybe it was one of their names, or the name of a relative.

If you throw in stuff from the cartoon continuity, there might be a bit of a tradition of names that start with an E--his ancestor Eli from "If I Were A Witch Man"

Then in Fanon, his father has been given the names such as Elliot, Edwin, (Shiela Paulson) or Edison (er, me).

Suffice it to say, there's been no in-story absolutely "right" answer.

Thanks.
I took Edison (thanks Fritz) for his father's name for the story that I am writting on FanFiction. Just have to figure out how Egon got his name. Maybe using it as a long lost relative is a good idea.

Yay, Egon trivia, great topic. It's said Ramis had a classmate named Egon Donsbach at Senn High School who was a Hungarian refugee. That's how the name was picked. Not that it helps much regarding canon. It's true it's a German name in origin. Spengler means "tinsmith", also German.

As for the Jewish bit, it doesn't stand out Spengler is one. In RGB it's apparent he doesn't practise it, but might have some Jewish ancestors. Given how long the Spenglers resided in Lewiston and Nassburg his line must have been arond in the States for a long time. Thought it was fun it's called "Nassburg" in Egon's Dragon, it means "Wet village" in German and it had a drought. Pardon I bring up RGB, I prefer that and also it's more resourceful than GB.

As for fanon inventions, remember it was pretty infected back when people were still sharing and discussing stories. The prolific writers wanted others to side with them by adopting the names they used for relatives and some returning fabricated characters, which I didn't understand. Was told off when using the names I was accustomed to, being rather productive since way before "common" internet.

This is the part of GB/RGB I wish was different, as some mention even, that writers not mainstreaming were bullied and ignored. If you check the most common topics and categories you know what I mean, the guys aren't in character and stories are seldom of a decent episode type. Someone said it seems like "fans" just read what others wrote and didn't pay much attention to canon, or even having watched it much. Indeed agree. There, now I got that off my chest. Been wondering what the hell I did wrong, but in recent years four of my stories were made into high quality fan audiobooks and a fifth one seems to be on the way. This was so inspiring that I'm even writing a third RGB novel. Heh.

Pardon my rambling. Still hoping for new decent fanfic, so hope yours will be.

Yeah, that was my thought too. Egon's usually believed to be more of a Deist, or a wierd sort of "non worshipping polytheist" ("I know a lot of the gods are real, but I don't worship any of them")

Going into some intricacies of mostly (but not totally) RGB based canon, in my continuity Egon's actually the result of two disparate branches of the Spengler family coming together.

A few centuries ago, some time before 1690, the Spengler family split; one branch became nominally Christian, then immigrated to the New World. Eli from "If I Were A Witch Man" and Zediciah from "Egon's Dragon" are descendants of this branch of the family; one of their female descendants married into the Melton family.

The other branch of the family stayed Jewish, settling in Poland, before in the early Twentieth Century the parents of Edison and Cyrus immigrated to the New World--per the deleted scenes at the end of GB2. Edison met and married Katharine Melton, a descendant of the Lewiston branch of the Spengler family.

It's a bit weird, I know, but it more or less gets all the facts we "know" in there.