Re: Inventing names

Carsten Becker wrote:
> Manisu!                                  [ Be greeted!
Idile! (Good day!)

> Sira iltáyang nelnoin vaena!             [ I need your help!
Vraz'r axil! (I hope I can help you!)

>
> Before I'm starting to work on a conworld  I need names, I
> thought & decided. But how to come up with names? Shall I
> just make up (at least for now) random, meaningless names,
> or should I make up typical words that can appear in names
> (e.g. animals' names, gods' names, war, battle, rich, poor,
> nice, good, bad etc.)? Or shoudl I even mix both?! The
> problem with descriptive names, such as "Stormcloud" is
> that they're mostly at least trisyllabic and that way don't
> fit what I'm used to -- European names are rather short,
> only one or two syllables mostly. OTOH, when you're looking
> at Indian or generally SE-Asian names, three syllables are
> very short!
> Then there are the place names .. The same problem, the same
> question ... But descriptinve names are IMO normal, and
> many place names are polysyllabic, so this shouldn't be a
> that big problem. At last I could force my self to call the
> biggest ocean of the map of my conworld I've drawn some
> time ago "Radám Anana", which is Daléian for "The big
> ocean" (Ocean big.3sg), Ayeri would be sth like "Caron
> Nucárya" (Sea AGT.big).
>
I had the same problem a few months ago. The first thing I did was learn
what some of the names used in _our_ world mean. For example: according
to www.behindthename.com (the first site I found) Michael comes from the
Hebrew _Miyka'el_ meaning "who is like God?". Carsten (or Karsten) is
listed as a Low German form of Christian, which has a rather obvious
meaning.

I translated some of these names into Suvile, according to their
etymologies. Michael would be in Suvile |Athlibon|, meaning the same
thing, and so on. Most "classical" names are similarly translated, since
languages usually have words for animals, flowers and gods. Also, a lot
of names are various terms for "beautiful", "manly", etc.

If your language (Ayeri?) can't make the name words small enough (like
if your "Earth-like" names are 5 or 6 syllables), then you have two
options:

(a) use short forms or nicknames (like in _Ringworld_, where all the
Ringworlders had six-syllable names, but everyone called them by the
first 1 or 2 syllables)

(b) use simple, meaningless words that fit the phonotactics of your
language (like Frodo in _Lord of the Rings_)

Of course, languages and cultures can borrow names of both people and
places. And most of our names (especially Biblical names) are old enough
to be affected by long-term lingustic evolution.

Most of what I said above applies to place names as well as personal
names. Place names are more likely to be descriptive, though, and more
likely to be in a different language. If all else fails, you could just
make up place names and say that they are from a lost language of
ancient times.

I hope all of this is of some help. I don't post much, but I tend to
ramble when I do.

> Cutanoea Caivo!                          [ With thanks!
Garaz nedesori. (Thanks are not needed.)

--
Michael

Reply