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ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9176: May 21st 2024 at 2:20:25 AM

I will say that "Zungar" does have a bit of a "hard" sound to me, and—perhaps suggested by the worry in asking post—does call to mind the sorts of words assigned to "primitive" societies.

I don't have an alternative to hand, however, especially given the etymological connections that seem to be desired.

I might suggest trying to stick with sibilant sounds—as seen in the end of "Ordos".

Well, on a different but related point, I'm stumped on what to name the ersatz for House Corrino. Given that the first Corrino assumed the name after the planet on which the final battle of a war against tyrannical machine intelligences was waged (Corrin), I should probably follow a similar derivation. What would be a good name for the location of such a battle? Something that sounds exotic, has a connection to technophobia that is rather subtle instead of being on the nose, and is relatively short and easy to say for the Anglophone?

[up] Hmm... I'm not sure that it's subtle enough, but perhaps something like "Sabotin"?

(I'm imagining the last syllable being a short-ish "een"—think vaguely French—not a harder "in". An alternative spelling may be "Sabotine".)

The intended connection being to "sabot", which was associated with with original "saboteurs", and said to have been used by them to damage machines.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on May 21st 2024 at 11:20:50 AM

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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9177: May 21st 2024 at 3:53:23 PM

Well, following the thread that led me to "Dzungar", there's "Choros"/"Tsoros", the name of an Oirat clan under whose leadership the Dzungar Khanate was founded in what eventually become Dzungaria (now northern Xinjiang). Choros has that sibilant quality that Ordos has, doesn't it?

Also, I had a eureka moment and looked up for the namesake of the Butlerian Jihad. Turns out it's one Samuel Butler, whose novel Erewhon (which was centered on portraying machine intelligences and self-replicating machines as potentially dangerous to humanity) was apparently a significant influence on Dune's own taboo on "thinking machines".

So after a bit of work, I came up with the following:

  • Lutber Melsuanote  as the prophet-like founding leader of what eventually became known as the Melsuan Crusade against the "abominable intelligence of thinking machines".
  • House Orheweno, the ruling dynasty of the galactic empire that owed its ascendancy to the Battle of Orhewennote , from which it takes its name.

What do you think?

Edited by MarqFJA on May 21st 2024 at 1:54:11 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9178: May 22nd 2024 at 2:20:53 AM

[up] I do like Choros, I think. ^_^

As to "Lutber Melsua", I'm not sure that I like how it feels on the tongue—but I do like the sound of "Melsuan Crusade".

Hmm... As a counter-suggestion, then, what about changing the first-name to "Brelut"? It's still an anagram of "Butler", but it feels to me to flow a little better into "Melsua".

(For the sake of clarity, I'm pronouncing it as "breh-loot".)

Regarding "House Orhewen", I'll confess that I'm tripping a little over the pronunciation—going from "or" into "heh" (as I'm inclined to pronounce it) feels a bit awkward for me.

But see what others think—it may be just me!

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on May 22nd 2024 at 11:21:03 AM

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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9179: May 22nd 2024 at 7:22:20 AM

I did start off with the name as Melsua Lutber, but thought that "Lutberian Crusade" may be too on the nose in the reference, so I switched the two name components around. It has the added benefit that Lutber sounds unisex, allowing for the possibility of the figure's sex becoming the subject of confusion over the subsequent millenia due to imperfect record-keeping and even some deliberate meddling. And I like how it sounds

The rh in "Orheweno" is supposed to represent the R sound being aspirated/voiceless, similar to the Ancient Greek pronunciation of the letter rho (hence why numerous Greek-derived/loaned words are written with said letter rendered as rh or rrh). (see more here)

Edited by MarqFJA on May 22nd 2024 at 5:24:19 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9180: May 22nd 2024 at 8:54:24 AM

[up] To the former, fair enough! If you like it, then that's the important thing!

To the latter, aah, I see! I hadn't thought that the "rh" might signify a digraph! Again, fair enough!

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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9181: May 22nd 2024 at 12:39:01 PM

I personally hate multigraphs because there's no easy way to distinguish them from non-multigraph versions of the same letter combinations that aren't confusable with other uses. That's why my personal romanization scheme for Arabic, for example, uses a lot of diacritic-based letter variants (e.g. for the letter Ḫāʾ خ, typically romanized as kh), many of which are in fact used in some official standards.

That said, I can tolerate their usage in this case because the words/names in question are in-universe supposed to be in the fictional lingua franca of the Orheweno Empire, which is under Translation Convention is represented primarily as English; with the heavy use of parallels to historical and modern (neo)colonialism and imperialism as overarching themes, it would make sense to have the oppressive empire's official and dominant language to have the same kind of nonsensical flaws that afflicts English and many other European languages, including the concept of multigraphs, and contrast that against a variety of marginalized in-universe languages that avoid such issues.

Anyway, to not stray for too long from this thread's purpose... I find "Navigators" to be too generic of a name to give to Dune's eponymous strain of Spice-mutated humans, and so I want a more distinct and fancier name to give to my setting's analogues of them. What do you guys suggest? It doesn't have to directly refer to their role as steersmen for starships when they're conducting hyperspace travel, to be clear.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 22nd 2024 at 3:26:48 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Nukeli Since: Aug, 2018
#9182: May 22nd 2024 at 11:52:24 PM

Could "Red Death" be a good assassin/spy codename?

He's The Dreaded will get anywhere and kill anybody, appears unkillable, and sometimes wears a red mask with his real appearance unknown.

The name is an allusion to The Masque of the Red Death where a prince and his friends in high places try to ride out a plague in an abbey while the country's people die, only fot a stranger to appear in their masquerade ball. The prince drops dead when he tries to attack the stranger, whose mask is removed only to reveal there's nothing under the mask: no face, no skeleton - the mask is only itself. Then everybody dies, because the stranger is the plague, and death is inescapable no matter how rich, powerful, or important you are or how safe you think you are.

(This isn't for my superhero story. Other people in the group would also have some kind of literature allusion names)

Edited by Nukeli on May 23rd 2024 at 10:03:49 PM

~*bleh*~
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9183: May 23rd 2024 at 2:12:03 PM

[up] Even without that allusion, I find "Red Death" is fitting as a nom de guerre, since it seems it's intended to strike fear as much as it is to conceal the real identity of the person behind it.


About my last question, I'll explain some essential lore to provide context: My analogue to Dune's Navigators are similarly the result of extreme exposure to the setting's equivalent of the Spice Melange (called Baharnote ), granting a limited yet still potent level of clairvoyance (among some other psychic powers) that enables safe (but not casual) interstellar travel through hyperspace, at the cost of extreme addiction to said substance and gradual transformation of their bodies into decreasingly human shapes, beginning with the development of a Third Eye and the end stage of such mutation being a vaguely humanoid amalgam of piscine, amphibian and/or molluscan features (among other deformities) that can hardly survive for long outside full submergence in concentrated Bahar.

These mutated humans are highly secretive, with few outside their personal attendants being allowed to witness them in person, let alone interact with them. As a result, most people have no idea what they look like, adding to the air of mystique and reverence that surrounds them.

With that in mind, what would be a good name to give to these Bahar-mutated humans?

PS: For those interested in further context, you can consult the following folder.

    A little history lesson 

Originally the above effects of Bahar hyper-exposure were discovered by pure accident, as a result of some hedonistic aristocrats and plutocrats' wealthiness and connections enabling them to over-indulge their Bahar addiction to a degree that commoners would be unable to. Once these mutates' development of psionic abilities was noticed, a group of ambitious biologists began deliberate experimentation with controlled Bahar hyper-exposure to refine the process; this soon was complemented by the extensive use of selective breeding to establish special bloodlines that maintain the genes determined to be conducive for optimal reaction to Bahar hyper-exposure, in order to reduce the risk of degeneration into nonsapient wretches.

These Bahar-mutated humans' potential for using their precognition for hyperspace navigation was realized when it became clear that there was no stopping the ongoing Melsuan Crusade from converting the rest of the human domain into embracing its taboo on artificial intelligence, including the navigational supercomputers that have been vital for reliable hyperspace travel. From there, the originally secretive society reorganized itself into a commercial enterprise for interstellar transportation, which then rapidly established monopolies across a sufficiently numerous collection of human systems to serve as a bargaining chip for negotiating its inclusion in the developing neofeudalistic order of the nascent Celestial Empire.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 23rd 2024 at 12:43:14 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9184: May 24th 2024 at 1:12:58 AM

[up] Sorry, I think that I missed your edit to your previous post!

Hmm... You've been using some transliterations of Arabic, I gather. What would a translation look like of something along the lines of "The Sighted Ones", or "They Who See"?

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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9185: May 24th 2024 at 3:44:36 AM

Yeah, though I want them focused if not limited to the Arrakis analogue and its natives, for obvious reasons.

Edited by MarqFJA on May 24th 2024 at 1:44:59 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9186: May 24th 2024 at 4:22:07 AM

[up] I'm not sure that I follow your meaning—are you saying that you want the name to be focussed on the Arrakis-analogue?

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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9187: May 24th 2024 at 10:45:05 AM

No, I meant that I want the Arabic names and terms to be focused on the Arrakis analogue, i.e. minimize their usage for things outside of that planet and the Fremen ersatz.

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ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9188: May 24th 2024 at 11:31:22 AM

Aaah, I see!

Hm, okay.... then maybe a Latin derivation? Something like the "Scientes" or "Sapientes"?

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jawal Since: Sep, 2018
#9189: May 25th 2024 at 1:20:18 AM

[up][up]

If you reconsider using Arabic for those mutants too, then maybe زرق اليمامة or اليمام may be adequate (bonus points in that addiction to Spice make eyes blue)

If you want a Latin name, then maybe The Cassandras?

Both examples work better if only women can become mutants.

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

If you wish for the name to focus on their physical deformities, then maybe Ghouls  "غيلان" or Cyclopes (though the last one is used by an X-man)

Edited by jawal on May 25th 2024 at 1:07:59 PM

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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9190: May 26th 2024 at 9:29:23 AM

[up][up] I don't know why, but straight-up Latin sounds too... lofty, for the lack of a better word... for these guys. Especially those suggestions.

[up] Oh, I could use زرق اليمامة as an analogue for Dune's "Eyes of Ibad" for the blue-on-blue eyes, actually. Or at least, as the term used by the ersatz!Fremen.

Not keen on the other names, unfortunately, although I might use غيلان as the ersatz!Fremen's term for something that fits the connotation of evil, whether real or mythical.


That being said, I was thinking the last couple days about how to name these ersatz Navigators, and wondered if I could find something that could give a connotation of these guys falsely believing that they are in a state of enlightenment (akin to the Buddhist sense) due to their acquirement of psionic (and especially precognitive) abilities.

I couldn't find any Buddhist terms for such a "false enlightenment", but I did happen upon a couple of existence states that could be said to represent it:

  • Devas, celestial beings that are analogous to other religions' deities note , sharing the usual treats of great power, long life (though not immortality) and being "happier" than humans (hence why they are the highest of the Six Paths), but which are not inherently better than the average human, being quite fallible and vulnerable to many of the same vices and passions. In fact, they are so engrossed in the bliss accorded by their state of existence that they tend to get trapped in it and not bother pursuing true enlightenment, and have a surprisingly high chance of falling into the lowest two realms (Narakas/Hell and Pretas/"hungry ghosts") due to how intensively their existence consumes good karma, arguably making them worse off than a mere mortal is; this is why experienced Buddhists would warn you to not confuse devahood with enlightenment.

  • Asuras, warlike "titans" that are outright addicted to their passions — especially wrath, pride, envy, insincerity, falseness, boasting, and bellicosity — and envy the devas for their more "blessed" existences, leading the two groups to constant war. Among the Sixth Paths, they vary between being placed above humans (for being "happier") or below them (for lack of virtue and greater suffering). The more malevolent ones can be considered equivalent to demons of other religions.

Some Buddhist traditions don't even bother distinguishing between devas and asuras as separate paths, lumping them both under a single one. And some of the descendants of deva reinterpret the name negatively as meaning "demon", "ogre" or somesuch.

With that in mind, I see a lot of parallels between the ersatz!Navigators and both of the aforementioned groups:

  • Like the devas, they enjoy a state of blissful euphoria (as long as they are hopped up on Bahar), and falsely believe themselves to have reached the apex of human evolution due to their sheer psychic might (they're mostly famous for their precognition, but are potent telepaths and fearsome psychokinetics as well), blind to the fact that they're actually an evolutionary dead-end that can be surpassed if someone with the right genetics and mental fortitude is subjected to Bahar hyper-exposure.
  • And like the asuras, they are drunk on both their acquired power (both psionic and in the form of immense social influence and wealth) and the euphoria of the Bahar-induced trances they pretty much constantly submerge themselves in, as well as being consumed by their passions and vices just as normal humans are (magnified by their aforementioned power), including jealousy over their place within the Empire and the same propensity to using violence and treachery that all other power players within the Empire have (though it's almost entirely their mortal agents who engage in such intrigue on their behalf).

Thus I've thought of blending the two names: "Devasura". It felt off, though, so I tried playing around with it by taking inspiration from some of the root words' descandants, and ended up with "Tevasur". In-universe, the ones who coined the name suffered from Future Imperfect and thus mistakenly believe that the term refers to godlike beings that exist in a state of full spiritual awakening/enlightenment.

What do you think?

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MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#9191: May 27th 2024 at 6:12:25 PM

Decided to go with a Pretentious Latin Motto for a (chapter) title and am looking to ask Latin experts for translations.

I specifically want to translate the phrase "From the ashes, I rise." to a Latin motto. "Ex cinere, orior" is what google spat out, but I'm not sure if the machine translation is accurate or poetic enough.

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#9192: May 28th 2024 at 1:11:45 AM

Ex cineribus, orior, I think. You could substitute favillis for cineribus (the latter is for cold dark ashes, and Wiktionary notes "ashes of a burnt city" as a rather suggestive secondary definition, while the former is for embers which still glow or smoulder). Orior seems like a good choice - it has connotations of sunrise and birth, etymologically related to both "orient" and "origin" - but surgo meaning "rise, stand up, wake up, grow" or one of its derivatives would be a potential alternative. (Exsurgo means "rise" but also "recover strength" and would have a poetic anaphora to it; resurgo specifically means "rise again".)

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MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#9193: May 28th 2024 at 2:26:36 PM

okay, thank for the answer.

Decided to go with "Exsurgo" for the last part of the title. Cineribus is more tentative (while the fire alluded too still rages, I'm leaning on the "city ashes" definition here)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on May 28th 2024 at 2:28:21 AM

Nukeli Since: Aug, 2018
#9194: May 29th 2024 at 7:12:34 AM

Red Baron name ideas for a tech billionaire? The press or something would call him that.

I thought "The (Metal) King", but i can't think of a metal or mineral that's relevant in modern technology and sounds good in there (iron and steel are less important there these days than they used to be).

~*bleh*~
Trainbarrel The Story Supporter from The Star Ocean Since: Jun, 2023 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Story Supporter
#9195: May 29th 2024 at 7:16:19 AM

[up]

"Aluminium Rex"?

Aluminium being the most used metal on the planet, hence if he produces it, he would be filthy rich. And "Rex" is the latin for "King", that also sounds better than the english word.

Hence "Aluminium Rex".

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9196: May 29th 2024 at 11:56:19 AM

Any feedback on my last post?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#9197: Jun 3rd 2024 at 3:08:21 PM

Anybody else that's still here?

Another name-related thing that I'm even more stumped on than anything else so far: The ersatz for the Bene Gesserit. I honestly have no idea where to begin with coming up with a decent name for them. I actually tried looking up what the closest female equivalent to the Society of Jesuits is (which Frank Herbert's son speculates may have been an influence on his father coining the name "Gesserit", at least in how it soundsnote ), and the only thing that I found was the Sisters of Loreto (officially the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary).

Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 3rd 2024 at 1:12:36 PM

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ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#9198: Jun 4th 2024 at 2:58:55 AM

[up] I'm still around, and I daresay that others are—but, for my part, I just don't have answers for your questions, I'm afraid.

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Nukeli Since: Aug, 2018
#9199: Jun 15th 2024 at 1:56:47 AM

I was thinking about the names of alien characters in my other scifi idea. One of the major co cepts is that the humans and the aliens cannot vocalize each others' language (but can both learn to understand), so the humans can't say the aliens' names. This would most likely be dealt with by translating the aliens' names, so a guy whose name means "Lonely Star" would be referred to as "Lonely Star" by the humans. It isn't an etymology digging thing because the aliens' names are word names, and as such everybody knows what everybody's name means.

So anyway, i was thinking about three of the five protagonists and what to name them. I'm not sure how much variation in appearance would make sense (or names referring coloration) since the aliens are eusocial and might even reproduce asexually, but these ones' parent is not the same one who's every other major alien's parent, so i guess at least the three looking different from the other aliens can make sense. Also, the three were born and named at the same time, and the aliens are named soon after birth so having names related to their character traits would be bizarre coincidence.

  • If i named the alien who's black with some gold-ish copper patterning "Night-Dark" (dark as night) could that work or would it sound weird or stupid?

  • Also if i named the one who's mostly orange-tinted copper with some gold-tinted copper and way less black "Earth-Red" (red like earth) would that sound stupid in combination with the other one since they have basically the same structure (and sound like Snow White and Rose Red tyoe of stuff)? Especially if the third one's name isn't like that? I've also considered "Of Earth", but is more than one of the three having a color-related name a bad idea?

Edited by Nukeli on Jun 15th 2024 at 12:22:55 PM

~*bleh*~
Trainbarrel The Story Supporter from The Star Ocean Since: Jun, 2023 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
The Story Supporter
#9200: Jun 15th 2024 at 2:18:59 AM

[up] How about doing it the Native American way and name them in a way that suits their personalities?

If a name is given and it proves to be a bad fit, the child's name gets changed.

As it reaches adolescence, it may be changed again.

As the adult progresses through life, new names can be awarded.

How about this for your inquiry?

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

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