Alternate name for dwarves

[Wensleydale]

Not necessarily. It wouldn't be the first fantasy language for which no actual words are given. A dwarf's player could just tell the GM when his character is speaking the language and when he's not, and the dwarf language's own word for dwarves could translate to something simple like "the people" or "true men."

this raises another question: is this a name they use for themselves? if yes, they won't call themselves dwarves or any of its related words, because this a human word for them. dwarf always carries a connotation of "small" with it, but to a dwarf, he'd be normal sized and everyone else is a giant. an exception would be if to them, "dwarf" means "person" and for humans it has come to mean "small".
just to go a little deeper into entymology, "dvergr" is related to the germanic "trügen", i.e. betray or trick, which is either not flattering or very honest, if dwarves call themselves dwarves.

That's what I was suggesting. Dwarf could originally have meant 'people' in... let's call it Dwarven. Then it was used in early dialogue between humans and dwarves, and the humans mistranslated it and borrowed it into their own language meaning the 'dwarf race'. This then gained further connotations of size when used as a metaphor and eventually become a word in its own right.

Also, dwarf doesn't NECESSARILY have to come from the above mentioned germanic term, trugen. It could come from a completely different fantasy language.

[Kalontas]

Go on with Krasnoluds. :) It comes from name of Dwarves in my langaueg.

[Furor]

wow, lot of responses. I like the idea of Dvergar the most, but i really need a name that when spoken evokes what you think of as a dwarf, stout, dependable, strong, warlike...and maybe its just me, bur Dvergar, because of Dnd and their actual place in nordic myth, makes me think of pale, cavern dwelling tricksters. I like to assign the internal linguistic names for each race (Sidhe means peopple in Sidhal [Elven], Sidhal meaning "people's tongue" etc.) because a race like the goblinoids refer to themselves as Cheitun but are known by others as goblins, orcs etc.

I played with Coranian [Insert Dwarf racial name] as a subrace, but it doesn't evoke what i want fore the race as a whole.

@Pheonix, thanks, pretty nasty pic i grabbed off a search for demons

[Nomadic]

Stout, strong sounding names (no actual lingual connotations as I just pulled these out of my head).

- Hungrum
- Iandor
- Kelrakun
- Melgram
- Ghor
- Degorl