The "What's a good name for this?" thread

Very much not human-derived.

In that case, ingest a bunch of Scrabble pieces along with a fifth of hard liquor...drink rapidly until nausea happens, then vomit. Whatever comes out in anything resembling a line, use it.

This works for two reasons; one, you are totally leaving behind linguistic convention...And two, you'll be drunk enough to think that naming your race that is a good idea.

While I don't agree with the exact technique, Scrib has the right idea. If the name comes from a language that has no connection whatsoever with any human language, just play with random letter combinations until you find something you like.

{Why does my spell-checker insist that "combinations" is a misspelling?}

edited 31st Dec '10 4:17:33 PM by Madrugada

Laintreui

Syustanik

Klennyutre

Xustisyt

This is fun.

Your spellcheck is playin' with you.

Just keyboard mash for a while (and then add some vowels).

Segrqaer Nilkisn Mthgweg

Ananzt?

I liked Xustisyt the best.

Laintreui or Xustisyt were the best.

Laintreui - /laintreui/ - Line-Trewy?

Xustisyt - /xustisyt/ - Shustisüt?

edited 31st Dec '10 6:51:58 PM by sz

Ley-ehn-treh-ih

I usually pick a bland, Exactly What It Says on the Tin name, look up synonyms, translate them, read out the translated word in the original language (if using Latin characters), transcribe the reading in IPA, read out the transcription as if in the original language and then refine it so it looks like a real word.

This sounds embarrassingly geeky.

Need a name for a character!

Think George Washington but a teenage girl with ice powers fighting in the American Civil War leading an army in the Western Theater. Preferably could sound good with the last name "Thomas".

edited 31st Dec '10 7:56:30 PM by Scholastica

Adelaine "Fightin' Doll" Thomas.

...I like nicknames Badass Damsels got in the olden days.

Hmmm...

"Slow Trot" Adelaine

Adelaine "The Rock of Chickamauga"

Adelaine "Sledge of Nashville"

Corpses animated and mutated by a vein of magic that should not exist in that universe. They become extremely emancipated, their limbs elongate, and their bodyily functions...change.

They are basically mindless eating machines, and used by the Big Bad of the story as Mooks. Extremely fast. Their claws/hands are very sharp. Still, their defense is kind of sucky.

So, yes, kind of like zombies but not quite. Their original name was going to be "the Vore" or "the Vora", but...um, yeah.

Ugggggh stupid scanner isn't working. Have a crappy iPhone pic◊

Gytrtyr

First off, awesome sketch Latia!

Lets see. Hmmmm

• Kryx
• Verok
• Jysti

edited 1st Jan '11 7:26:13 PM by AtomJames

Veinsouls? Life-eaters?

If you don't mind rel-word names, you could try 'ghouls'.

You could try messing around with the word roots that mean 'death'. Like 'necro-' or 'mord-'.

Latin/Latin based is always good, as is Greek so if you don't mind that we have 'toma' from Greek 'ptoma' meaning "the fallen" and maybe 'caders' from Latin 'cadere' which is the root of cadaver.

edit to ask - Is the name 'The New Sweran Cooperative' too much of bad-nation name? I mean, they are the aggressors in the story but I don't really want it to come off as The Peoples Republicof Tyranny

edited 4th Jan '11 4:13:55 PM by AwayLaughing

Depends. I think that works for a modern-day or sci-fi thing, but if it's a fantasy story, maybe not.

For my cyberpunk/biopunk story the characters have these items (they could be gloves, shoes whatever is possible to wear) that they wear that harnesses some kind of inner energy or chemicals (still deciding on that, I'll keep it deliberately vague for now) that they have as a fuel to do whatever cool powers and stuff (like say, generating fire or sending out signals to control a swarm of nanomachines or something).

For the moment I had the placeholder name Psybernetics as an obvious portmanteau of psychic powers (how it's perceived) and cybernetic implants (how they essentially function) but it sounds really silly the more I think about it, and psybernetics and cybernetics are pronounced exactly the same so I don't see why they'd use terms that sound so phonetically similar when it's so easily to confuse them.

I've been trying for a while to come up with sci-fi buzzwords and prefixes but it's still difficult to come up with something so I was hoping people could give me a few pointers.

You could always go with something non-descriptive, like Gear, as in: "What kind of Gear are you wearing?" Or maybe Harnesses?