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Hello, Y’all. As you can see from my title, I’m here to beg some help from you… I’m writing a new story, (not my NaNo project.) in which I have several “mythical” creatures that accidentally (it was the phoenix’s fault) got dumped into the real world; however, I still need a name for THEIR world… Anyways, it’s just your general slew of mythical creatures, a couple of griffins, a wyvern, phoenix, and perhaps a dragon. The other characters are a dwarvish four-year-old, an elf, and a (from the real world) medieval knight. Their world is pretty dim, I don’t have much story-ing that will take place there, I just need a name…. So, what are YOUR world naming techniques? Do I need to figure out more info on their world before I name it? Any random tips that pertains to naming? Anything y’all have would help me a ton… And a quick shout-out to all you KeePer’s for letting me be a general nuisance without feeling TOO bad for bothering you XD. In all seriousness, thanks for being such a great forum community to where I’m not scared to ask my silly questions. 🙂
~AellaNot silly at all @Aella. Actually, I just take words and twist them up and see what I can make of them. Often it’s chance. Once I spelled ‘riveting’ wrong due to tangled fingers, and ended up with ‘Ivreton’. 😛
It also depends on what image you want to evoke with the name. Dignified? Try Eliandor. Fairytale-ish? Phantasmornia. Cute? Bellesmere. Scary? Karazian.
You can also take names of existing countries/words/places and scramble the letters until you get something you like. Instead of Ireland, Lireand. Instead of Norway, Rowayn. It’s great fun.I love coming up with names! What I usually do is take randomly long words from the dictionary and take out random letters from them. I.E. Peradventure would make Paventra. @aella
☀ ☀ ☀ ENFP ☀ ☀ ☀
@aella I like to spell words backwards, which is a technique I can’t take credit for, because I picked it up from another author. ? Or you could use a word from another language that would have significance if it were translated. For instance, Aslan is Turkish for lion.
@aella
Hi. I love names. 🙂 I usually just think of random letter combinations, or, if I want the word to mean something specific, I look up names that mean ________ [insert meaning]. I also have a thesaurus called The Thinker’s Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words by Peter E. Meltzer, which has a lot of unusual words in it. For example, if you look up the word holy, the word that replaces “holy” is “theanthropic.” Also, if you can’t think of any names, you could go to a name generator (there’s a really good fantasy place name generator here).@theliterarycrusader
I love the idea of spell words backwards. I need to try that sometime. Which author did you pick that up from? 😉@gretald It was Chuck Black, I believe. One of the main characters was named Leinad, which is Daniel spelled backwards. Also, Arrethtrae is earth and terra spelled backwards.
The thesaurus you mentioned sounds interesting. I’ll have to look that up! ?
@theliterarycrusader
Oh, okay. Man, I really need to read the Chuck Black books. 🙂 Both of those names are really clever.@gretald Haha! ☺️ You definitely should!
I’m not the right person to ask about world naming but @anne-swiftblade is. (Seriously, this girl just writes letters down and clever and unique character and world names just start to appear) 🙂 It’s how a great many place names have come about, for example, Mindelvia, Catherstance, Codash, and Glacialis.
Theater kid. Currently depressed because I can't stop listening to sad musicals.
All right, I heard my name 🙂
@Hannah a good place to start is a random word that has the right sound to it (like @Kate-F said). The next thing I find helpful is the computer keyboard. No seriously. Just stare at the thing. something about having an idea in your mind and then starring at a board with those same letters, but in an unfamiliar order, can often spark your imagination.
But try to keep your new words phonetic so the people who aren’t in your brain can read them 😉@kate-flournoy @dragon-snapper @theliterarycrusader @gretald @christi-eaton @anne-swiftblade
Thank you all so very much!!!! I’ll be trying at least some of these out over the course of the morning and I may be back to beg the favor of having my name choices critiqued… If that’s how you say that? ? Thanks so much!!! Now, on to the work of it…?
Google translate is actually pretty useful. Maybe go off a cool sounding Latin or Celtic word and hope that works. 😛
@writefury
Glad to see you on:). And yes! Ive been using it to see how they sound from something that doesn’t know how to pronounce them like in my head.
I’m currently leaning towards “Viliden” (using @kate-flournoy ‘s method of mixing up words and then some of @anne-swiftblade ‘s random letters…)
But what do y’all think of that? My other options currently are “Ganadir” or “very interesting world name” ??? I’ll be working some more throughout the morning though.
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