[Forum Philosophy] #17 - Names and Language

[Superfluous Crow]

I go to great lengths to have my names sound interesting. I'm not always succesful in this, and you'll see the names I use in my setting change once in a while. I have recently begun using actual words; such as cities called Arch or the Sprawls, or a nation called Throne. So although we often try to use completely fictional names, the real world actually often uses old words for naming. (Buenos Aires or Los Angeles for example)
I also try to stay away from overly dramatic fantastical names such as the Demon Mountains, the Woods of Fear and such. Who calls things that??
I also love names which convey a sense of mystery or oddness.  

[Nomadic]

Who calls things that?

I see you've never met the Artificer King Olaf Beardaxe of Darkmountain, Lord of the Alefist Dwarves of the Copper Hills and wielder of Orc Ender the axe of Deep Cavern. He brews a mean Fireburn Ale.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

I also try to stay away from overly dramatic fantastical names such as the Demon Mountains, the Woods of Fear and such. Who calls things that??
I also love names which convey a sense of mystery or oddness.

It depends on what you're creating. In creating Echoes of Dreams, my surreal fairytale setting, I did call something the Enchanted Forest.

[Nomadic]

Cliche names can also be good when you feel up for some over the top silly rp.

My Cragstalker Barbarian, Urlag Deathkiller, leaps upon the back of the vile netherwurm and hacks away at its doomorbs with his mighty bloodaxe!

[LordVreeg]

Celtricia's age dictates a certain number of communication modalities.  It also infers a level of intermixing and flux, in that a language changes in time, and while sometimes there may be a point where a language is differentiated from it's parent, most languages are nothing like they were centuries before.  

I use some 20-30 languages regularly. [spoiler=list] Sauroid
Omwo~
   Marcher, Silverwood, XI~U Omwo~, Delvan
      Suprosian
Magetongue
Klaxik
  Underearth, Red Hobbit, Gastax
Odop (law)
  Neblerian, Hendac, Modron, Devilkin, harnic (Orbi)
    Arcanic
Hobyt
  Brightish
Vox (Southern Common)
  Ambrellian, Omnian
Anarch (Chaos)
  Jubilexian, Grazztian, Venolvian
    Ancient Venolvian,
Westic (north common)
  Horse trader, Violic, Orcash
    Red Pass orcash, Zjymanese
Omnian
[/spoiler]
Sometimes I use some real life equivs to remind myself of a sound, Like Harnic's Grekk background and Venovlian's Latin-esque feel and structure.  Omwo~ uses a letter trasnposition scheme in some words to create a more sybilant sound, and Klaxik uses the same to create a harsher sound.  Klaxik's being constantly in heat, their terminology has dozens of specific derivations of their level of horniness.  [spoiler=]Fuquars'ti vort Fucquas si sula sgum cquennaqua klaxika/That harvest was harder to take in than a Cquennaqua (specific level of demanding sexually aroused) female Dwarf[/spoiler] So vernacular has much to do with language as well.

Slang and words taken from one language to another, I use lots of it.  A lot of long time readers know that Knights of the Armor or Trade use certain terms, and many other groups do as well.  Slang and seting-specific verbage create versimilitude.  Omwo~ for good night is Ho~io~iu (Hooeeooeeoo), and once my players stated using this in real life, I knew I had it made.

These are from earlier posts, to illustrate the point.

[ic=]'Chell, Amigal', is the battlecry and all around oath-word for the knights. It is Klaxik, meaning "The Scales, my Friends!" [/ic]

[ic=]"
Going east, they saw, by the light of Eodl's lantern, that the corridor stretched about twenty feet east, and then sort of continued for another fifteen feet, before opening. But the last fifteen the walls were covered in some fabric. As Kiko and George led down the corridor, they were carefully eying the curtains. The fabric was old, and grayish. It seemed to have no patterns, just an old raggedy curtain.
Of course, they were spending so much time watching the edges of the fabric up in front of them to notice the trip plate one the floor. Kiko got a half syllable of warning out as the huge metal bolt ripped down the corridor from the southern curtain, zipping over her head, ripping through Tusnus' tabard, before impacting messily into the north wall.
'Chell and balance, that was a close one!!' said the Squire of the TradeGod as he pulled his tabard from it's impinged location. The metal bolt was almost a yard long.
Kiko pointed to the place where the shot originated. 'That is one big Crossbow.'[/ic]

[ic]From behind the carnage, wafted up the sound of music. Pharren was buttressing their efforts, and as he did, the squire of the TradeGod planted himself in front of George and Cucino, as the point of the triangle. 'Chell, thou Foul beast, Chell, Amigal!!', he roared as he bounced the silvered head of his heavy flail off the shoulder of the creature.
The thing screamed, it's wings furiously pumping and it's claws gashing at the newly healed flesh behind Tusnus' damaged armor.[/ic]

[Superfluous Crow]

Oh yeah, my opinion is dependent on the style of my own setting of course. A fairytale or high fantasy setting would veritably depend on slighly cliché names.

[Ninja D!]

I do not create entire languages for my settings. That, to me, seems like it would be too much work for not enough gain. Most of it would never really get used...at least not in any way that people would notice without you pointing it out to them. I mean no disrespect to anyone who would do it, though. I think it would be pretty cool, actually.

I try to draw names for my setting, especially Natu, from real-world languages that I think fit the feel of the setting pretty well. I take actual names of people, places, and things then use them or change them just a little bit before using them. While this system certainly isn't perfect, I feel it works well enough.

I also try to avoid overly dramatic naming as it doesn't usually feel right to me. While some villages living of the edge of a haunted forest may call it 'The Great Haunted Woodland of Very Bad Things Like Doom and Such', I feel that forest should also have a proper name.

[Gamer Printshop]

While I am half Japanese, I can talk "house talk" I'm hot, I'm cold, I'm sick, I'm hungry, I'm tired, etc. - but I don't actually speak the language per se. I know lots of Japanese words, just enough to get me in trouble. I can count to 9,999, I know three ways to count (it depends on what your counting.) I know some geographic words - mountain = yama, river = kawa or gawa, kyo = city. That's about it, so I have to rely on an English to Japanese dictionary, online resources and every now again, a confirmation or correction by my mother (whose Japanese, born and raised).

However, I am doing my best to make as much in Kaidan use Japanese for titles, descriptions, people's names, specific items names. But I am truly discovering my lack of knowledge. For a while I had a noble lord named "Tanaka" until I discovered "tanaka" meant middle of a rice field, and a noble lord would not have anything to do with a rice field, that' a peasant fieldworkers name. That I find to be my biggest naming problem - knowing some Japanese, but getting things wrong just the same.

Lots of the words, I am just making up, making it sound Japanese. The island of Yonshu (which is a real Japanese word), the island the entire initial adventure module is based, was created as something sounding similar to "Honshu" which is the main island of Japan. I want to avoid naming provinces and cities after their real Japanese counterpart, rather words that "sound" similar. In some cases I discover I chose a real word, sometime I don't. For example there is such a place as Nagoya, Japan - its where the winter Olympics were held. I have a town called "Agoya" in Yonshu, but that's not a real Japanese word.

So I guess I am using both Japanese and pseudo-Japanese for the language of Kaidan.

[Cap. Karnaugh]

I've begun to use the Everchanging Book of Names pretty religiously.

Yeah, me too. Languages are really important if you're trying to create a consistent, full-fledged world; unfortunately, without some basic knowledge on the subject, one tends to make up words that are basically just modified English.
Since no one has posted this, I think you should all take a look at Mark Rosenfelder's site (www.zompist.com), which has some great tutorials about linguistics.

(BTW, I'm trying to develop a software for automatic world creation, and languages have their part too, so when I get there, I'll let you know ;) )

[Kindling]

Not on topic, but, hello gnola14! Welcome to the site and congratulations on your first post :D

[Cap. Karnaugh]

Thanks Kindling! Shame on me, though, for not having posted before (I became a member of CBG long time ago).

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Wow, two years is a long warm up period. Hope we'll be seeing more of you now!

[Cap. Karnaugh]

<offtopic>
Haha! That's true. I was quite active with my world (Messalan) at the time, so I looked up for a site where people could show their campaigns/worlds. My participation in the forum is directly related with my development of Messalan, so I guess you can see how stagnant the latter is :P
</offtopic>

[Cap. Karnaugh]

Oh! Coming back on topic, I do create custom languages for my settings. As for now, I have more or less ten languagues in my world, all of them in different stages of development. Yeah, it's a laborious work, so I'm eager to find a nice piece of software that runs on Linux and create some nice pseudo-languages