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

Are the middle and upper classes marked purely by differing amounts of money, or do they have other culture-specific traits?

(For example, in our Western culture, the middle class is fairly broad in what it does for a living; but in a fantasy world, the middle class might be almost entirely merchants, or guilded craftsmen, etc.

This in turn may inform what name might fit the class in question.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 7th 2024 at 9:38:11 PM

I'll have to think about it some more. But I might lean into a pseudo cyberpunk theme here. Involving the value of identity and free will. So the upper and middle classes would have more free will than the underclass. And the upper class would be the ones with the most identities, being able to use the memories and identities of others to achieve their own ends.

The general idea that the faceless masses here would be rendered at best, individual with no legal status and at worse robotic empty shells stripped of their memories and personalities and forced to follow preprogrammed protocols.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 8th 2024 at 7:24:23 AM

What are some abstract nouns that are derived from physical substances (like tripe, gall, or schmaltz) or sound like they could be (umbrage, languor, odium)?

Well, in the vein of "gall", there's "bile".

Otherwise, two more that occur to me:

• "vitriol"
• "humour"

Would "Silver Shark" be a good Red Baron name?

It's for the same story as above though, and the atlantean cultural view of sharks may differ from the western human view, though i'm not yet sure how exactly.

"Silver Shark" also alliterates in the language i'm writing in (though as a compound word).

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 13th 2024 at 6:32:06 PM

@MorningStar1337: Aah, interesting—and horrifying!

Okay, so, my instinct is to stick to Latin, given that the one name that we have is so derived. However, my grasp of Latin isn't great, so I'm not confident of the following. Still, I offer them in case they are desirable, or otherwise provide inspiration:

• For the "middle class": Individuii (As they each have an identity, but only one.)
• For the "upper class": Innumerii (As they may have many identities.)

(I'd also suggest that someone better-versed in Latin than I correct my construction of those words, if called for.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 9th 2024 at 10:30:32 PM

How does "Bauhansa" sound as a name for a German megacorp? I derived the first part from German Bau ("[the act of] construction/building") as a nod to Germany being associated with industrial power and superb engineering and efficiency. The hansa part is, of course, a reference to the Hanseatic League.

FWIW, Bauhaus is a real-life German company.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 9th 2024 at 9:33:36 PM

Title ideas?

It's about a young hyena politicking herself into the pack's leadership^note  (hyenas do have friendships and apparently political alliances in the real world), and seeking revenge on a lioness who killed her mother. In the killer's pride, the dominant male's brother^note  (lion prides can in fact have more than one male, unless they're Tsavo Lions. Nomadic lions travel alone or in pairs, pairs being more frequent with related males) discovers he got a different lioness pregnant and decides to kill his brother because he could or would kill the cub (as lions do) and possibly also him. For this end he tries to get in cahoots with the hyenas because he's outmatched, promising the protagonist revenge.

Vaguely supernatural stuff like perhaps precognitive dreams, near-dead characters maybe-hallucinating, and shamans and once the protagonist getting visions/dreams after taking drugs happens, but otherwise it's pretty realistic. The first comparison that comes to my mind is The Lion King (1994), think of The Lion King.

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 13th 2024 at 7:06:30 PM

Remind me of Lufthansa, so I guess it sound legitmate, but my German is still limited, so I can't be sure.

Maybe  Claudius's Instrument or Claudius's Poison.

Claudius is the villain of Hamlet of course, which has some similarities to the Lion King's plot; he is the Scar of that story.

He killed his brother, the king, by pouring poison in his ears.

I think it is not necessary to have a character named Claudius in your story in order for the title to make sense; people will understand the reference.

...............

Alternatively, and more simply, The Scavenger King.

Edited by jawal on Jan 14th 2024 at 11:29:10 AM

Yeah, Lufthansa is another inspiration for the name.

A supervillain who was a notorious, extremely powerful necromancer in ancient Egypt and escaped from the tomb he was imprisoned in back then during the Cold War and caused a global zombie outbreak in an attempt to conquer the world.

If this helps any, he also has four co-dragons whose disembodied spirits were imprisoned alongside him in a series of canoptic jars and who mainly function in the present day by possessing others.

It's a bit on the nose, but could he use the name of Egyptian gods, having come to believe he has replaced them in the modern world after they have been forgotten? He could for instance call himself Osiris, and his dragons would be Anubis, Thot, Ammit and possibly Maat. But I know it's not very original.

Or go with the Egyptian word for "Darkness" which is pronounced as "Kkw"?

People might figure out of to say it out loud after a while, as long they don't see it spelled out as a hieroglyph on a piece of paper.

What would be a good name for a small, localized dimension in which the law of mass and gravity is completely distorted and malleable?

Context: In this fantasy battle series, one of the most powerful techniques superpowered beings can use are creating a field that overwrite the surrounding reality with a landscape that reflects one's ability and soul (I'm calling it Sanctum for the time being). For anime/manga watchers, think of Domain Expansion from Jujutsu Kaisen.

The very first user of this ability is a man who is also happened to belong to a group of powerful villains whose members each represent seven deadly sins. He embodies Greed and he lives in a giant mansion filled with all sorts of luxury items, and his primary power is increasing the weight of any object he touches.

After the main character help him realize that he has been obsessing over wealth to fill the void in his heart and what he truly wanted was freedom, he finally turn against his former allies, including the final boss. To buy time so the MC could escape, he casts Sanctum for the first time in his life.

Inside, his normal ability has now expanded to basically controlling the entire mass and gravity within, such as small black holes, removing opponents' gravity, and so on...until the final boss casts her own Sanctum to shatter it and execute him.

Now, what would be a good name for this Sanctum? My first thought was "Mass Gravity Sector"...but that really doesn't feel magical at all.

Also, it would be especially better if it also hints at guilt and sense of being weighed down.

I want to give a bunch of characters surnames borrowed from prominent primatologists who were pioneers in studying the great apes, but I noticed that most of the scholars in question have English or Germanic surnames, which presents a complication for my desire to have the scientists hail from a relatively diverse range of national/ethnic backgrounds. What would be a good way to alter the names for that purpose? Or should I just settle for using the given names as the vehicle for showing that aforementioned diversity?

Hmm... Maybe something like "Fraught Domain"? Or "The House of Fetters"?

For those wondering, here are the namesakes in question:

• Louis Leakey (UK)
• Jane Goodall (UK)
• Dian Fossey (US)
• Biruté Galdikas (Canada, of Lithuanian descent)
• George Schaller (US, originally from Germany)
• Vernon Reynolds (UK)
• Adriaan Kortlandt (Netherlands)
• Toshisada Nishida (Japan)

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 17th 2024 at 12:59:40 PM

If it bothers you, maybe you can name the character based on famous fictional apes instead.

This page has a list of the most notable apes (and monkeys) in fiction.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_primates

Remember a lot of POC in America have an english first name (or surname, if not both). There's also no reason for (for example) a dutch POC to not have a dutch first name, if they were born there and/or are mixed race (in the latter case, it could also be the surname). Multiethnic names are perfectly possible.

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 17th 2024 at 8:28:24 PM

That's actually a good point.

For one thing, one could look for non-Western first names that are similar to first names on the list. For example, "George Schaller" might become "Gugu Schaller".

And for another, I could see "Adriaan Kortlandt" applying as-is to someone from the Cape Coloured community here in South Africa.

(Note!

I'm aware that in the United States the word "coloured" is a slur.

This is, however, a different usage, endemic to South Africa. In this usage it is not a slur, but simply identifies the specific ethnicity described in the link.

You still wouldn't apply it to a black person—that could well insult. And indeed, conversely, I imagine that you could similarly insult a coloured person (in this usage) by calling them "black".)

Re: Bauhansa as a name for a German corporation.

It reads like a German word, but I'm not sure how I should pronounce it. As in, which syllable should be stressed. I don't have this problem with Lufthansa or Bauhaus. Maybe because I live in a world where these are already well-known companies, maybe I'm just bad at pronouncing words (I had to go to speech therapy as a teenager), but maybe there's something about the syllables here. "Bau" being more open-ended than "Luft"? Hard to explain.

Edit: After thinking about Bauhansa pronounced like Lufthansa for half an hour or so, it sounds like a perfectly normal word to me. My brain is weird.

A real German company would have a (usually silent) suffix that explains the structure of the company. Something like AG (Aktiengesellschaft, publicly traded company), GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, something like an AG, but limited and usually smaller), KG (Kommanditgesellschaft, whatever that is), GmbH & Co. KG (Loophole Abuse formalized to the point that it is not really abuse anymore). Bigger companies can consist of several smaller companies. If you look at the job offerings at Deutsche Bahn, for example, you will see that some jobs are at Deutsche Bahn AG while for most others, the employer is a different company like DB Kommunikationstechnik GmbH or DB InfraGo AG. We call this a Tochterfirma or Tochtergesellschaft (Tochter = daughter).

In a formal context, I associate "Bau" or "bauen" with construction and civil engineering. If I came across a company named Hansa Bau AG (not sure if that already exists), I would assume that they make buildings - houses, bridges, tunnels -, or at least, that they started out in that field. In a more informal setting, like, asking a friend to help me with my new IKEA shelf, I would also use "bauen" (or "aufbauen" or "zusammenbauen") for assembly. But for a company that assembles high-tech products in a super-modern factory, I would expect a more impressive or tech-y word.

Compare "der Bauingenieur"/"die Bauingenieurin" = the (male/female) civil engineer, "der Maschinenbauingenieur"/"die Maschinenbauingenieurin" = the (male/female) mechanical engineer. Contrast "der Bauer"/"die Bäuerin", which is a (comparatively informal) word for farmer. I once knew some people who called female mechanical engineers "Maschinenbäuerin" as a joke, which sounds like someone who grows machinery in a field.

Edited by prinzessinnen-und-raben on Jan 18th 2024 at 11:06:20 AM

Nice to see feedback from an actual German on my German-related question.

Yeah, Bauhansa is supposed to be pronounced with a stress on Bau, similarly to how Lufthansa's name has the stress on Luft.

What would you suggest as an alternative to Bau, then?

& Yeah, I was starting to think similarly last night. Given that I'm planning to use these characters in a futuristic setting, where they are members of a scientific expedition to a newly discovered planet whose most notable native lifeform is a species of more or less literal ape-humans ^note the scientists are shocked to find that the species' genome is so similar to humans they start to suspect they're actual descendants of Transplanted Humans, and there is a prominent theme of colonialism in the plot ^note the expedition is subverted by their assigned private security force, who reveal they've been ordered by the scientists' corporate sponsors to loot the planets' resources and wildlife, it would be fitting to play up the colonialism theme via the scientists' names, with the surname corresponding to the colonial power and the given name signifying the colonized nationality/ethnicity.

As Ars Thaumaturgis noted, the character with the Dutch surname could be made to be from South Africa, where can be found the largest linguistic legacy of Dutch colonialism. And some if not all of those named after British people can be assigned nationalities/ethnicites from those countries that were once British colonies, such as India or Australia (specifically the Indigenous peoples).

Not sure if using literal ape-people as a stand-in for POC in a colonialism allegory is a good idea, even if the human heroes are all POC.

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 18th 2024 at 5:35:24 PM

Oh no, it's the ape-humans that are the actual protagonists, as they're the whole point of the work; the human scientists are there just to provide a human viewpoint for the reader's convenience, and (alongside the would-be looters/poachers) to ultimately demonstrate why the planet should be left alone by human civilization.

And by "ape-humans", I mean "they look like humans if their anatomy was geared for hand-walking and tree-swinging, had prehensile feet, and behaved like a significantly less humanlike version of Tarzan", to put it in simple terms.

And the colonialism aspect is strictly with respect to the contact between the offworlders and the natives; it doesn't have play any role once the offworld contact is eliminated, since there's a highly protective Mother Nature-like Genius Loci that will intervene quite viciously should the barely tolerated visitors overstay their welcome.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 18th 2024 at 8:18:26 PM

That depends on what your fictional company is about. What they originally did before they went full MegaCorp. What their origin story is.

If I came across a company with "Bau" in their name and no other context, I would think civil engineering. But in-universe, the context would be that the company does everything on earth and apparently also space colonialism. People wouldn't think that much about the original meaning of the name, it is just the word for the company. So it's more about what your readers think of it, or how it's explained to outsiders.

One idea: once upon a time, there was a medium-sized German company with a normal-sounding company name. Maybe it was Hanse Maschinenbau (compare Hanse Merkur, an insurance company), maybe it was the Ingenieurbüro Hansen & Bauer because that were the names of the founders (compare Kühne & Nagel, a logistics company, compare also Scrooge & Marley from A Christmas Carol), maybe there was just one founder with the name Hans Baumann who wanted to do something clever. Then, something happened - becoming a publicly traded company or preparing to, expansion to new fields, a company merger or three - and someone decided, you know what, we need a rebranding. If we want this international business thing to work, we need to sound cool and cosmopolitan. And that was when the Bauhansa [something tech-y] [something tech-y] [probably some Gratuitous English] AG was born. Time passed, more changes happened, humans entered space and so did the stock exchange. Nobody has the time to say "Bauhansa Maschinen, Mikrotechnik, Raumfahrt und Robotics Aktiengesellschaft IN SPACE" even with the auto-complete feature of the cyber-parts in their brain (but maybe you have to say it like this if you didn't pay for the premium version?). So, colloquially, people call it the Bauhansa. Even if that doesn't make much sense in reference to what the company actually does.

Side note: don't shorten Bauhansa to BH, that's a piece of underwear.

Side note #2: I said in my previous post that Bauer means farmer, so it doesn't sound very tech-y. Bauer (plural: Bauern) can also mean peasant in a more general sense, and it is the chess piece that English speakers call a pawn. Just if this is in any way useful to your story about unwitting humans being sent to an unknown and probably dangerous frontier by those in power who are fine with double-crossing them.

Thanks. Irony is, I'm writing* a novel in a setting where most characters are English speakers. In theory, they should speak the English of the sixteenth century (except for the framing device, which is early eighteenth century), with all the division of regional dialects and social class background this entails. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing this. Even if it makes my story inherently more modern.

But if there are any British tropers around, you can tell me how ridiculous my character's names are. In a setting roundabout five hundred years after the Norman Conquest and even longer after King Alfred the Great clashed with Danish invaders, we have Captain John Danemill (originally from the north of England), Sir Alfred Welsh (first officer, knight in service to a young Queen Elizabeth Tudor), Thomas Beauléon (second officer, younger son of a noble family, well-meaning but privileged), Matthew Johnson (shipping boy from a poor family, views John Danemill as a father figure - also the ancestor of the characters in the framing device), brothers Malcolm and Stephen Wesley (a common sailor and a carpenter; Malcolm sometimes has to defend himself against the terrible accusation that he could be a Scotsman), Dimitri (the other shipping boy, I haven't thought of a last name yet, grew up in a catholic orphanage in France, converted to Protestantism to get away from said orphanage), and the protagonist, Henry, called Hal (doesn't have a last name because he doesn't know who his father is, born during the last years of Henry VIII's reign). Oh, and they are all stuck together on a royal ship called The King's Son, which is an interesting name for a possession of the crown, given the royal house's luck with producing sons over the previous decades.

I assume that to someone who actually knows a bit about history, that sounds about as realistic as a character in twenty-first century Germany who goes by the name Thomas von Reichsadler. But it gets across who those people are.

That is maybe a discussion that deserves its own thread. How to avoid unfortunate implications when writing a story that touches on the themes of colonialism? I'm a white person from a country that committed and benefited from colonialism, writing* about a predominantly white cast of characters in a setting that is inherently colonialist, or at least very difficult to do without any connections to colonialism. Is it bad that I approach this from the POV of white people?

On the flip side, I'm a woman writing* about gay men and about the darker side of the Hello, Sailor! trope, that is, men and young boys as potential victims of sexual abuse (depictions on-page don't go further than harassment, but it's something that the younger characters and the resident Reasonable Authority Figure have to keep in mind as a possibility).

[*] by "writing", I mean planning a lot and not actually writing.