The Name Thread

Magnus Pym · November 16, 2011, 12:04:09 AM

From Wikipedia

QuoteA Persian medical treatise written in 1376 tells how to cure cannibalistic people known as kaftar, who are said to be "half-man, half-hyena".

-Exactly= what I needed. STOLEN!

So I got these;

Lionfolk: Leonid
Elephantfolk: Tusker
Hyenafolk: Kaftar... I might rename it to Ghaftar (see what I did here? lol)

Superfluous Crow · November 16, 2011, 12:13:23 AM

Leonid is very fantasy-y. Not necessarily bad depending on what you are going for, just making you aware.
Tusker is good, but sounds more like a nickname given to the species by humans et al. Maybe they have a name for themselves as well?
Kaftar is great!

LD · November 16, 2011, 12:22:45 AM

Kindling- Elephants are no longer pachyderms? What happened?

Kindling · November 16, 2011, 07:02:15 AM

I have no idea, I was just quoting wiki :P

Ghostman · November 16, 2011, 09:43:41 AM

Kindling: Those being actual personal names that I simply collected into alphabetical lists, I would have no right to object if you or anyone uses them.

Magnus Pym: Be aware that 'Leonid' is a Russian personal name, famously borne by one USSR general secretary. It is actually a shortened form of the Hellenic personal name 'Leonidas', also of historical fame.

Superfluous Crow · November 17, 2011, 12:51:55 AM

According to my google search Leonids is also a famous meteor shower!
I can't find any obvious links to fantasy though, so I might have been wrong about that. Admittedly I only checked the first page of search hits...

Xathan · November 17, 2011, 04:36:08 PM

I posted a number of creatures in my TM discussion thread and I'm unhappy with most of the names - any help there would be greatly appreciated.

[spoiler=names and descriptions]Ratweres - though they lack sentience, a Ratwere is a creature that appears as though it should - bipedal rodents, easily 3 feet tall, with rudimentary tool use. However, their tool use is only slightly more advanced than what we see in apes. Rateweres gather in large groups and are considered a menace to society as a whole, since they can breed rapidly and pose a significant threat to Nascent villages and frontier civilizations, though they rarely have the numbers needed to threaten larger societies.

Howler Bats - despite their name not mutated from bats but rather from Howler Monkeys, Howler Bats are essentially flying apes with their forearms mutated into batlike wings - gaining their name both from their distinctive sounds and the structure of their wings.

Carnequines - also called Hellhorses, Carnequines are horses with sharpened teeth and a predatory diet, competing with wolves for the same ecological niche and often preying upon their herbivorous cousins.

Floatwhales - Whales that developed the ability to naturally refine phlogiston and create "air sacks" that enable them to be skyborn, Floatwhales are lagely docile and used by some cultures/creatures in place of skyships despite being smaller than their mechanical counterparts. Floatwhales can survive in the Aether and many have begun to roam far form Earth.

Crovus Rex - A mutated crow bigger than an eagle, Crovus Rex is a highly debated topic because they seem to have a language and culture so may actually qualify as Nascent Things, though they lack tool use and have yet to communicate with any other intelligent life-form. They resemble crows with spinal ridges along their backs and a third blood red eye directly in the center of their skull.

Trolls - Large reptiles with simian bodies and regenerative properties - though not as rapid as in typical fantasy, they still can regrow a severed limb and heal form most wounds given time. Predatory but not highly intelligent, they are tamable enough to serve as guard beasts.

Swampgrasps - an evolved mollusk, swampgraps are unique for their three elongated radula (the tongue of a mollusk) that can extend up to 20 feet to grab prey, sea based creatures that often prey on ships and coastlines.

Glideapus - an octopus with a flattened body and two of it's tentacles flattened to serve as wings, Glidapus can, like floatwhales, naturally refine phlogiston, though they use it as a means of propulsion instead of gliding, essentially making them jet-propelled areal creatures. The remaining four tentacles drag behind the body, and the glidapus will swoop over prey and grab it, typically snapping its spine from the sheer velocity of the grasp. Glidapus can survive in the Aether.

Parakrill - small arthropods that developed a membranous parachute allowing them to float, they reproduce incredibly rapidly and have become the basis of the aerial ecosystem and are rapidly spreading across the Aether.
[/spoiler]

O Senhor Leetz · November 18, 2011, 01:48:07 PM

I like Carnequines. I think it would work well if you left out the horse descriptions, because then it's a bit too obvious. But I'm with you on the rest... no offense.

Unfortunately, I'm not all the familiar with your setting, so I'm not sure in what direction I should aim you at the moment. But being that TM is based on real Earth, using a Greco-Latin naming scheme, or using or languages, is not only acceptable, but also makes total in-game sense. What about having a scientific name, like Corvus Rex, and a common name, king crow.

Superfluous Crow · November 19, 2011, 05:55:39 AM

Out of racial solidarity I second the vote cast for King Crow.

Carnequines is actually a pretty sweet name as long as you don't notice the -equine morpheme. And even then it's not that bad. Reminds me of carnifex. Anyway, carne- is a perfectly legit prefix as long as it isn't preceded by chili, so if you were worried that it sounded artificial then worry no more!

Howling Bats is sort of okay, but you might want to drop "bats". Maybe Lurker instead?

floatwhales might be fixed through a single letter substitution (or perhaps not): Bloatwhales? Sounds a little nastier and more intimidating. While floatwhales is clearcut fantasy, bloatwhales straddles the fantasy/lovecraft gap. You need to drop the whale if you want to go for pure, distilled Lovecraft.
(You could also justify calling them behemoths.)

Why are swampgrasps called swamp-anything if they live near the coast and prey on ships? Deepcallers/Caller from the Depths might fit. Perhaps Brinetaster? Something derived from drown or siren would be good too - the last requires some adjective that is contradictory to the ordinary image of the siren, though.

Seems reasonable to have something called trolls in a RL-derived setting. Put more focus on the troll/monster vibe and downplay the reptilian side and you should be okay.

glideapus is pretty horrible but also easily solvable: enter the mooncalf!
(okay, out of context it is a pretty ridiculous name but it has a fair bit of Lovecraft vibe going on)

Parakrill only brings to mind tiny cartoon shrimp parachuting out of airplanes. Which is good fun, but probably not suitable for TM :D
driftlife? Or model them on algae, having them suck up the sun of the upper atmospheric layers. Blackdrift or driftmold? (yes, I like drift)
Honestly, this one is going to be hard to do - krill aren't exactly intimidating and TM needs to keep up its (macabre) appearance. Black clouds of drifting mold-creatures is probably the only fitting version of this I can imagine.

Xathan · November 19, 2011, 09:35:38 AM

Thanks for the feedback:

Leetz - Yeah, maybe I should scale down the horse in the description - it reminds me of the Thangorian Snarebeast. Just because it is a giant spider doesn't mean you ever need to use the phrase "spider" in the description, and just because it's a predatory horse doesn't mean I need to call it a horse - and maybe alter the description a bit to make them less horsey.

I figured Greco-Roman naming would work, though it's good to hear that reaffirmed. And for some reason, the idea of calling Crovus Rex King Crows when people refer to them never crossed my mind, making me feel a bit dense for missing the obvious but now something I intend on doing.

@SC: Thanks a ton for all the ideas!

Looks like you and Leetz agree on Carnequines, so those will likely stay in, just described to be a bit less horsey. One other thing I'm struggling on is what the common folk call them, because I want to avoid the painfully obvious "Hellhorse" - especially since most folk don't bother with anything called hell anymore, and haven't for a few centuries now. Thoughts?

So for Howling Bats you think maybe Howling Lurker or something similar? Perhaps Howling Hunters? Or should I just drop the Howling, leave that in the description, and call them Lurkers?

Bloatwhales works much better...but you saying Behemoths sparked a whole nother thrain of though, and I'm now torn between Behemoths and Levithans. The former is a bit more lovecrafty - though the reason for the whale suffix was because I wanted to keep these things from being TOO lovecrafty, reserving the worst of that for creatures that are actually extraterrestrial.

Swampgrasps were originally swamp ambush predatores that filled the crocodile niche in a speculative evolution project of mine (what if mollusks had beat fish to land) and I couldn't think of a better name off the top of my head to post. I love brinetaster or Brinelurker or Brinegrasp. Deepcallers is something Iike, but going to use for something else, and Callers Fom the Deeps is abit to much for sailors to scream in terror when one of these is licking them apart with tounges that function like freaking chainsaws (real mollusks have that same tounge - it's kinda terrifying). So some varation on BrineBLANK is going in. Thoughts on the three I'm pondering?

Good point - what I'm thinking now is, considering how much I love Skyrim's 3 eyed trolls, I'm probably going to base my trolls off of a repitilian version of that.

Mooncalf should be absurd...but it isn't. I'm going to use that for now unless I can think of a better second word than calf, but then again I could see people naming these things that at first glance, since they don't appear as nearly as deadly as they are when just in flight.

Yeah, Parakrill is an aweosme name for a fun, lighthearded setting. :P No so uch. Blackdrift is the best I've been able to hear - they form almost clouds of black, buzzing creatures that are winged shrimps floating on algae parachutes, darkening the skies and attracting Behemoths and their predators. Kudos for taking a completely unterrifing creature and not only giving it a creepy name, but figuring out how to make them creepy in how they work too.

O Senhor Leetz · November 22, 2011, 08:10:05 AM

For Arga, I've written down a fairly lengthy list of syllables and sounds that I've been combining to make names for places and people and things in Arga. More often than not they sound silly, but every now and then, something meshed up thats good. Unfortunately, the downside is that many of the names have the same prefix, suffix, or a similair sound.

for example, I have five archapelegos named the Pellanosi, the Volanosi, the Ibanosi, the Ullynosi, and the Quirnosi. Also, in a region of small, warlike kingdoms, there are three cities, belonging to three different kingdoms, named Pen Perdan, Pen Percath, and Pen Phaelox.

Now, my world map would have names according to how the Pellanese see the world, so that does explain why many names are the same. Most world maps in English use the anglo name for most places that don't speak English: Spain vs. España, Germany vs. Deustchland, Ireland vs. Eire. but i digress...

what are the opinions at large with naming schemes like that? stay with it or bail?

sparkletwist · November 22, 2011, 03:33:39 PM

I like the consistency. As long as it doesn't seem repetitive to you, it can just seem like traits of the language, which is realistic. :)

O Senhor Leetz · November 29, 2011, 05:38:05 AM

what's the consensus on tweaking common monster names to fit a setting? for example, in Arga, which I'm sure most know is a primarily Greek-inspired setting, I'm thinking about changing the names of the following "common monsters" so they are still recognizable but, I feel, fit the setting better:

Giants = Aegantos
Harpies = Harpaes
Dragons (more feral than regal) = Pedragos
Sprites, fairies, etc = Fae (not exactly a stretch, but whatever)

I'm still thinking about a few more to squeeze in, but I'm sure you all get the idea. Thoughts?

Kalontas · November 29, 2011, 05:44:03 AM

I think that the things you mention are better left off with unchanged names. Players will call them by the old names anyway, because they're the same thing, in fact. For example, giants will still be called giants because they're essentially giant people. Or renaming harpies... just feels unnecessary.

O Senhor Leetz · November 29, 2011, 06:03:18 AM

Quote from: Kalontas
I think that the things you mention are better left off with unchanged names. Players will call them by the old names anyway, because they're the same thing, in fact. For example, giants will still be called giants because they're essentially giant people. Or renaming harpies... just feels unnecessary.

Yeah, I'm with you on the harpies, but I'm a bit fond of the aegantos and the pedragos, plus, despite their similarity in name and role, they will be completely Arga-fied. What I'm trying to do here, i suppose, is try to avoid using the common names because I think for most people they are connected to a pre-existing idea or concept that I may or may not want to use.

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The Name Thread

Magnus Pym

Superfluous Crow

LD

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Superfluous Crow

Xathan

O Senhor Leetz

Superfluous Crow

Xathan

O Senhor Leetz

sparkletwist

O Senhor Leetz

Kalontas

O Senhor Leetz