Cultural Names

[Xeviat]

I hate to start so many threads so quickly.

I need help renaming some of my races for a different region of my setting. I'm starting with my mostly Europe inspired region, but I'll be moving to my Asia inspired region next. The names and cultures will be different, but the races and classes will be the same. Here's the list of the races and what I have for names so far:

[th]Europe[/th][th]Asia[/th]

Player Races
Human	Hin?
Dwarf	Korobokuru
Elf	Spiritfolk
Halfling	Vanara
Ifrit	?
Triton	?
Valkyrie	Tengu

My Halflings have tails (and are evolved from monkeys, but the people of the world don't know about evolution), ifriti are a humanoid race created by the fire god, tritons by the water god, and valkyries by the air god.

[th]Monstrous/Non-player/Advanced Races[/th][th]Europe[/th][th]Asia[/th]

Khan (Feline)	?
Lupinahk (Canine)	Kitsune?
Mite (Rodent)	Nezumi?
Usaril (Bear)	?
Visecrite (Bat)	?
? (Seal)	?
? (Dolphin)	?
Draconian (velociraptor)	?
Kobold (lizard)	?
Lizardfolk (crocodile)	?
? (snake)	Naga
Sidhe (4E's Eladrin)	?
Orc	?

One thing I don't want to do is fall into the trap of relying too heavily on one Asian culture or another. While the names I'm using for my European races are all English or English versions, I don't "have" to use a singular language for the Asian region. I'm also not certain about some (for instance, using Kitsune for the canine people can work, in theory, if the canine people in the Asian region are more like foxes, but Kitsune also are fire spirits and that might bring extra baggage). I've been scouring my mythology books, but I've been coming up rather empty on fantastic creature names.

Thanks for any help offered. Oh, and perhaps we want to discuss the nature of "European" and "Asian" themed settings.

PS: I should note that I do more blending in my setting than one would assume based on names alone. The whole world is animist and believes in reincarnation, although these exist both in Asia and "pagan" Europe to some extent. The major human religion in my European region was created from a mixture of Chivalry/Bushido and Confucianism. One of the Ifriti cultures in my Europe region is heavily inspired by the Aztecs. But using a universal naming theme helps unify the microsetting.

[Scholar]

okay, the only thing i can contribute to your list is something beginning with "neko" for the catfolk without more information on what asia you want. after all, asia isn't just china and japan. ;)
what i'd like to know is what you see as "european-themed".
arthurian knights? mercenary warriors like götz von berlichingen? eastern europe, like romania?
age of dirt? renaissance? 30 year war with artillery?
i generelly associate "asian themed" with curved, single edged swords, bamboo hats, strange clothes and names with either too many or too few syllables. oh, and shouting "hai!" a lot. :)
if you want to be creative, take the telephone register of jakarta and pick names at random, noone's gonna notice anyway.^^

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Maybe a kappa is kind of like a kobold--at least as close as a tengu is to a valkyrie ;)

A kitsune is a fox and nezumi is japanese for mouse, so you could just do the same thing for bears (that is, look up a translation in japanese, mandarin, or korean).

English for snakeman: serpentfolk

Seal: selkie? (technically a seal that can take human form, but maybe close enough for you)

Dolphin: Delphinids (dolphins) or Cetacean (also includes whales)

I've seen dragonian in a few games for dragon men. But with something like that, there's no reason draconian couldn't work for asian cultures too. Also, nagas were the dragons (and serpents) of India. In Japan Tatsu, in China long (or lung). Many of these could take human form.

Ningyo (Japanese) mermaid for the triton

[Gamer Printshop]

Bakemono are Japanese goblins, probably the closest thing to Orcs.

Kappa have far superior strength to a Kobold, though, but are associated with swamps.

Although an actual primitive people of Japan, the Ainu worshipped Bears, and had a close association with them, known to the Japanese. (The Ainu had red hair and bearded, but oriental features otherwise - considered caucasians though.)

[LordVreeg]

Do you have any language ideas?  I am assuming you are talking about self-referentials?  Or are you talking about what other people call them?  

Not to be dense, But in Celtricia:
The Gartier is what they call themselves, which is actually an Orcash kenning for 'sick/enflamed-headed'.  The orcash generally call the gartier the Vanurska, which is actually an ancient bastardization of the Entropic word for 'leader'.  The Westic term is 'BugBear', which the Gartier despise but the acculterated ones put up with, normally with some sarcastic comment about how much longer the 'mini's' will run civilization (it is generally accepted that the Hobyt's came up with the term "Bugbear".
Gartier's personal naming patterns follow the Klaxik (Dwarven) clan pattern of personal-family-clan, so "Greenbough Tek Earner" is Greenbough (actually a nickname) from the Tek Family of the Earner clan.

I'm making the example so I know what kind of name you want.  I like the "Tieridos" for the Tritons as a self referential, "Trids" to most other races.

[Xeviat]

I think I'm purposefully ignoring actual language rules for my setting, because I'm worried of injecting another science for me to deal with.

But, I will note that the names I am looking for should be what the Humans of the region call the other races. Yes, that's a little brain storm ... So it might be very possible for most of the names to be from one culture, with a few other outside names (for instance, most of the European culture names are largely English names or English approximations). Thus, due to my familiarity with them, it would probably be best to base the European culture names on English and the Asian culture names on Japanese (the European cultures are inspired by Catholic, Celtic, and Egyptian, while the Asian cultures will largely be Japanese, Chinese, and Indian).

Aren't Kappa turtles?

Ainu is a good reference for the bears. I'm not certain if I really want to just call them "fox" "mouse" "bear" ... but that could work if I ultimately decide to rewrite the fauna of the world (then the Lupinahks being called "Kitsune" in the Asia area won't overlap with animals because there won't be any foxes).

I left Bakemono out because I will have goblins in my setting so it will be best to use them for that. Oni will probably work for Orcs, as orcs are denizens of the Shadow Plane and calling them "demons" isn't a stretch.

If I haven't mentioned your idea, it's because I'll probably use it and I don't have any questions about it. I'll be updating the first post soon. Thanks everyone.

PS: On a side note, since there seem to be a few language experts here, one idea I've had in the past was to use different Earth languages as inspiration for the languages of different races, to make it easier on me. I had dolled them out already, but my world's races have changed drastically since then (and there is less world-unification then there was in previous drafts). Any thoughts on what languages to use for different races (as I said, English and Japanese will be used for human languages; also, Icelandic will be used as an approximation of Viking/Norse for the Giants).

[Gamer Printshop]

I am half Japanese and I do have some language knowledge and lots of folklore knowledge of Japan.

Think of Kappa as a tiny naked humanoid about 3 feet tall - no turtle shell, that have a small hollow spot on the top of their heads. This hollow spot holds water, which is the arcane strength of a Kappa. If the Kappa turns on its head and dumps this water, it loses its power, otherwise its strength will almost always overpower humans they encounter.

Many folklore stories are about heroes trying to trick the Kappa into doing some challenge where they accidently dump their water.

No, Kappa are not turtles. :)

[Xeviat]

Ah; all of the imagery I've seen of Kappa show them with turtle shells, including D&D's own OA. Their wikipedia entry says that the imagery sometimes depicts them with shells, but the article doesn't tie them to turtles, so I concede the point.

So I could use them for Kobolds, except for the loss of the strange strength thing. That seems like a very important part of the folk-lore, so I'm not comfortable with just dropping it (also a reason the "valkyrie" will have to be known for being incredible swordsman if I'm calling them Tengu).

[Gamer Printshop]

Please note, my Japanese folklore knowledge is not based on D&D, Gary Gygax, TSR - but of actual Japanese Folklore. I've seen the OA references to turtle shells, but in Japanese Folklore they are sometimes associated with frogs, but never reptiles or turtles.

Strange regarding Tengu and swords (tengu are among my favorite folklore beings) - a famous Yamamoto hero, went into the mountains and was trained in archery by Tengu, as they were known masters of the bow.

Strange how many misconceptions between folklore facts and D&D exist.

Like the Afanc in D&D is a giant catfish, whereas in English folklore an Afanc is a giant Beaver. English dragons were "worms" - legless, wingless reptile snakes with poisonous breath or bite. Firebreathing, flying dragons were exclusively of Scandanavian origins.

[Gamer Printshop]

Please note, my Japanese folklore knowledge is not based on D&D, Gary Gygax, TSR - but of actual Japanese Folklore. I've seen the OA references to turtle shells, but in Japanese Folklore they are sometimes associated with frogs, but never reptiles or turtles.

Strange regarding Tengu and swords (tengu are among my favorite folklore beings) - a famous Yamamoto hero, went into the mountains and was trained in archery by Tengu, as they were known masters of the bow.

Strange how many misconceptions between folklore facts and D&D exist.

Like the Afanc in D&D is a giant catfish, whereas in English folklore an Afanc is a giant Beaver. English dragons were "worms" - legless, wingless reptile snakes with poisonous breath or bite. Firebreathing, flying dragons were exclusively of Scandanavian origins.

[Xeviat]

I could have sworn I read about Tengu training swordsmen elsewhere; it's in the wikipedia articles if I remember correctly. Is it that they're just good warriors all around?

Either way, I' am not seeking to accurately represent the myths of the world in my setting, only to use the myths of the world to inspire my setting. Because my setting is Earth in the far future, I am utilizing the idea of a collective conscience: the people of Terran (Earth) meet humanoid creatures from the land of twilight who possess supernatural beauty, long life, and pointed ears ... so they call them elves, as if the name "elf" was an echo in the collective consciousness.

Additionally, using familiar terms helps players and readers to identify with something quickly. I believe that D&D uses inspiration from many, many sources, but changes them to suit its needs. This can cause confusion and frustration for those familiar with the actual myths, but I believe it helps the writers to be inspired.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

The wikipedia makes reference of tengu and the yamabushi - the tengu seem to be rather borderline - originally warlike oni and later protective spirits within the land(scape).

I think a lot of difficulty in relating western and eastern folklore is that the different cultures demonstrate rather different interactions with the various fae and spirit folk. Part of this arises from the basic cause that these are distinctly different lands in the sense of bioregion - leading to different ways of humans relating to the land itself. As a result, the various expressions/manifestations found in folklore tend to be pretty unique. Even commonalities can become confusing when the cultures will classify them differently. The Aanishinabe refer to almost every non-human fae/spirit/otherkin as manitou, even though some are distinctly nature (e.g. forest and tree) spirits while others are explicitly extraterrestrial in origin. Commonalities such as were-type shapeshifters are still viewed in widely different fashions among different cultures.

Part of what you may want to look at in regard to you're goals of interpreting new races through the lens of older "collective consciousness" is step back for a moment and look at your linguistic basis for the expressions. "Elf" is a word  of distinctly Germanic origin which has carried into English while the Gallic "faerie" has likewise more recently come into English usage, both largely displacing older Gaelic words (as English has generally displaced the Gaelic dialects in daily usage,) among the indigenous populations of the islands. Everyone encountering these new beings will refer to them by linguistic cognate in their primary language and/or that of the predominant culture in which they live. It would follow that in say, the setting of "Firefly," such beings would be commonly referenced by humans in either English or Chinese even if such humans show a different ethnic origin.

[Gamer Printshop]

I don't mean to be a stickler on folklore beliefs vs. D&D mythos - I was just making a comment. Gary Gygax made a herculean effort creating the original monster manual, I relied on his Deities and Demigods to get me points in History/Art History - still he got some details wrong. But who's perfect? He's more perfect than I, I'm just saying...

However, you're far better off sticking with what your players or potential players would be familiar with monsters, races, classes - than to change things as someone like I would suggest. If D&D OA says Kappa have shells and Tengu are swordmasters that's great, use it!

I love the study of primitive religion, art history, folklore and legend, sagas and epics, as much as I love D&D.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

One of the problems with pinning down things about this sort of folklore is how widely accounts vary and even contradict each other at times. Even European material which we have ready access to in English displays a lot of variation. That of other cultures (unless you can read the language and have access to the material in that form) is even more problematic in the absence of a comprehensive source to draw upon. Japanese folklore show a huge degree of variance simply because the beings referred tend to be so local and connected to place. Stories about similar beings in different places are particular to that place - their mountain tengu is not the tengu of some other mountain. The individuality and uniquely personal characteristics so expressed can make generalization problematic.

Related to the topic, if any haven't already, I recommend watching "The Great Yokai War," a Japanese movie ( live-action) which presents o huge amount of traditional beings. It's still a movie - not necessarily an authoritative source, but seems to present the beings as traditionally described. It's also a lot of fun - some great lines like the drunk seeing a cloud of evil (literally) advancing over the city saying, "Oh, it's just Gamera, never mind." and my favorite almost non-sequiter reaction, "The burdock! The burdock!! It's coming right out of the fishcake!!!" The  yokai beat the evil one by quite literally partying the house down. . .