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In the Evil Dead movies the infamous book is given an inconsistently spelled name, which vanished in the other installments. The scripts for the original movie and the remake titled it "Naturan Demanto" and "Naturom Demonto", which is not real Latin (or Sumerian). However, I was able to find words with the same string of consonants NTRM and DMNT.

I do not know any Latin, so I was wondering if naturam demento, naturum demento or noturum demento were grammatically correct phrases that made any sense as the title of an unsavory occult book.

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Nātūra means "nature" both in the sense of "something's innate properties" (the nature of water is to be wet) and "the world" (all living things are part of nature). So Nātūram Dēmentō would mean something like "I distort the true nature [of something]" or "I distort the order of the world", both implying rather unwholesome magicks.

You could also use a form of nāturus, either nāturum dēmentō, "I drive mad the male person who is about to be born", or nāturam dēmentō, the same but with a female target. Neither of these has quite the same ring of utterly perverting nature, but I don't really know the context of the movies.

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If you come to think about it, the title "Naturan Demanto" could be a mispronunciation of another title: A real book by Italian geographer and theologian Giovannia D’Anania, "De Natura Daemonum." It means "On the Nature of Demons" and is a treatise on demons. If you pronounce this title fast enough it does sound like the book mentioned in Evil Dead.

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  • Very clever. I wish I could check multiple answers.
    – Anonymous
    Nov 6, 2023 at 14:08

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