on inventing names and words
Taking a break from characters descriptions, so here are a few tips on word-making and names from a language nerd.
So, you have to name a thing, or a person, or a concept. Maybe it’s supposed to be in a forgotten, alien, other-worldly language. Maybe it’s just new so people had to come up with a name.
Naming things&concepts:
If it’s just naming a new object/concept and inventing a new word for the English language (or whichever language you write in), then you should account for the grammatical rules and the inner “grammar logic” of said language.
Look at how new words are formed in general: airplane, telephone, and computer are all examples of relatively fresh words. If you want to name a concept, a good example would be internet slang, which you probably know better than me.
If you’re not using an existing language as a base, then onomatopeia really helps. We know that “pillow” is something soft, and “rock” is something hard and maybe sharp, and we would know it even if we saw the words for the first time. Think about what you want your word to feel like, then construct it in a way that would conduct said meaning. I’ll add a bit in onomatopoeia-based word construction in the end.
Naming people&places:
People, cities, countries. They all need names, and John the country, John the city, and John the protagonist don’t always work.
Again, if using existing language as a base, look at examples in said language, figure out naming patterns.
If working without a language as a base, onomatopeia is your best friend, but remember: you might want to construct naming patterns, too. Is there a typical suffix/postfix/interfix for cities? For towns and villages? For countries?
Are there masculine/feminine/gender-neutral names for people? What’s the difference? Can a reader notice said difference without you having to point it out?
These may not seem important, but they help drop little bits of in-depth lore: the name of this city suggests that it only recently grew, because its suffix is still that of a village. This country’s name looks a lot like the name of a city, indicating that it might have been a city-state at some point. And this town has both a person-name suffix and a town-name suffix (or postfix, or interfix, or anything, whatever you want!), indicating that it might have been named after someone.
A bit on onomatopeia-based word construction:
This is pretty obvious, but it took me much longer to figure out than it should’ve, so I’m here to help other tone-deaf people out there.
I’m going to use people’s names as examples.
What do you want the name to sound like? Is it supposed to be intimidating? Soft? Gentle? Arrogant? Is it a name that should be yelled, roared, announced, whispered, singed?
Once you figure out what you want your name to be like, make a list of letters that you think would sound right in this context. For example, we want the name to indicate strength:
D R T K G H Z B for consonants
A U O I for vowels
Mash them together in a relatively pronounceable way: Duzirtog Bir. Truly a name that makes enemies tremble.
I hope this helps!
