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

I was also pointed to Khazraa, which supposedly literally means "green" and might also be from the Quran?

This is why I wanted to ask someone who actually know what they're talking about. The English internet has rather gaping holes in it for basic facts for certain cultures. I can find a list of the most common Japanese names for the past fifty years, but of course anything on Arabic cultures has to be filled with misinformation, mistranslations, and sometimes people just flat-out make stuff up.

I need a name for a character named after a leader in Western History that restored order and security in a collapsed country by providing a government and fighting against warlords and bandits.

Countries couldn't collapse in a way like you're talking about until around the 17th century, and there's been few notable collapses since then, especially in western history.

Before then, feudal government effectively encouraged warlordry on the part of the nobility, and most places were in a constant state of low-level civil war during what is called peace, never mind what happens when a kingdom actually went to war with another. What you are describing as "collapsed" was just how things were until relatively recently.

In fact, the Pax Romana was a prolonged state of constant, bloody, civil war noted for not having many particularly threatening outside invaders or many invasions of other places.

That is the grammatically correct feminine form of the Arabic word for "green", but neither I nor my mother believe it to be in use as a given name, at least in the actual Arab countries. Maybe it's in use by some non-Arab Muslim nation?

And yeah, I hear you concerning the dearth of reliable information on this topic. I think that the following factors are at least some of the major contributors:

• The Muslim world is afflicted with widespread computer illiteracy compared to the Western(ized) world (which would impact the likelihood of information being exported out of the region through cyberspace).

• The Muslim nations' cultures are (along with many Third World nations) dismissed by most Western countries as too "primitive"/"barbarian" to be worth learning about.

• A lot of Muslim countries in the Islamic world generally despise the Western world for a variety of reasons, and thus have little to no motive to share information about their culture with people from said world; some have history of exploitation by the West (especially those that were former colonies of European powers), others are driven by more recent issues (e.g. the perennial Western bias towards Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the War on Terror), and others just look down upon non-Muslims in general.

• Generally poor economies and being by and large dominated by dictatorial regimes limits the likelihood of intellectuals bothering to spread such information instead of, say, devoting themselves to combating domestic/regional issues that are of far more pressing concern.

Edited by MarqFJA on Dec 19th 2022 at 4:31:41 PM

Athelstan? United a bunch of smaller kingdoms and tribes to create the kingdom of England, drove-off a bunch of vikings.

I need names for two types of beings. I've been calling them both "spirits" and it's getting confusing.

The first type of beings are incorporeal and don't have much of a mind though they do have sentience but not really capable of thought. Maybe on the same level of intelligence as a fish or lizard.

The second type is more ghostly and ethereal with a sense of self and capacity for thought. As sentient and intelligent as humans though incapable of directly communicating with humans via speech so, to humans, how intelligent or self-aware they are is up in the air.

They can both be visually perceived by humans in some circumstances with the former appearing as vague and changing shapes and lights while the latter usually have more of a fixed form. Beyond that, there isn't too much different between the two. They both do the kind of stuff you'd expect spirits to do - curses, enchantments, possession, etc.

Edited by WSM on Dec 19th 2022 at 6:53:39 AM

For the first type, I might suggest "wisps": it seems to me to fit both the "small, shifting, floating shapes" appearance and the lack of intelligence.

For the second... perhaps something like "sylphs"? (Originally spirits of the air, and thus perhaps fitting for a somewhat-airy-seeming spirit.)

Or, taking another tack, perhaps "eidolons"? (Meaning something like "apparition", although it can also mean "an ideal", I believe.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 20th 2022 at 10:28:44 PM

I also vote for wisps for the first group. Or if you want to get wordy, lesser spirits.

As that second name implies, the more ghostly and intelligent group could just keep being called spirits.

Thank you - good suggestions. My concern with calling the first one "wisps" is that it might suggest that they are primarily ghostly beings when the reality that I would like to emphasize is them primarily being incorporeal (thus VERY rarely seen or interacted with) and not really being able to directly interact with the physical plane. I might just keep them as "spirits", I'm just worried that would imply they are sentient/intelligent as that's usually how "spirits" are depicted in fiction.

Wisps, sylphs and eidolons would all make good names for the second one though. I'll definitely be taking those into consideration. Come to think of it, eidolon might work for the first one. I'll think about it.

The first ones are supposed to be the "greater" of the two. Like, more powerful or "spiritual". I would just call them "pure spirits" but that sounds, I don't know, kind of weird.

Edited by WSM on Dec 23rd 2022 at 9:42:40 AM

So I've been kicking around this idea for a game where you play as an anime magical girl in a realistical Monster Hunter-esque open world but I've been having trouble coming up with a good title.

Maybe something like "Mahou Slayer"?

Otherwise, can you perhaps tell us a bit more about the game, both in mechanics and plot?

Speaking for myself at least, my impression of the word "wisp" is somewhat the opposite: it makes them seem less ghostly, less like conscious beings.

After all, they would share a word with gaseous lights and shreds of fog, and other such ephemeral, elemental phenomena.

If there's the suggestion that they're beings, then "wisp" to my mind suggests that they're minor beings, perhaps more basic, or perhaps less "complete" in some way.

"Spirit", on the other hand, very much suggests a being to me.

I would suggest against it, myself: remember that "eidolon" can mean "an ideal" or "an idealised figure"—which (to my mind at least) implies something more fully-formed and more coherent.

Absolutely!

So the main plot is about a Magical Girl who got Isekaied by into this world by the main villain during a fight with them. She then runs into the tutorial boss in a ruined town who it turns out is actually a tailor transformed into a monster. Turns out all the townspeople have been turned into monsters and now the MG has to free them by defeating them. Each villager you free unlocks a new shop or facility and there's a whole base building mechanic.

The game plays mostly like an Action RPG with classes and a fairly simple skill tree. The classes are Warrior (fights witch sparkly weapon), Witch (just goes straight up magic), and Idol (fights by singing and dancing). Sort of a Fighter, Mage, Thief situation going on. There's also the secret classes Dark (a beast master who summons slightly less powerful Monsters of the Week) and Deconstruction (a parody of poorly made deconstructions that think just throwing in blood and angst makes it a Deconstruction, she's fairly powerful but damages herself when using her powers cause it's "edgy").

Edited by BackSet1 on Dec 23rd 2022 at 4:01:35 AM

What's the name of the setting?

I... forgot to give it a name.

We'll skip that part then. What's the main character's name?

That is a semi-complicated question.

Technically the main character doesn't have a name (you choose their name at the beginning) and each class has its own Magical Girl name that you can't change (take care of that pesky "can't have every possible name voiced" problem). The Witch is called Hex☆Heart, the Warrior is called Princess Powerhouse, and the Idol is called Bubblegum Pop.

I just came up with a world name: The Dark Wilds (formerly The Vibrant Wilds).

The Dark Wilds

Into the Dark Wilds

X of the Dark Wilds

X being Warriors, Magical Girl, etc. Pick a noun.

An interesting plot and concept, I think!

So, what then about "Magical Beast Saviour"? Or, for more verbosity, perhaps something like "Magical Saviour of the Beasts of Dark Wilds"?

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 24th 2022 at 10:35:54 PM

I need a good generic name to use for collectively denoting all sorts of Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps (animals, helpless civilians, unaligned paramilitaries, etc.) in a Real-Time Strategy game that is set in a modern-day/futuristic war.

Rejected candidates listed below:

• Neutral: My vision of these Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps is that they would include mercenaries that a human/AI player can hire to fight with them, and non-playable (quasi-)factions that can be won over to a player's side if they fulfill certain conditions and would thus fight alongside them as an AI-controlled ally (i.e. becoming Neutral No Longer). As a result, "neutral" is only viable as a level of alignment/relations status.
• Critter: It only makes sense as a generic term for animals or animal-like creatures, and so only useful as the name of such a sub-category of Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps.
• Creep: It has overly negative connotations, and sounds too "fantasy-ish" due to its origin in the Warcraft video game series.
• Monster: It has the same issues as "Creep", with the caveat that it originates in much older RPGs; in addition, its application to entities that would otherwise not even be remotely qualified to be called "monsters" (e.g. human civilians) is very dubious at best.
• Mob (short for "mobile"): It is also too "fantasy-ish" due to its origin in old RPGs (which were mainly fantasy genre ones), and sounds too jargonistic as well, not to mention that it inherently excludes non-mobile entities (such as structures).
• Civilian: This term excludes anything that is logically not a "civilian" per the typical definition of the word, such as animals (by dint of being non-human and non-sapient^note And before you mention dolphins, I personally count them as "proto-sapient" at best until solid evidence is found of them being truly sapient (which I think would be cool, mind you).) and armed fighters.

Edited by MarqFJA on Dec 28th 2022 at 3:45:35 PM

Entities?

Unaligned?

That would include every object in an RTS game, wouldn't it?

Same "alignment status" issue as "Neutral".

Aparts? Asides?

Edited by erazor0707 on Dec 28th 2022 at 8:30:06 AM

That sounds really awkward.

... You know what? I just got an idea: reintepret "NPC" – which, as the usual RPG term for characters that are not player-controlled but also not automatically hostile to the player characters, would apply to RTS games' neutrals/critters (and often creeps, since they are typically only hostile if you trespass within a certain range or aggro them, and don't bother pursuing you if you flee) – as standing for "Not Player Controlled", with the understanding that "Player" means "active participant in the game" in the sense that they actively seek to win the campaign mission/skirmish battle (and are the only ones to whom win/loss conditions apply in the first place), thus including human players and AI players (whether ally or enemy). The NPCs, in other words, are defined by being natural bystanders to the conflict between the Players, who only stop being bystanders under specific conditions (e.g. being attacked enough times by a Player that they get fed up and change their diplomatic status with said Player from Neutral to Hostile^note Compare the City-States in the *Civilization* games).

How about that?

Edited by MarqFJA on Dec 28th 2022 at 6:07:02 PM

World Denizens? Or just Denizens.

Same problem as "Entities".

I did come up with a possible solution in my last post, though.