Re: Naming Mythical creatures

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 04:32:25 -0800, B. Garcia <madyaas@...> wrote:

>I'm a little curious on how those of you who've gotten far enough for
>your cultures' mythologies on naming various deities, spirit types,
>monsters, and mythical creatures?
>
>I've been trying to figure out how to go about it for the Saalangal,
>and I've looked to Tagalog for inspiration, but not much luck. I
>assume originally creature names would usually have some sort of
>meaning behind them (such as the recent example here - werewolf), So,
>how did you all go about giving names to the various creatures in your
>concultures' mythologies?
>
Well, there are no words for mythical creatures in emindahken yet, but there
are some words for spirits/deity, and other religious/spiritual topics:

*built on the root -adee- ('living being, not human')
   e'adee : 'spirit, soul' (e- is the abstract noun class prefix)
   njeeladee : 'angel; divine being; god' (njeel- is the divine/sacred noun
class prefix)

*built on the rood -hajf- ('parent')
   njeelhajf : 'God the creator' (lit. 'divine parent')

*built on the root -min- ('people/society')
   njeelmin : 'heavenly hosts; angels'

emindahken is very productive with combining prefixes and roots, so the
'divine/sacred' prefix (njeel-) can be applied to many things
   njeelken : 'scripture; revelation' ('divine/sacred speech', right now I
have the society as largely oral)
   njeeholjo : 'place of worship' ('sacred location/place')
   njeelriilja : 'religion; spirituality' ('sacred/divine path)
   njeelhalj : 'true essence of existence' ('divine/sacred circle')

etc. :)

James W.