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

I'm thinking of Ars Venationis, as a Shout-Out to the Ars Goetia.

Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)

What about Devil May Care? (Not to be confused with Devil May Cry)

How serious a cartoon are we talking here? Something serious/adventurous/dramatic? Or something more comedic?

First thing that comes to mind is "Hybrid-Terrestrial"

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 30th 2018 at 9:03:19 AM

Is it fine to ask for title suggestions for a novel?

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Allow me to dump some background details:

A little bit of both.

Cliched but usable.

The Donetsk Dispatch? The Mariupol Mandate? Straight Outta Sloviansk? Angel of Avdiivka? I'm an alliteration trash, sorry.

Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)

Consider a hypothetical race of spider-humanoids with a pair of venomous fang-bearing appendages projecting from their cheekbones that serve as their equivalent to a spider's chelicerae. Assuming Translation Convention sans Woolseyism is in full effect, what would be a plausible name that this race would use to refer to these appendages? For comparison, the plain English counterpart to the technical term antenna (as in the arthropodal appendage) is feeler, because that's literally its main purpose (serving as a sensory organ).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I suggest you take mandibles or jaws since you're asking for an alien anatomical term.

Right now, I'm creating my short horror story. I'm trying to create names for certain locations in my story.

• I'm trying to find a name for a fictional modern city in New Hampshire where scary, strange and sinister things happen. The name of the city create connotations of macabre, weird and of Anglo-French origins.
• A name for a Stonehenge-like monument located in the outskirts of the city. It was constructed by Abenaki to prevent Red Fog from entering the world. The name is supposed to come from the Abenaki language for 'stones'.

Up in Useful Notes/Paraguay

See, that runs into the problem that they still have humanoid jaws. The chelicerae-equivalents just happen to be flanking said jaws, akin to Monstrous Mandibles of the Functional Addition type.

I thought about just having a Contrived Coincidence that the literal translation of the race's name for the appendages into English just so happens to be almost identical to the translation of the human-coined term chelicera (literally "claw horn"), but it didn't make sense to me because they're neither claws nor horns (it would be a different story if they ended in crustacean/scorpion-like pincers).

Calling them tusks similarly doesn't work because they're not teeth. And they're certainly not jaws, even though it's somewhat common to call real-life chelicerae that for convenience (it's only remotely justifiable in the case of scorpions and acarids, since they're essentially primary mouthparts rather than tools for envenomating prey like in spiders).

The pointy tooth-like projections on these appendages could legitimately be called fangs (just as in spiders) or tusks (they do resemble them, and the term does get applied to not-quite-teeth projections, such as in this extinct animal), so... fangers or tuskers?

Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 1st 2018 at 10:10:09 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

What about "stings"/"stingers"? I don't think that the term exclusively applies to tail-borne parts, and it seems fairly accurate (especially given that the parts that you describe are, as you point out, not teeth).

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First, I've never seen the word "sting(er)" (in the organ sense, rather than action sense) applied to anything in zoology other than sharp pointy appendage(s)/projection(s) at the caudal end of the animal; when the organ is located at the rostral/cephalic end instead, it's called either a fang (e.g. spiders) or a claw (e.g. centipedes), mainly because that's the form that the organ in question (in case of spiders, it's because the "fangs" overlie the mouth proper).

Second... The race I have in mind already has a caudal scorpion-style stinger.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

As to the first, that may be in part because of what you noted there: in most animals, the organs in question either resemble mouth-parts (and thus are referred to as though they were teeth), or appear at the end of limbs (and thus are referred to as claws). The arrangement that you're describing for your creatures is, I think, somewhat unusual.

The second, however, is very much a salient point, and fair enough!

That said... Since they serve a similar function, I can see such a species referring to both sets of stingers as such, but differentiated by position: "my tail-stinger" as opposed to "my head-/mouth- stingers".

Conversely, I could see them having a name for the mouth-adjacent organs that simply doesn't translate well into English. If we are to translate it, we might go to its roots, giving us something like "mouth-venom-pinchers", or similar.

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Only if you're not someone who saw a lot of monster girl artworks and in the process noticed that insect-based monster girls tend to have such an arrangement either for the exotic factor or because their overall design is making at least a token effort to approach anatomical correctness ^note Nakamura Legra actually makes a point to maintain a high degree of anatomical correctness in his work; it's most visible in the arms of his mantis girls and the jumping legs of his grasshopper girls..

You know, according to Wikipedia, people used to use sting to describe a venomous snake's fangs and bites, before that fell out of favor. That being said, I think I've figured out the modern-day logic behind naming the venom-delivering organs and actions: If the organs are located in the mouth or just next to/over it (e.g. snakes' fangs and spiders' chelicerae), then they're treated as if they're mouthparts; if they're located on a limb, then they're considered claws (and most probably are actual claws); and if they're located anywhere else (but especially the tail) and cannot be called by any other specific name (e.g. some fish have spines all over their body that just happened to be connected to venom glands/sacs), then they're sting(er)s.

Yeah, that's the approach that I had been thinking of from the very beginning. I thought I've managed to articulate that thought when I mentioned feeler as the English informal counterpart to antenna, since it seems very plausible to me that such a race would literally call their antennae or even any other appendage with sensory functions a name in their language that literally translates in English to "feeler/sensor" (however it's originally phrased).

... And you know, I'm starting to rethink my reservations against using jaws. The term is not only commonly used to refer to real-life chelicerae, but is also applied to insect mandibles (which are genuine mouthparts) even when said mouthparts are modified in ways that make it physically impossible for them to be used for processing the insect's food (i.e. via chewing/cutting), such as in stag beetles and the soldier caste of termites and certain ants (they're so elongated away from the mouth and inflexible that they're useless for feeding, instead being entirely dedicated to functioning as weapons). I can't believe I've forgotten about this fact!

So, cheek-jaws (because they project from the jugal area of the skull), outer jaws (because they're outside the mouth proper), venom jaws (since they're venom-delivery organs)... not sure which to pick. Maybe there's even a better alternative that I haven't come up with.

Fun fact: Most people would assume that horns have to project upwards from the skull, and thus have to be located on the dorsal or anterior side... but certain ceratopsid dinosaurs have horn-like growths coming out of their cheeks (specifically the jugal bones), and paleontologists appear to be perfectly comfortable calling them horns.

Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 2nd 2018 at 12:51:39 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I meant unusual in nature, as I was replying to a point regarding zoology. (If I recall correctly.)

That's a good point, I do think.

Your reasoning may well be accurate, indeed. That said, if so, I suspect that at least part of it comes about due to humans not having such features themselves, and thus categorising them with features that are roughly similar, and more common.

Ah, I think that I'd forgotten your mention of that! Sorry! ^^;

That said, note that humans have specific terms for most of their own more-obvious features, including sensory ones: eyes, ears, fingers, and so on.

In the case of the term "feeler", the word is used to describe a sensory organ that humans lack.

I would thus imagine that a species such as you describe (presuming naming tendencies similar to those of humans, of course) would have a reasonably specific term for their venom-appendages.

That said, if they associate the use of said appendages with eating, or otherwise with their mouths, then their specific name for them might well be related to their name for their mouths/jaws, as you describe.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 2nd 2018 at 1:12:26 PM

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@eagleoftheninth

- While the other cities are under Ukrainian control (except for Donetsk), I like them and I'll have to write them down somewhere.

I need a name for a category of Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can. The thing that is being inside is a creature called an Illusian (pronounced Illusion)

Going by the idea of "illusion" I did a search for "Illusion Container", then "magician box", and came up with the wikipedia page for sawing a woman in half. From there, I got two possibilities to toss out: "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawing_a_woman_in_half#Goldin's_box_sawings Goldin]]", after Horace Goldin, who came up with different ways to do it, and "Wakeling", named for Alan Wakeling, which has that more fantastical element to it.

Obviously this won't work if you don't want to use stage magicians / illusions as a reference point, but it's the first thing I thought of so I ran with it.

On the other hand, I'm still partial to fanger or tusker as a name, considering that it's also plausible the race may come up with a name for the appendages that translates to English as "that which strikes with a fang/tusk", which neatly fits English usage of fang and tusk as verbs that mean "to strike with the fang(s)/tusk(s)", thus fanger/tusker.

Also, keep in mind that much of the modern English terminology for human anatomy is actually taken from multiple languages over the course of history, and is in all probability quite different from the terminology used by other human languages (barring the Latin/Greek-based names, which would only slightly differ based on each language's method of derivation^note e.g. the lower jaw is known as a mandible in English, but in French it's mandibule.).

Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 4th 2018 at 6:10:09 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Regarding "fanger" or "tusker", I think that either could work.

[edit] Although note that "tusker" is an extant word, and so of those two, "fanger" might be a little better. [/edit]

Regarding words for appendages, while it's true that English is a strange hodge-podge of multiple languages, I suspect that most other languages will be similarly specific about human appendages, just with perhaps a narrower set of source languages. I do stand to be corrected on that, however.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 4th 2018 at 8:47:49 PM

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I had this idea recently. How does the name "Jilyanne" sound for a fun-loving hedonistic lady?

I like to keep my audience riveted.

Sounds fitting. It reminds me of jill being slang for female masturbation.

I was just saying that since they come from other languages, it wouldn't be odd to find that some of those words originally meant the same thing as either each other or some of the English words used for related anatomical features. I only remember a case for scientific names, but Latin coxa and (Latinized) Greek ischium are used to denote two different bones of the pelvic skeleton, yet both mean literally the same thing: "hip joint" ^note that is to say, in their native languages, each referred to the exact same body part..

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New question on a different topic: I'm trying to come up with a name for a James Bond parody that is both female and of Japanese nationality/ethnicity. Does "Junko Bandou" work?

Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 4th 2018 at 10:54:36 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Admittedly, it sounds too much like James Bond and it sounds like an Expy character from an anime show. However, I can give you options that feel Japanese:

• Ami Nara
• Mizuki Azumi
• Natsumi Morimoto
• Akira Tajiri
• Fumika Fujita

Now return for a new names. What is the good toponym for these fictional locations in New Hampshire:

• An Anglo-French name for a fictional city known for its strange, scary and sinister events that occur in-universe.
• A collection of earthwork monuments constructed by the Abenaki as a lock to prevent the Red Fog and other entities from the Veil of the Beyond entering Earth.

Up in Useful Notes/Paraguay

That's fair: English does seem to have a history of absorbing words, and repurposing them to increase its expressive power. (Another example, albeit not an anatomical one, is the word "mutton": if I'm not much mistaken, it's derived from the French word for "sheep".)

Still, that doesn't necessarily indicate that other languages would be less specific than English. It may well mean, however, that English is a bad example from which to extrapolate to new languages.

Hmm... I quickly refreshed myself on the words for various basic sensory parts in Afrikaans (a descendant of Dutch, and rather similar to modern Flemish, I believe). As it turns out, they're similar to the same in English, suggesting that we may get our English words for such basic features from a single (Germanic, I suppose?) source. However, I don't know the Afrikaans derivations, so I don't speak with confidence.

English -> Afrikaans Eye -> Oog Ear -> Oor Nose -> Neus Mouth -> Mond Lip -> Lip Finger -> Vinger

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That's the point, actually: To make it quite unsubtle that this character is an Expy of James Bond.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

EDIT: Nvm

Edited by DarkbloodCarnagefang on Sep 8th 2018 at 7:23:14 AM

Note to self: Pick less edgy username next time.