Day 22- Name all nine reindeer without using a search engine.

[strange_complex]

Er... Donner, Blitzen, Dancer, Prancer, Comet, Cupid, Dasher, Rudolph...

Dammit, I have eight but cannot get the ninth!

Oh well, that's a pretty good head start for anyone else doing this meme today.

Christmas kisses for anyone who can tell me the ninth in a comment while likewise respecting the 'no search engines' rule.

(They're a very weird set of names anyway, aren't they? When I have pressed 'post' on this entry and can look at search engines again I am going to search out where the hell 'Donner' and 'Blitzen' in particular even come from. Crazy mid-nineteenth century clerics!)

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Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Naturally, Wikipedia has all the answers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus%27s_reindeer#Commonly_known_names), including the explanation for Donner and Blitzen. I feel silly for not having been able to figure those out myself, now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Without searching, you're missing Dasher!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

No, I've listed Dasher above. Having checked since on Wikipedia, the missing character is Vixen. There has to be someone to rhyme with Blitzen, after all!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can't read :(
Or rather, I can't keep my thoughts in order while posting from a busy shop queue!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Understandable! I hope you get what you went in for. :-)

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Vixen? (Didn't search).

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes - well done!

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

It seemed hilarious to me that you'd miss Vixen.

I didn't Google but I find the names easy to remember because of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", which doesn't seem to be where you got your memory of it since you didn't list them in that order. I think they're listed in the same order in the little intro to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" that some people sing before launching into the song itself.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Actually, my memory of the names does basically come from that poem, but I don't know it well enough to quote it precisely - hence missing Vixen, of course. I just have a sketchy general impression of the sorts of names which crop up in those lines. Interestingly, though, I did know that Donner and Blitzen came last, which is why those were the first two names that sprang to mind. They leave a strong lasting impression as a rising climax of the couplet.

[inbetween-girl.livejournal.com]

You missed Vixen. I'm just going with the song lyrics.

[goddessofchaos.livejournal.com]

You did better than me, I don't think I would have got half of them! (Not that you can get half of nine, of course...)

[kernowgirl.livejournal.com]

See, this is the kind of thing I would have no problem with. I used to know the entire poem of Night before Christmas, and I can still quote large chunks of it. Poems and songs I do well with, memory-wise. The one I'm likely to forget is Rudolph, because he's not attached to the list in song.

[weeping cross (from livejournal.com)]

I started trying to go through the list in my mind and kept finding myself mentally repeating Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi ...