TTRPG Devlog: Qet and Inaccessible Names
I've been boiling a thought in the back of my mind lately, in regards to Naming Things in Fiction.
Newer folk may not know this, but my longest running creative endeavour has been Qet; a dark fantasy eldritch horror setting with inspiration from various Mesoamerican cultures and histories. It's a worldbuilding project, narrative setting, and TTRPG-- relegated to the backburner for over a year now. I needed a break.
Herein lies my problem: Qet's "common" equivalent language is a conlang inspired by Nahuatl.
English-first speakers, particularly fellow Americans, struggle a LOT with Nahuatl and anything similar to it. I'm American so my audience would...include a lot of Americans. Naturally a lot of the friends I'd want to run the game for are also American.
People struggle to read a lot of the proper nouns in Qet. An early first draft campaign took place in the deep caverns of Tchaoxlik, and the players were given Zykeutuezyl-- little light-emitting lizards-- as their primary source of light, to care for.
The bottomless lake Chluetichlon is significant in the lore, the Coulqepluex are a major ethnicity, and Qeplueoytz are shape-shifting monsters entire campaigns could center around. I've more examples, but you get the idea by now, I'm sure.
Part of Qet's inception was me noticing that US/UK fantasy overwhelmingly takes inspiration from European cultures, and That Sucks! There's so much more in the world, for one-- and this is fantasy! I want to see UNIQUE worlds that aren't just England But With Magic. Qet was my first worldbuilding project, and at the time I began, I had yet to develop the ability to just...make new stuff off the dome.
So I needed a solid inspiration from the real world as a starting point, and I chose something I thought was severely underrepresented: Mesoamerica. There is no 1:1 "this is the Maya but they're blue" or "here's the Olmec but they're birds" type stuff in Qet, rather, there's bits and bobs spread amongst original cultures and the world they live in. Corn is a staple food. The climate is hot and humid with a lot of shared flora from the real world Mesoamerican region-- but more differentiated fauna. One culture wears Aztec-inspired capes but live in Pueblo-inspired adobe homes. Polished obsidian mirrors play into eldritch magic. Some cultures sit and sleep on reed mats. One regional religion is a blend of the Aztec faith and Catholicism. Alongside these and many other bits of inspiration, the trade language of the world is Qetlec, which is inspired by Nahuatl.
I quite like a lot of the Qetlec names and words I've come up with over the years. I find several to be particularly satisfying to say! But I do have to admit that I, myself, had to train and practice to pronounce my own conlang. It may be second nature after years of working with it, but I often run into the dreaded "sbah...sbshs...uh...however you say it" or blatant word-butchering from new readers. It's an accessibility problem, after a certain point.
When I think of naming in fictional settings I return time and time again to what I believe to be a shining example of strong, accessible naming: Destiny.
Everything players need to know has a simple name that's typically just straight up English, no matter how alien. The Eliksni? Well that's a difficult name for some, so to players they're just...called "The Fallen." Other alien groups are simply titled: The Cabal, The Vex (who are actually made of radiolarian fluid-- another difficult name), and The Hive.
When they do concoct unique names for things, they do so in a way that should be easy to pronounce for their primarily English speaking audience. Fikrul. Mithrax. Oryx. Savathun is probably the most difficult one and that still seems fairly easy for players to pick up on.
Sometimes Destiny takes proper nouns from existing languages on Earth, but does so in the same manner-- sticking either to words English spakers already know or could feasibly pronounce with ease. Rasputin. Osiris. Ahamkara.
Destiny's player-facing setting is one that is crafted to be accessible. They're careful with their names. It's in the weird background lore that things may get complicated from time to time-- where it's not essential for players to be able to pronounce everything.
Qetlec isn't the only conlang in Qet, there are several others, but I'm less worried about them. It's reasonable to expect that English readers can pronounce Lhehd names like Hanviehl, Ahndel Veha, and Linnh; Tolech names like Mochog, Romtol, and Kupuch; or Auroullott names like Beuttep, Tteunor, and Auroboll.
Eldritch names are fine to be a bit difficult, I think, but I ride the line with those too-- Ul'jvot, Gaegoed, Kub-glorrha. Yaesheuhnahl is right at the edge but, it is a god made of 3 separate entities (Yaesh, Euhn, and Ahl) so I think it's not totally unreasonable.
It's Qetlec in specific that I think causes problems, which is a really big shame because I think it adds a lot to the world's flavor. But it includes a lot of sounds that aren't readily apparent, with things like "x" actually being pronounced "sh" or tight consonant/vowel pairings unfamiliar to the English reader like "ytz" "zyk" and "qeu." Hell, even beyond pairings-- the letters q, y, and z aren't super common in English! (Y is common at the *ends* of words but not at the start.)
I've tried some halfway measures here and there. I include pronunciation tooltips on every word I think folk may have difficulty with-- but that's only really doable on a webpage. In recent years, anything I added that I thought might be difficult to pronounce included an English alternative name. Gaiwej: Whispering Mouth. Asdeom: Adaptive Flesh. Zeloutihue: Lunatic of Lliaq. P'qur: The Labyrinth of Gods.
I think it did work in making things more accessible, but it did bother me a little that this made the titles of each article much, much longer. It did make for names that were easier to remember, and, crucially-- look up. It was a bit of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution.
However, while this might work for a setting presented in a wiki format-- it doesn't work for a book or TTRPG. If you find yourself in a canyon and spot something in the distance you wish to warn your comrades of-- are you really going to shout "everyone look out for the Asdeom: Adaptive Flesh?" No. You're going to pick one or the other-- "Asdeom" or "Adaptive Flesh."
If your comrades have internalized only one of the two names, especially the one opposite what you called out-- they might be confused. We solved one problem only to create a new one! The easier solution is to simply have one, memorable-- and pronounceable-- name.
And that's where I'm stuck, I suppose. I'm attached to the many unpronouncible names of Qet and I know I must do away with them. I need to make new rules that limit how many syllables they may have, and cut out sounds that are difficult for English speakers.
Part of me thinks I need to start entirely from scratch on Qetlec instead of just reworking what's there. That I'm going to be too blinded by familiarity to spot all the problem areas, or too attached to change key nouns. Is "Zeloutihue" totally fine and pronounceable for the average English speaker? I can't tell! I'm lost in the sauce here!
If words like zykeutuezyl and olxlikliz are totally easy for me by now, how can I judge everything else fairly?
This is all to say, hey, think about this from the start. Don't make my mistakes and end up in this pit with me-- if you want your project to be accessible to your intended audience, consider the language(s) they might speak. What sounds are they familiar with? Could they feasibly pronounce all the important terminology in your work?
I'd love to hear folks' thoughts on this, what do you think? What would you do in my situation? What good or bad examples of accessible conlang have you come across? How have your own projects approached conlangs and names?