Questions tagged [names]
A name is a word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to. Questions with this tag seek help where the use of a name affects a rule or system of their world. This tag is NOT to be used to ask questions of the form "what is the best name...?" which are off-topic.
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A country where citizens are supposed to have a name with three to ten parts [closed]
In my world that is set in a near future, there was an EXTREMELY big country fusion.
Since the country has more than 500 million inhabitants, people are required to have a name with at least three ...
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Is Ilosovic an actual name? [closed]
When I watched live action Disney/Tim Burton Alice in wonderland, I was surprised that one of the characters is named "Ilosovic", because it sounded like a Slavic or eastern European surname ...
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Why would a republic still have the word Principality or Kingdom or Empire in their official long name? [closed]
I am writing a prospective that is set in a near future.
The United-Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern-Ireland is now a republic, which means the British royal family has been abolished by a ...
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When countries combine, how do they pick a new name?
I am writing a story where two countries decide to merge into one larger country, but I am having trouble figuring out what they would actually name the new country.
At first I though that they would ...
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Need Help with a Fictional Modern Baltic Country’s Name?
I want the name of the country to mean “eastern border/land”, but I’m not a professional in the Latvian/Eastern Baltic languages.
As an example, would it be Austgale or Austrumgale (gale meaning “...
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If in the future there are flying vehicles with the same aesthetics and function of car, would it be still called a car / flying car or somthing new?
In a future where technology has evolved and cars don't need wheels and can hover and fly, but retain the same: aesthetics, functions, affordability, and cost as the cars we have today just without ...
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What are some of the most culturally universal names? [closed]
This is mostly a shower-thought type query rather than an active problem I'm looking to solve, but here it goes.
Say I have a character that gets an opportunity to choose his own name, and he wants to ...
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How to name an Ancient Egyptian Prince?
I have created a character and only still need his name. I've spent the past 3-4 hours googling stuff about Ancient Egyptian royal naming conventions, and it's a lot! @_@
The character is a young man (...
user99624
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What would the US government realistically call a scientifically-proven afterlife? [closed]
So in my world, the afterlife is proven to be an actual, physical location you can visit with the right knowledge and technology. This is in the near-future, in a (mostly) hard sci-fi setting. We ...
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What do you call a biologically assisted robot? [closed]
A droid is short for android, often a mostly humanoid robot.
A cyborg is a biological being which is improved by robotic elements as part of their body. The word being derived from cybernetics which ...
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How do you come up with various meaningful names from different languages for a multicultural fantasy world?
I want to introduce cultural diversity to my fantasy world, taking inspiration from various cultures in the real world. To make my multicultural fantasy world believable, I need to come up with ...
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how would you call a star when referring to a "sunset" or "sunrise" [closed]
So, I've been developing a worldbuilding project, and I have an issue with this one planet's star, the planet it's called Xin Anhui, that means "new Anhui" a province in China, based on the ...
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What's a shorter word for this type of magic? [closed]
I'm having difficulty naming one of the magic types in my conworld. The current name is manipulation magic. However, I'd like to find a shorter word for it, that's 2-4 syllables in length, though ...
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What might a time travel facility be called? [closed]
In the real world one may catch a train at a station, a flight from an airport, a bus from a depot, a boat from a port or terminal.
If one were to travel through time inside a time machine what would ...
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Need help figuring out gods with a theme of hammers or foxes [closed]
So, I'm writing a story about a group of superheroes, and all of the heroes have codenames based on different mythical gods and goddesses (ex., the stealth-based one is Nyx, the flying one is Horus, ...
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Why would a family only go by their last names? [closed]
In my story there's a family which only refers to themselves by their last name. They only go by their first names when in company with other members of their family, but even then they tend to use a ...
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Help with naming [closed]
Name suggestions
So I have a magic system that's based on creating and manipulating certain "fields" and need some help with names for the magic and the users. I don't want to call them ...
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Advice on building some African styled names? [closed]
So in my little fantasy setting I got a fairly large and long standing dragon run empire. One of the cornerstones of its power is families of dragonbloods, humans with a dragon in their bloodline (the ...
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How Might We Name AI's Designed to Protect All the Earth? [closed]
PROJEKT ' VERDANT PALISADE '
The year is 2020. A meeting of the UN Security Council is held, disclosing the initial success of a joint project between several member states and handing over authority ...
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Naming Continents [closed]
I'm creating continents for my fantasy world but I need help creating names. I still haven't decided how many continents there will be, but I'm already having trouble coming up with names. Does ...
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Alternatives to taxonomy [closed]
Are there alternarive methods to taxonomy for defining creatures and their relations with living and extinct relatives?
user89947
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What are good alternatives for 'Admiral' in a space force? [closed]
I'm currently writing a far-future sci-fi novel. I have officer ranks and their equivalent positions sorted for my space force, I have decided to follow my in-universe naval rank structure for a ...
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How can I have the name of the first tribe on a newly discovered continent established as the entire continents name, even after kingdoms are formed?
I have a group of humans who discovered a continent that has no civilisations yet. They settled at a small region and they name their tribe and their lands after one of their Gods. They believed he ...
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Proto-German name for Plant People
I was considering calling plant people in a setting, "skoagraz," which is a combination of the words for forest (skogaz) and flood (agraz).
Flood seemed a good word to imply inclusiveness, ...
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How to decide what language(s) to use for place names? [closed]
I have a homebrew world for a TTRPG where I have generated languages for each of the cultures populating the planet. When referring to those places (on a map, in the player's guide, in-game, etc.), I'...
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What kind of names are suitable for colonies, in-universe? [closed]
I'm making an alternate colonial scenario, and it comes with its own client states, settlements, and other things that the coloniser must have a name for. Historically, those names were often ...
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Names based on real world culture
I'm trying to name the gods of the pantheon of my world with names inspired by real world cultures and civilizations. My concern is that I come up with names that aren't culturally insensitive; ...
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Procedurally generating a galaxy's worth of names
Background
I am investigating the practical utility and limitations of a procedural-generation-based naming scheme for stars and other notable or significant interstellar structures (e.g. nebulae, ...
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Naming parallel universes
In a parallel universe system (previously discussed here and here), portals are mechanical door frames that, when activated, cause a copy of your universe to appear on the other side. You and your ...
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Different ways of going about worldbuilding besides making up words and drawing maps?
I'm really not interested in creating a language for my world, especially having to make up names for the peoples and places. Or drawing maps. Mainly because I'm neither a good linguist nor a good ...
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In a world where magic is so common that animals can do it, what kinds of surnames would exist? [closed]
A handful of societies determined last name by profession in some cases, resulting in surnames like Smith, Baker, Butcher, Fisher, Shepherd, Tanner, Schneider, Farmer, etc... Most of these professions ...
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What is the scientific name for an intelligent species that can breed with all other known intelligent species? [closed]
Ship log:
It has been a year since we discovered the alien species that now are dubbed Venusians. Our first impression was that all of them look like extremly beautiful human females. Our second ...
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How different from reality should a complete fantasy world be? [closed]
Consider a story set in a completely fictional place, not even necessarily on a planet, perhaps an infinite plane of uniform density or something. There is zero connection with Earth and anything that ...
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What is a good name from mythology for a group of humans who cannot feel pain or emotion? [closed]
I've got a situation where I need a name for a group of humans who cannot feel any pain or emotion (Kinda like CIPA, but without emotion as well). These have been stripped off them by a supernatural ...
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Tricks for naming worlds [closed]
One thing I have seen time and time again are people giving their worlds names.
Personally, I find this a rather difficult process, since everyone in my world calls their Earth 'Earth' and the people ...
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Is there a standard terminology for female equivalents of terms such as 'Kingdom' and if so, what are the most common terms?
I'm writing a political system where women hold a higher rank in society than men. Almost immediately, I ran into an issue with the naming of locations.
Now, if a land ruled by a king is a kingdom, ...
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How to create naming conventions for a fantasy society with its own language? [closed]
I'm not a proper linguist or anything, but over the years I've created a fairly basic language for a magic people that I use in my D&D games. So far I've got by with them being ancient and long ...
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A proper latin name for an alien creature [closed]
I am designing an alien creature, an oxygen breather on an Earth-like planet. These creatures have a crest on their back that changes color according to the mood in which they are. That crest is a ...
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Is this map realistic/believeable?
I'm working on this map right now. Is this map realistic/believable? The continent would be about 5 million km² and lies in the temperate climate zone. (I intended it to be smaller than Australia; my ...
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Animal motif for an organized horde of bandits? [closed]
There is supposed to be a bandit horde that is very well organized and terrorizes large parts of a province. It was thought that it had an animal motif, which is also its heraldic arms. Now that I'm ...
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What should my Dyson Sphere be called [closed]
I have written out a Dyson Sphere world with four cities that surround four colossal oceans (each >16000000x the volume of jupiter). I've worked on the flora, fauna, government, pseudo-gravity and so ...
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Creating a derogatory term for non-humans in my fantasy novel? [closed]
I've been writing a fantasy novel in which humans are the ruling class, largely striving to squash all magic users throughout the country. What I'm trying to do is come up with a derogatory term for ...
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What could cause Mozart to be a common name? [closed]
My Keplerians, a humanoid race that looks similar to humans on the outside but is not human, have a futuristic civilization on 1 planet and a stone age civilization on a similar planet. The futuristic ...
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What would be the right Cultural Name of People that Identify being from a Federation [closed]
In my sci-fi book there is a faction that is a Federation (so original right). So a bunch of Colonial Sectors joined together under a federal government to fight against a much more powerful faction. ...
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How to differentiate, male and female names of an alien? [closed]
I am working on a story. I just want to know, is there any easy way to make readers differentiate male and female (alien) characters by reading their names.
According to my story those aliens are ...
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What is the best unit of measure for the time portion of a non-earth-bound light"year"?
The question, Reference to Earth in Intergalactic Universe illuminates the shortcomings of the term "light-year", which defines a distance by mixing the universally constant speed of light in a vacuum ...
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Would a society of empaths have names?
My world has a society of mages that can only communicate through empathy. They communicate by reading and projecting the "internal voice", effectively deriving their information from telepathic ...
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Name for God-Type Creature [closed]
I don't know if you are allowed to ask names here but whatever. In my world, this god awakens and is now unleashing its wrath upon humanity for seeming no reason. This creature/god has massive effects ...
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What factors cause a society where people have no family name?
I want to have characters who have no family name. I notice that people in Indonesia and Iceland have no family name. What kind of culture/tradition caused that? Are there any common factors that ...
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What to name a race of rock people? [closed]
I'm looking for a good name for my race of crystalline/rock people. Preferably a fancy/sciency sounding one, as "rockulon" & "bouldera" don't really fit the tone of the story.
