What’s in a Name: The Subtitle of Book I

“Is this a religious book?”
“Uh… no, why?”
“Well, your subtitle seems to suggest it.”
“I don’t write theology, I write science fantasy. I believe you need to avail yourself of a dictionary.”
 
As I was nearing completion of the first draft of Book I back in 2015, I began mulling over an appropriate title. Originally, I was considering something whimsical, such as ‘The Saga of Ardis,’ when an idea struck me to turn one book into multiple. With this in mind, ‘Chronicles of Ardis,’ felt like a working main title, leaving me in search of a catchy subtitle. After a few weeks, one word started to hit just write, a word which felt almost like a bane.
 
If you recognize the word ‘concordance,’ then you might know it to be synonymous with a ‘Biblical Concordance’ (of which I do own.) Which by definition is ‘an alphabetical list of the words (especially the important ones) present in a text, usually with citations of the passages in which they are found. However, this isn’t the only way that the word is used. With a modest bit of research (and search on Wikipedia,) you also find a bilingual concordance which is simply ‘a concordance based on aligned parallel text.’ Scrolling down a little, you also find that concordances are frequently used in linguistics when studying a text.
 
Wikipedia aside, there’s also the definition of the word, taken from the online Miriam-Webster Dictionary:
 
Concordance (noun)
 
1: an alphabetical index of the principal words in a book or the works of an author with their immediate contexts
 
2: CONCORD, AGREEMENT (Note: both words have definitions as well.)

== 

A simple Google search will also show:

noun: concordance; plural noun: concordances
 
1: an alphabetical list of the words (especially the important ones) present in a text, usually with citations of the passages in which they are found.
"a concordance to the Bible"
a generated list of instances in which a particular word occurs in a digital corpus, typically with the context also provided.
"clicking on any word in the source text produces a concordance"
 
2: FORMAL
agreement or consistency.
"the concordance between the teams' research results"
 
3: MEDICINE
the inheritance by two related individuals (especially twins) of the same genetic characteristic, such as susceptibility to disease.
 
Origin: Late Middle English: from Old French, from medieval Latin concordantia, from concordant- ‘being of one mind’
 
I think it’s safe to assume that I went for the second option found in either of these definitions. Nevertheless, it has brought a degree of wry amusement over the years. For instance, at one point, if you were to go to Amazon and put into the search box “Chronicles of Ardis: Concordance,” not only would it not come up, but it would bring up a search of over 700 books not even remotely related to my own, but said books were theological. I suspected the reason behind this was the subtitle.   
 
Lastly, I’ve heard more than one person ask a variation of the question written back at the beginning. Funnier still are the people that argued with me about the use of the word, as though it was locked into one thing alone. While that might be initially understandable, considering how it’s mostly used, it should come as no surprise that this word by itself had more than one meaning and can be used in other contexts. As for my own use of it, it stems from the idea that those gathered had ‘reached an accord being of mind in their thoughts and deeds.’ I had considered other words, such as harmony, accord, and the like. However, they failed to grab my attention as the word concordance did.