The Meaning Behind Fireheart; by Dawnpaw

Dawnpaw asks “what, why?” about Firestar’s Warrior name. Get hyped!

If you payed just a microscopic bit of attention to The Prophecies Begin miniseries, you would know that the protagonist was Firestar (who for the purpose of this article will be referred to as Fireheart, his warrior name). But why was Fireheart named that? Most of us are aware that there are other possible names for him, such as Rustclaw or Orangepelt (not sure if these names are taken, just came up with these while brainstorming). However there is a lot of meaning behind Fireheart’s name, besides his pelt.

For starters, we tend to associate fire with bravery and strength, and that is what sets the prefix apart from things like Rust or Orange. Also, heart can have one of two meanings. When placed next to a word like Strong, or in this case, Fire, it usually means that the character is kind-hearted and prepared to do anything to achieve what they believe is right. Of course, when placed next to a word like Fierce or Ice, it tends to mean that the character is mostly, well, eeeeeeeeeeeevil (had to put that there).

In addition, if the six people all called Erin Hunter chose to make the suffix -claw, that wouldn’t turn out too good, since we normally associate claws with violence. Funny thing about that is that fighting is only one use for claws. As for the prefixes Rust and Orange, and the suffix -pelt, those all sound kind of boring compared to Fireheart. Seriously, rust doesn’t really do anything, orange is just a “boring” color (but also my favorite) and -pelt is, according to my calculations (which may or may not be incorrect), the second most common warriors prefix, beaten only by -fur (and-kit and -paw, which I did not include). Nobody wants to give the main character a super-common name, so forget adding -fur or -pelt to it.

And all that is why Fireheart is called Fireheart. Please comment below about what you think about this article! Thank you for reading!