Through the word “Bogsveigar”, the writer intended it to be the plural of bogsveigr, which they seem to assume means “archer” in Old Norse.
“Bogsveigir” is the name of the scrapped archer unit for the Norse culture in Age of Mythology. In the original AoM, its absence gives the Norse a weakness: without a human archer, they lack a cheap source of pierce damage.
In the widely decried AoM Extended DLC, FE reinstated this unit, alongside giving units to other cultures that filll in their designated weaknesses (a healer for Greeks, a fast anti-myth raider for Egyptians, a cheap Onager for Atlanteans).
Indeed, if you search the word in 2023, you can find it mentioned as a synonym for “archer” on 2000s-period webpages like “Norse names you can use for your RPG characters”. Ensemble probably got the name from a similar source, such as this.
But here’s the deal. Read the following:
The standard word is bogmaðr, literally “bow-man.”
Cleasby and Vigfusson’s old Victorian warhorse of a dictionary also lists skyti, cognate with English “shooter”; and the poetic term ýskelfir, literally “yew-shaker”. […]
A famous archer in the Saga of Olaf Haraldsson was known as Einar Thambarskelfir (þambarskelfir). I’ve seen several suggestions for what þambarskelfir means, but one suggestion is that it means “guts-shaker”, on the assumption that Einar’s bow was strung with gut strings.
As attested above, bogsveigr, literally “bow-bender”, is neither a generic term for archer (i.e. bogmaðr or skyti), or a special kind of archer, or an unspecific epithet like “yew-shaker”.
It is specifically a byname given to a single legendary archer Án - one translation being “Aun the Bow-bender”. Some links about him:
English Wikipedia entry
Old Norse poem project (scholarly overview)
All appearances of the word in Norse sources are poems and sagas referring to either him, or his family (daughters in the texts below):
So it is more like the “guts-shaker” in the Quora example: it is a poetic way of saying “archer” (the scholarly overview above shows two possible earlier mentions of him as simply “Án the Archer” - Ano sagittarius in Gesta Danorum and Án skyti in Heimskringla), but only ever associated with a specific individual. It is special enough that the eponymous saga added a fanciful origin for the name:
(Source:
Thomas H. Ohlgren, Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation)
And that’s what made Bogsveigar worse than having a Bogsveigir unit in AoM:
1.) AoM is conspicuously a looser interpretation of history than the numbered AoEs, with its laser crocs and jumping “Anubites”, and people know that things in AoM don’t always have a basis in real myth.
2.) By creating a heretofore non-existant plural form of the word, AoE2DE is faking authenticity through the superficial appearance of grammar, which is more deceptive than if FE had used the transparently Modern English “Bogsveigirs”.
3.) On today’s internet, the actual authentic origins of the legend are obscure and concentrated on a select few academic websites, compared to the somewhat widespread “bogsveigir = archer” pages. Now AoE2DE is dropping significant occurrences of its newly invented variation onto the internet - probably not enough to drown out the true sources, but in large enough quantity and at high enough Google ranking to risk further muddying the water.
4.) They did all this when they could have opted for a simple harmless name like “Yew Bow”.
5.) Yes, unintentional result, but making a generic tech out of a guy’s nickname using faux-historical language is just like calling a British UT “Langschankes”.
If Thirisadai is AoE2DE unintentionally citing an already widespread wikipedia hoax, this UT name is it intentionally yet thoughtlessly injecting its own invented pseudohistory into the knowledge space. It is actively polluting the well.
Illustration of the impact: Google is now suggesting “bogsveigar”, which it hadn’t done before the patch release.