The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: Seraphine_Harmonium

Quote from: Stargate525

Quote from: brainface

QuoteIf the default is to be reptilian, maybe the humans get called "primates" or some other comment on their roots.

or furries.

No, furries are something else completely.

Well, not completely....

In Celtricia,
The dwarves call themselves the Klaxik,
the Elves term themesleves the Omwo~
The Gnomes term themselves the 'other short meat'
(just kidding, they call themselves the Jeren)
The Hobyt's call theselves the Hobytalia
the bugbears call themselves the Gartier
The orcs call themsleves the Orkash (call them orcs and be accused of mindless racism)
The Dragons term themselves the Sauroid
Men call themselves Gesana, Telman, or Nodman.

Quote from: Seraphine_Harmonium

Quote from: DeeLI just recently had this problem with halflings.  My solution - go to the phrasebooks and lexicons given in Dragon magazine, and other places.  The halflings apparently refer to themselves as the hin.  Dragons refer to them as the rauhiss.  The Book of Vile Darkness has an evil variant of the halfling race known as the Jerren.  Based on these sources, I decided that the proper name for the halflings was rauhin.  (Given that in my world, dragon culture is formative in many ways of all culture everywhere.)

It hadn't occurred to me to do the same thing with humans, and as it seems you have a satisfactory solution I wouldn't bother.  But I might just do that now, find out how other races refer to humanity...

I did this with dwarves as I was going towards a dwarf-centric world (at least those were my noble intentions) But I decided the dwarves called themselves the Ithai.  Humans call them dwarves, but older races refer to them as Ithai.

I unfortunately do not own a subscription to Dragon but I have picked it up a few times. I have to settle on a fantasy name generator i found off of Google for inspiration, then add a little tweaking of my own to suit my tastes.

Quote from: sparkletwistI think it is an issue of frame of reference.

We are used to thinking of things in terms of humans, and it's difficult to distinctly name something when there is no contrast-- as an example, quite a few cultures' name for their own race/ethnicity/whatever is simply the word for "people" in their language.

What this means is, you can find some ways to refer to humans by looking at some other race as the "norm," and seeing how humans diverge.

For example, dwarves are dwarves because they're smaller-- but to whom? If it's a halfling-dominated society, they're going to need a different name. Humans in a society dominated by a shorter race could be called "giants." (maybe what we know as "giants" would be "supergiants" or the like...) If the default is to be reptilian, maybe the humans get called "primates" or some other comment on their roots. If the default is to be an avian, maybe they're "lung mouths."

In my setting, elves use "round-ears" as a sometimes playful, sometimes derisive term for humans.

This is pretty much everything I came into this thread to say, and was beaten to it.

It is tempting and even satisfying to invent a word that means "humans," but unless you do something more with that word, it is just an extra bit of vocabulary that players must familiarize themselves with. Descriptive names ("roundear", "apeling," etc.) have an advantage, because the word itself is a continuous reminder of what it means, and can also be used as a way to underscore prevailing conflicts in a setting. (For example, if a big theme of yours is war or political tension between humans and elves, a term like "roundear" serves to heighten that tension continuously through casual conversation, especially if you characterize it as a pejorative bit of slang.)

If you do choose to use an invented word, it is helpful to give the word some sort of additional meaning, above and beyond "this is another word for humans." This will lend additional legitimacy to your invented word, imbue it with additional, subtle shades of meaning, and help characterize your humans (a race which, in many settings, is terribly bland and vaguely defined.)

To use an example of my own:

In the Jade Stage setting, humans, who are also called umani or Indrist, are the descendants of settlers from another world-- the only race foreign to the heartland of the setting. "Indrist" is the adjective describing things that are from Indirai, the humans' place of origin, much the same way that the word "Spanish" describes things that are from Spain. So you may have Indrist mythology, Indrist artifacts, and the Indrist themselves. Because of this association, the use of the word "Indrist" serves as a reminder of one of the most salient details about humans in the setting: they are foreigners to the land and its culture, immigrants from far away.

The other word, "umani," is a dwarven word meaning "the lost ones," the word the native dwarves first used to describe the initial human settlers they befriended. Those first settlers, who had trouble learning the unfamiliar dwarven language, mangled the pronunciation into "human," and the term stuck. The word "umani" has less practical value to me as a writer than "Indrist" does, but its literal meaning is poignant and its connection with the word "human" is clever, so I keep it around. Both "umani" and "Indrist" are shamelessly invented nonsense-words, and without the additional meanings ascribed to them to keep them relevant, they would be rather pointless.

One place to start is by looking at the etymology for the word "human".

Quote from: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=humanHuman[/url]
    c.1250, from M.Fr. humain "of or belonging to man," from L. humanus, probably related to homo (gen. hominis) "man," and to humus "earth," on notion of "earthly beings," as opposed to the gods (cf. Heb. adam "man," from adamah "ground"). Cognate with O.Lith. zmuo (acc. zmuni) "man, male person." Displaced its O.E. cognate guma (from P.Gmc. *guman-) which survives only in disguise in bridegroom. First record of humankind is from 1645. Humanoid (1918) is a hybrid of L. humanus and Gk. -oeides "like," from eidos "form, shape" (see -oid).

One thing that stands out to me is how late in our history the word human came about. I think it would be safe to say that in most fantasy settings it would be the same, with people being referred to as descriptive words. Romans, meat bags, halflings, dwarves, tall folk, eldar, and other such words are what I would most likely expect to see used.

I use slaveborn, manlings, scumborn (etc, etc, and their translations into other tongues) for most of my races' terms. They call themselves Meret, the daemonic word for both Slave and Human. This is my point - depending on the culture, language, and history, the humans will probably call themselves different things.

I typically only have new names for races when referring to place of origin (Like Canada or Italy), but this is brilliant:

Quote from: sdragon1984"What do you call yourrselves?"
"<I don't understand>"
"What..... do you" *jabs finger* "call.... yourselves?"
"<I don't understand!>"
"I think they call themselves the Jeigawaks!"