Inventing names

Manisu!                                  [ Be greeted!
Sira iltáyang nelnoin vaena!             [ I need your help!

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).

Cutanoea Caivo!                          [ With thanks!
  Carsten


--
Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
  -> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri

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