Villainous species looks for a name

Hello guys, As the name suggests, I need a name for my main antagonistic species. Their abilities are:

• Shapeshifting
  • Derived from this, Healing Factor
    • However, they avert Shapeshifter Baggage, so no unlimited healing or shapeshifting
• Absorbing biomass by contact (voluntarily)
• When they injure someone, the injured person is slowly turning into one of them.
  • That said, the species is neither too intelligent nor too dumb (e.g. they know how to open a door, but have difficulties driving a car)

A bit about the universe it is set in: It's Alternate History 20 Minutes into the Future, albeit one where Romeros zombies never took off, and nobody really ever heard of them.

A name I came up with is "Wight", but I'm not sure that I want to use it as there could be better alternatives. Thanks for any help!

edited 20th Jun '17 8:59:43 AM by LordVladek

Wendigo?

Wendigos are connected to cannibalism, so unless that "absorbing biomass" thing is specifically geared to "absorbing" the flesh of humans, it probably shouldn't be called that.

Maybe "revenants"?

edited 20th Jun '17 2:46:33 PM by Sharysa

Implies undeath and desire for vengence. Not sure if that applies. Werewolfs?

You're basically describing a fire. The emberglow? The charred? The ashmen? The calcine? The kindlekin? The searsouls? Etc.

So far, Wendigo seems best. They are not exactly cannibalistic, and the absorption ability extends to plants and microscopic life, but I think that the word gets the idea to the reader.

Revenant isn't too good, because, as Belisaurius pointed out, it implies undeath, and my species isn't dead. The only thing they can do with corpses is absorbing their biomass, but not turn them. Werewolfs... I don't think that fits at all XD

But a fire-related name could also be good. "Flaring Ones", anyone?

I like the sound of "Searsouls", too.

And now that I'm looking at a thesaurus, I found "devouring" as a synonym for "fire" (wtf?!). "Devouring Kin", maybe? A bit long, but it describes the concept pretty good.

Any other suggestions?

edited 21st Jun '17 3:08:48 AM by LordVladek

Personally I think 'Wendigo' is a terrible name. It's not so much that the name itself is bad, but because Wendigos have been badly 'reimagined' by so many non-Algonquin writers that it's almost a trope in and of itself. (Also, despite commonly being used as 'Native American werewolves', Wendigo aren't shapeshifters).

But the shapeshifting and biomass absorption does bring to mind a different mythological creature:

The original concept of the Ghūl. Unlike the D&D version that permeates modern pop culture, the original ghouls were shapeshifting, desert-dwelling, very-much-alive-and-intending-to-stay-that-way, carnivorous monsters with a taste for living human flesh, not undead corpse eaters.

But if the name Ghoul is to cliché, you could always go with 'Qutrub'. Which is essential the same as a ghūl except older (the myth is older, I mean, not that the creature itself is an old ghoul), originally human and infectious.

It's actually along those lines that I personally avoid using any preexisting monster names or concepts. Pretty much every other concept is tied up in cultural baggage or copyright, or already has such a presence in the popular mind, that I've just found it easier to create creatures from scratch - names included.

My favorite example is when I threw a vampire story together, wherein vampirism was generally treated as dietary requirement. And then the hipsters took it over, and when they were done with it the teenagers claimed it. Long story short, there's a scene where the vampire is greatly annoyed that an apparent 'vampire restaurant' with lots of vampire-looking teens in it, is actually a vegan joint that serves a whole lotta tomato juice - in the process completely missing the point of both Veganism and Vampirism.

A couple of readers complained that it wasn't a proper 'vampire story'. They had genre expectations based on what I was calling the species. (In TV Tropes terms, they concluded that Genre Consistency - dictated by Our Vampires Are Different, no less - was more important that External Consistency.)

Forcing a reader to start from scratch without the aid of preconceptions means they have to discover your fictional world as it is presented to them. So, how about "Blightkith"?

@Robrecht I wouldn't want to name them ghouls, as they have a lot of implications that aren't my species. From what you've suggested I'd rather go for Qutrub, though I'm not sure about using that one (partly because I don't really know how it's spoken).

@Deus Denuo I thought about that too (inventing a name, that is), but I'm inherently bad at it. Blightkith, hmmm... I don't really like the sound of it. What about the "Scourge" instead?

If the monsters are seen as The Virus and if the characters in the story themselves consider what makes them monsters a disease might I recommend: Gula Pathogen.

You can then, if you like, have a little aside where one character refers to them as Ghouls and another corrects them to say that Gula is actually Latin for the mortal sin of Gluttony since the monsters consume people and animals (I'm going to assume that despite you saying they absorb biomass, they don't absorb plants, else they're pretty much unstoppable since even a small forest has more biomass in plant form than the average city has in humans), both literally and figuratively and not related to mythological Ghouls aside from sounding similar. And then settle on 'Gluttons' as a common name for the monsters themselves.

edited 23rd Jun '17 5:13:39 AM by Robrecht

Worst thing to do is overthink it, though, and in practice specialists and laymen often don't call something the same thing. IRL, no one says that they're infected with "HRV-A65 Rhinovirus"; they'll say they have a cold and then buy chicken soup on the way home from work.

"Scourgers" works, I think. The word is disassociated from the concept, so you are able to exert literary control over it. And it's general enough that it can also apply to a number of subtypes. Such as a variation that can shapeshift but doesn't absorb, or vice-versa: "Shift-scourgers" and "Blob-scourgers".

edited 24th Jun '17 12:05:57 AM by DeusDenuo

I didn't think about that naming angle. I did, however, think about various types, e.g. that some of them retain intelligence and guide the less intelligent ones. Or "Heavies", meaning that they've absorbed so much biomass that, if they stayed in human form, the ground couldn't support them if they wouldn't grow bigger feet/more legs (they'd still have Super Drowning Skills, though).

@Robrecht Actually, when I say "absorb any biomass" I mean it, including plantlife, since I'm aiming for Kill 'em All with heavy doses of From Bad to Worse.