Latest / Sessions Canceled / Making Good Fantasy Nonsense Names: Ep. 191

Transcript

Making Good Fantasy Nonsense Names: Ep. 191 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Internet the the GM is crying after his players bullied him
• 0:22
  over naming a character Pervon and they just kept making fun of
• 0:26
  the dude's name and he just, he couldn't get over it.
• 0:30
  So he's he's in his room right now.
• 0:33
  He's inconsolable. This is like the third bad name
• 0:36
  he's come up with in a row. And wow, we're hoping.
• 0:40
  He'll figure it out, Do him like.
• 0:43
  Do you remember that bit? I do, I do remember Pervod and
• 0:46
  how they never let him live it down.
• 0:48
  Never let that one go and they stuck to it.
• 0:51
  Bro stuck to it. He did not wreck on that name.
• 0:53
  That is his name in the show and everything.
• 0:55
  Yep, Yep. Yeah.
• 1:00
  It's it's like Marius Laplas and how Travis would just never let
• 1:04
  him Lapo live just every two seconds.
• 1:09
  Yep, Yep. Yep.
• 1:13
  Yeah. I couldn't even have that weird
• 1:14
  name. No, it's not.
• 1:16
  It's just to kind of, well, that's that reaction's a little
• 1:18
  different though, right, 'cause that reaction is, oh, I just
• 1:21
  think it's kind of like an amusing, like it's a fun one.
• 1:23
  That's more of like, I'm laughing with you.
• 1:26
  The perv on situation was definitely Matt.
• 1:28
  We're laughing at you, you know what I mean?
• 1:32
  Like that's the difference there.
• 1:34
  Yeah, format. It's it's an.
• 1:41
  It's an important distinction. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:46
  You know, like you, and you can tell when you're the, when
• 1:50
  you're in the GMC, you can tell when it's what the distinction
• 1:53
  is, you know? Yes, although I, I am privileged
• 1:57
  enough, that feeling where you're like, Oh no, yeah, I, I
• 2:01
  am thankfully privileged enough to that when when my players
• 2:07
  make fun of the names that I choose, it's usually because I
• 2:10
  chose them to be funny. Like the in my first the guy who
• 2:15
  operated the Ham radio tower was just called Ham, and they
• 2:18
  thought that was particularly funny.
• 2:20
  Yeah. And in that scenario, then
• 2:22
  that's what you want. Mission accomplished.
• 2:25
  The problem is when you think it's a cool name, and it's
• 2:28
  definitely not. Yeah.
• 2:32
  Yeah, yeah. Or when you decide to commit to
• 2:36
  a name that you don't like anymore, but you've committed
• 2:38
  for it long enough that you're like, well, we're just going to
• 2:40
  do that right now. I guess that's the position I'm
• 2:43
  in right now with Fabula. It's fine.
• 2:48
  OK, I'm so fascinated. Which what?
• 2:53
  Why I'm fascinated about the whole well, so before we get
• 2:58
  into it, follow us on your podcast platform of choice.
• 3:01
  And she was a little, don't know over at our coffee, but I was.
• 3:03
  Going to do that later, but alright, sure.
• 3:05
  What was the impetus for this episode?
• 3:07
  I'm I'm fascinated. Oh, I thought you were going to
• 3:11
  ask me what name I don't like anymore in February.
• 3:14
  I mean that that that will come in time but.
• 3:17
  So the, I mean, the impetus was basically just I, I've been
• 3:26
  trying to make a concerted effort to actually, I got to
• 3:33
  back up a little bit to fully explain what the whole point
• 3:35
  here. So like in terms of how I handle
• 3:38
  like world building for my campaigns, right?
• 3:42
  You've been Privy. So I'm sure you've picked up on
• 3:44
  how I do this. I, I like to do things in the
• 3:49
  the the Dark Souls method. Now before you pointed out, yes,
• 3:55
  I'm aware that I complain about how Dark Souls delivers its
• 3:58
  lore. My problem is not the way they
• 4:00
  set up the lore. My problem in the Souls games is
• 4:02
  how they deliver the lore. Just just to clarify.
• 4:06
  But what I mean by that is, and when I say deliver, like I don't
• 4:11
  like the tucking things away in item descriptions or tucking
• 4:15
  things away in like weirdly obscure secrets.
• 4:17
  That's the part I don't like about how souls does the lore,
• 4:20
  the I the conceit of making the lore a little bit distant and
• 4:24
  just kind of dropping you in the middle of it.
• 4:26
  That's the part I like. So when I'm doing in tabletop
• 4:29
  game, I'll do the same mentality where I come up with a bunch of
• 4:33
  world building shit and I just have, and again, I'm sure you've
• 4:36
  noticed this. I just have characters say shit
• 4:40
  or I have things be mentioned or I have places be brought up in
• 4:46
  some fashion like, but you know, whether it be by a note or by a
• 4:49
  character or by a magic item or whatever, right?
• 4:52
  And I don't go out of my way to explain it.
• 4:57
  I simply drop it in front of you guys as the players and then if
• 5:01
  you want to inquire further you can.
• 5:04
  And if you don't give a shit then I'm not going to tell you
• 5:07
  any more than what the the NPC is telling you right now, right?
• 5:09
  You know what I mean right? Yeah, right.
• 5:12
  So my idea is like NPC mentions name of magic sword but or or or
• 5:22
  or name of a place and just assumes that you guys as player
• 5:26
  like or your just assumes that your characters know the same
• 5:30
  information that the NPCSMPC knows.
• 5:33
  And if you don't say anything, they're just going to continue
• 5:36
  to assume that and then they're just going to keep talking.
• 5:39
  Because that's kind of how real life works, right?
• 5:41
  If you're talking to someone from New York City and you live
• 5:46
  in Albany and the person from New York City starts mentioning
• 5:50
  a particular St. in Manhattan, they're gonna talk about it like
• 5:54
  the guy from Albany also knows what they're talking about,
• 5:58
  right? Like they're just gonna assume
• 5:59
  because, oh, where I live, this street is so popular, right?
• 6:02
  If they say 40 2nd St. then the guy in Manhattan knows that 42nd
• 6:07
  Street is an important St. cause like that's where the Met is.
• 6:11
  But the guy in Albany probably doesn't know that.
• 6:13
  But the guy from Manhattan's gonna assume that you know that
• 6:16
  and talk about like you do know that.
• 6:17
  And if you don't ask, he's probably not gonna clarify
• 6:20
  because that's just kind of how people are, right?
• 6:22
  Yeah, Yeah. I extend that logic to my
• 6:25
  campaigns, and that's kind of how I handle word building.
• 6:28
  I have characters say things. Or for example, I have
• 6:31
  characters who are religious, bring up things about their
• 6:34
  religion and just assume, particularly like with your
• 6:37
  character Isaiah, where you're a human walking around this major
• 6:42
  city. They just assume the human guy
• 6:43
  in the major city knows about the religion I'm talking about,
• 6:46
  not knowing that your character doesn't follow that religion.
• 6:49
  So. By extension, I think, I think
• 6:52
  there's a funny the the difference in reaction is kind
• 6:54
  of funny because Irena Sarah's character usually is like, no, I
• 7:02
  don't do that shit. Whereas borough's like close but
• 7:07
  not actually no like farthest you could be from close enough.
• 7:12
  Right, but a lot of the time also Goromaru doesn't as a
• 7:16
  character doesn't necessarily inquire that much 'cause he
• 7:19
  probably doesn't care that much. So it's it's not that he doesn't
• 7:23
  care, it's that it's it's, it's more to say that Goro just
• 7:31
  learns from listening. If he has a question, presumably
• 7:35
  someone will bring it up. Oh, he'll, he'll wait for
• 7:39
  somebody else to ask and then piece it together.
• 7:41
  Yeah, pretty much. Sure, fair enough.
• 7:44
  But anyway. All of this is to say I feel a
• 7:48
  little bad because I think the the religion that you've built
• 7:51
  in your game is super interesting, but Goro just
• 7:54
  doesn't have the. No reason to interact with this.
• 7:59
  Yeah, he he just doesn't need. Doesn't have the impetus.
• 8:03
  Yeah, if he he will learn about it or he won't, but he probably
• 8:08
  will, you know what I mean? Like he he'll learn about it and
• 8:10
  if there's parts of his knowledge that are missing, he's
• 8:14
  OK with saying something wrong and then getting corrected on.
• 8:18
  Right. And he doesn't have this, this
• 8:19
  impetus to look that deeper into it because it's not affecting
• 8:22
  him directly, which is fine. And I get, I, I understand that
• 8:25
  I'm OK with that because that's just how, when I, when I do
• 8:30
  world building, I, I, I build it with that idea in mind.
• 8:36
  So whether whether players latch onto it or not is fine because
• 8:40
  I've, I've, I've built in that assumption right from the start.
• 8:46
  The extension of all of this is I'm trying to be do that even
• 8:54
  more by being more conscious of how I handle names.
• 9:01
  Because the name of a thing can tell you the history of a thing
• 9:07
  without even really telling you very much, right.
• 9:10
  If you have like actually, you know, real life, real life human
• 9:19
  food example, if you go to a bakery and get a croissant, even
• 9:24
  if you don't know anything about France, you might hear the name
• 9:30
  croissant and be like, oh, I, I wonder if that's a French
• 9:33
  pastry, right? Because the name sounds like
• 9:38
  you. You as an American are probably
• 9:40
  just familiar with French words enough because there's actually
• 9:43
  a lot of French words in English that we use.
• 9:46
  You're probably just familiar enough that the name croissant
• 9:50
  is going to is going to tee off in your brain and go, that might
• 9:54
  be a French pastry, right? And just that little bit of
• 9:58
  thought is telling you a little bit of a story in that you go,
• 10:02
  oh, this is a really common pastry in America, but it has
• 10:08
  this French name. I bet there was some kind of
• 10:12
  cultural swap at some point. Oh, maybe it was like pre World
• 10:17
  War One immigration stuff. Or maybe it's a little older
• 10:21
  than that, like, or maybe it's from when the French were here
• 10:24
  during the French Revolution and some sort of information was and
• 10:28
  you're you're concocting this information with nothing other
• 10:31
  than a name, right? Right.
• 10:34
  So with that idea in mind of how that works in real life, and you
• 10:38
  could do that, honestly, I used a French example, but probably
• 10:41
  the easiest example is, is lots of Hispanic things are super
• 10:46
  prevalent all over America and they're just kind of baked into
• 10:50
  the like, I mean, we have a city called Los Angeles, which is the
• 10:55
  angels, right? Like, you know, there's a lot of
• 10:59
  Hispanic culture that's just, like, baked in.
• 11:04
  So you know what's, you know what's really funny?
• 11:06
  I I thought there was something that was uniquely Spanish, but
• 11:10
  it it isn't actually the Mojave to to you and me.
• 11:15
  That's you're like, that's Spanish, right Mojave.
• 11:17
  Mojave. I would assume so.
• 11:19
  I was talking to my girlfriend who is Dominican from the Dr.
• 11:23
  and she was like what is the Mojave?
• 11:25
  And I was like, ah. Yeah, weird that you didn't know
• 11:29
  how to say that. Yeah.
• 11:31
  So I looked into it. Yeah.
• 11:32
  And Mojave is a mix of of the the Native Americans in the US
• 11:39
  that would have become just the Midwesterners and like
• 11:44
  Californians. That's like a unique word to
• 11:48
  that area that is a mix of a lot of different languages.
• 11:54
  I see. Well that makes.
• 11:56
  Yep, that makes sense. Yeah.
• 11:57
  And I I told him like, oh, that's just Moave.
• 11:59
  And she was like, oh, you say it like Spanish.
• 12:01
  And I was like, yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
• 12:03
  You say it like Spanish. Yeah.
• 12:08
  So all of this is to say that I'm, I'm personally trying to be
• 12:12
  really conscious of this idea in my game to invoke that feeling
• 12:20
  in this world that I'm making up, because that makes it feel
• 12:22
  more like a legitimate world, because that's how it works in
• 12:25
  the real world, right? Yes.
• 12:27
  So I, I have this this thought in the back of my head of of how
• 12:33
  I'm using name and and languages to indicate certain things like
• 12:37
  I don't know. I don't know if you guys noticed
• 12:39
  this or not, but quite a few of the villages and the towns inner
• 12:44
  Fabula game have very Japanese sounding names.
• 12:49
  And the reason for that is because I established early on
• 12:54
  that Shishioku, which is where your character is from, right,
• 12:59
  colonize the area. And so the naming conventions
• 13:04
  stuck around for some in some places.
• 13:07
  And so the weirdly Japanese sounding Kashishioku is
• 13:10
  essentially, you know, our version of Japan in the game.
• 13:14
  The weird Japanese names like stuck around, even though the
• 13:18
  people that live there now have probably no fucking clue that
• 13:21
  that's where they come from, right?
• 13:24
  So like I'm doing this very conscious.
• 13:26
  Nate. So basically I've been thinking
• 13:27
  about it a lot. So it's been at the top of my
• 13:29
  mind. The other reason I've been
• 13:30
  thinking about it is because I've been really interested with
• 13:34
  how, because as you know, I've been deep in the Witcher hole
• 13:37
  for a while now. And I've been really interested
• 13:41
  in how the Witcher has been using language because there's
• 13:46
  some really fun stuff that Subkowski does with like the
• 13:50
  elder speech and the way that different characters refer to
• 13:56
  each other using different languages.
• 13:58
  And then like Skeliga, which is very much based on Vikings and
• 14:01
  Iceland and like the way they talk and their names and how the
• 14:08
  like the weird magical language works and stuff, which is elder
• 14:14
  speech. But also sometimes not like it's
• 14:15
  also like an adjustment on elder speech, blah, blah, blah.
• 14:19
  So I've been doing some like reverse engineering of trying to
• 14:21
  figure out like where did Subkowski get the idea for this
• 14:24
  word or that word or where does this name come from?
• 14:30
  And then also looking into, I've also looked up a little bit like
• 14:33
  how CD Project Red has continued that that linguistic styling
• 14:39
  into the games from the books. So it's just been like on top of
• 14:46
  mind. So I've come up with a couple of
• 14:51
  techniques that I use to do this thing.
• 14:55
  And I think a lot of people have a hard time with names and
• 15:01
  naming things and making stuff feel kind of legit in their game
• 15:08
  because they don't have a system, you know what I mean?
• 15:12
  Like I think people kind of just wing it a lot of the time with
• 15:17
  naming shit in their games, and having just a little bit of a
• 15:22
  system, a little bit of a technique, will make everything
• 15:26
  feel more cohesive. And ultimately cohesion is all
• 15:29
  you really need. It doesn't need to sound like
• 15:32
  real, real language, because real, real language is so
• 15:35
  complicated that you could never truly emulate it unless you are
• 15:39
  a deeply, deeply knowledgeable linguist.
• 15:42
  And then even then you're probably not going to nail 100%
• 15:44
  because language is such an organic thing that just sort of
• 15:47
  happens, right? Like slang and all these other
• 15:49
  weird things and words translating between languages
• 15:52
  and getting all fucked up between languages and all that
• 15:55
  shit. Or like mishearing each other,
• 15:58
  right? People mishear each other and
• 15:59
  then a word becomes a new word. So it's like you're not going
• 16:03
  to, you can't emulate real language 100%, but you if you
• 16:06
  have a system for how you go about it, that will give that
• 16:11
  cohesive feeling. It will, yeah.
• 16:14
  It, it gives everything a sense of congruity.
• 16:16
  And I, I do this a lot in my campaign because I very
• 16:21
  specifically have cultures in mind when I am creating
• 16:28
  different parts of the world. You know, so right on the planet
• 16:33
  that my players, not that they grew up on, but the one where
• 16:36
  they were stationed for a lot of their time is called New Xanadu.
• 16:42
  Xanadu is a East Asian word that means paradise.
• 16:48
  It was used a lot in the in the Mongolian Empire.
• 16:52
  And the planet itself is a mix of like cosmopolitan night city
• 17:01
  where it's American, Asian, Hispanic.
• 17:07
  And then I wrapped it up in a language of ancient
• 17:12
  Mesopotamian. So the planets are all named
• 17:16
  after or are portmanteaus of of places in Abalonia, Assyria,
• 17:24
  Mesopotamia. Like the capital city is called
• 17:27
  Rukh as opposed to Urukh. You know, right?
• 17:31
  A lot of the the important people in the area also use
• 17:34
  those names. Like there is a a famous pirate
• 17:38
  hunter with a giant axe who goes by Marduk.
• 17:43
  And then then session one, there was a big thing where someone
• 17:47
  stole that guy's name and was running around as a pirate.
• 17:52
  And all the people in the area were like, I don't know what
• 17:55
  happens to this guy. Even if he beats us, even if he
• 17:57
  robs his blind, this dude's not making it a year because that
• 18:00
  guy will find this guy. So, yeah, I, I think about that
• 18:06
  a lot. Like I, I even get down to the
• 18:09
  names of the I, I 'cause I have to do this right.
• 18:11
  I have to do this with names of Mex, the names of the
• 18:13
  characters, how that relates to their Mex, the names of the
• 18:15
  ships, why they're called certain names, the ship name
• 18:18
  designations. I'm, well, I'm in this jam with
• 18:22
  you. Yeah, that's, that's really,
• 18:24
  yeah. That's kind of what it comes
• 18:25
  down to. So I I've been thinking about it
• 18:27
  a lot in my game and then I've been intrigued by how the
• 18:34
  Witcher has been doing it as a franchise.
• 18:37
  And so that combination is just maybe like, all right, yeah, let
• 18:39
  me bring this up and then just to to answer the question from
• 18:47
  forever ago, the name I'm annoyed about in Fabula now is
• 18:50
  Lasar AB ha I I I don't like it anymore.
• 18:52
  I want to ditch it, but I I think it's too late to ditch it
• 18:54
  now. So I don't want to retconic
• 18:58
  because I feel like it's going to be weird.
• 18:59
  I was Oak. The the problem is not that the
• 19:02
  name itself I think came out bad.
• 19:04
  I just think it's not fitting the character in question and
• 19:07
  that's getting on my nerves. So in case you're curious, but I
• 19:15
  also don't want to, you know, like roll it back now.
• 19:21
  I, I don't know if you, if you really didn't want it to change
• 19:24
  it, I don't think you'd have to roll it back.
• 19:27
  I think you could just, I could reckon, change the the emphasis.
• 19:32
  Oh yeah. Maybe so rather than lasar APA,
• 19:35
  it could be la saraba. That's true, I could.
• 19:40
  Or you can put more of like a like a Middle Eastern like Lasar
• 19:44
  APA, Yeah. See, that's the thing.
• 19:47
  I think that's my problem. It sounds like it's a little
• 19:49
  Middle Eastern. That was not the intention.
• 19:51
  But then it it's as I've said it more, it started to sound that
• 19:54
  way and I was like, that feels slightly off for what I wanted.
• 19:59
  Yeah, I definitely it gave me Middle Eastern rhymes like
• 20:00
  Naram. I was like, OK, Celtic druid,
• 20:03
  man, that sounds pretty pretty Celtic Druid.
• 20:06
  Watch MU water dragon. I'm like, OK, Yep, that Yep,
• 20:10
  that works. The somber child being just like
• 20:12
  perfect English because he's a tiny Eldridge abomination.
• 20:15
  Like tracks, tracks. The the Phoenix being a Middle
• 20:21
  Eastern name. I was like, is this a reference
• 20:22
  to Ephrit? No, it, it, I think I slapped, I
• 20:26
  think I actually pulled a couple of Welsh words together, but I I
• 20:31
  think I combined them in such a way that they turned into a
• 20:33
  weird new thing that didn't quite work.
• 20:39
  I did that as I. So actually I have a good
• 20:40
  example of this. I had something that I thought
• 20:43
  was going to be a really cool name.
• 20:46
  Yeah, for my campaign and my players didn't get it.
• 20:51
  So there is a, there is an Irish Berry called Fear Gorta.
• 21:00
  That's its name Fe ARSPACE GORTA.
• 21:04
  So when I was like, oh, this thing is called the Fear Gorta
• 21:09
  virus because it's like a, it's like a sentient nano machine
• 21:12
  virus that just eats everything and then it replicates itself.
• 21:15
  You know what I mean? And the players didn't, my
• 21:18
  players couldn't tell if it's name was Fear or Gorta.
• 21:22
  Like, oh, do you fear Gorda or is it named Fear?
• 21:25
  And its designation is Gorda. Like no, no, no, no, the virus
• 21:28
  is called Fear Gorda. And it has like phenotypes, like
• 21:32
  different archetypes that it can take that people know about.
• 21:36
  So there's like the Kelpie and there's hold on, let me pull
• 21:40
  their names up. I the Comcon just updated.
• 21:42
  I mean, I'll, I'll be honest though, the fact that they had
• 21:45
  that kind of confusion about it almost makes it feel like a more
• 21:49
  legitimate real name. Because that does happen in
• 21:51
  real. Life it does, yeah.
• 21:53
  And I didn't, I, I, I didn't roll it back, but I I'm with you
• 21:57
  where I was like, should I? Should I?
• 22:00
  Yeah, I've had that. Yeah, I get that.
• 22:06
  Yeah, it is funny. Yeah.
• 22:07
  I can't remember how I came up with the Sarabhat.
• 22:09
  And it is weird that yeah, it, it does sound a little Middle
• 22:12
  Eastern. I will say the one the the one
• 22:17
  that I feel like nails the most is Watamiyu.
• 22:20
  I'm like, yes, that hits exactly the way I wanted it to.
• 22:24
  Yeah, that one's good. I like that one.
• 22:26
  Because I was like, I want that one to feel a little Japanese
• 22:29
  but also feel a little like easier to say.
• 22:43
  The so, yeah, so I, I have, I have so I have these techniques.
• 22:50
  Now, before getting deep into the, the whole thing, I, I feel
• 22:56
  like I have to throw out a little disclaimer not so much
• 22:59
  for us, but just on like the idea in general, actually, 2
• 23:05
  disclaimers disclaimer #1 is I'm specifying this on how to make
• 23:13
  hold on, excuse me, sorry burp, I'm specifying that this is how
• 23:20
  to make your fantasy names good, right?
• 23:24
  How to make your fantasy nonsense names good as I put it,
• 23:28
  because I do think you need to have slightly you need to adjust
• 23:35
  your naming conventions for different genres, right?
• 23:40
  The way things are named in a sci-fi setting or a post
• 23:45
  apocalypse setting are going to be a different vibe than in a
• 23:49
  fantasy setting. And I think it's good to be
• 23:52
  conscious of those differences and to kind of like illustrate
• 23:58
  what I mean. If if you have a post
• 24:03
  apocalyptic setting and a character has like their their
• 24:08
  special shotgun that they use that they like have cared
• 24:13
  lovingly for many years and used to kill bandits and they named
• 24:16
  their special shotgun Errandite, that would feel a little weird.
• 24:22
  Now you could have like a lower reason why the character used a
• 24:25
  name like that maybe, but just on like a base level errandite
• 24:32
  in a like imagine that in a Mad Max movie like this is my
• 24:35
  shotgun errandite. It would be like that's an odd
• 24:38
  name. What would probably be much
• 24:42
  would feel a lot more likely is if you had the weird guy with
• 24:46
  his special shotgun who kills bandits and he named his shotgun
• 24:49
  boom fucker because the shotgun does a big boom to the fuckers
• 24:53
  he doesn't like. Right?
• 24:54
  Like that feels post apocalypse, like, Oh yeah, this is my
• 24:58
  special gun boom fucker, right? Like that's kind of the vibe
• 25:01
  you're talking about, right? If you think about Mad Max,
• 25:04
  what's the name of the town where they get all the gasoline?
• 25:07
  That's gas. Town, Gas town.
• 25:09
  Oh yeah, OK, Where do they get the bullets?
• 25:11
  Bullet Town. All.
• 25:12
  Right. Yeah.
• 25:13
  Oh, yeah. Bullet Farm.
• 25:14
  Oh, yeah. All right, yeah, yeah.
• 25:15
  Gets the point across. Right.
• 25:16
  What are the guys who who a marathon Joe sends out to go
• 25:19
  fuck people up? War Boys.
• 25:21
  War Boys. All right, Yeah.
• 25:22
  Michigan message received, right?
• 25:26
  Whereas if you have like sci-fi, for example, you might have a
• 25:29
  fancy laser gun or some shit and your fancy laser gun's probably
• 25:33
  not going to have a special name.
• 25:35
  It'll be called like the Amarasu Mark 5, you know, Ripperator
• 25:40
  edition, right? It'll have like a corporate like
• 25:44
  tagline name because that's more of like a sci-fi vibe.
• 25:48
  So in this case. I had a lot of fun.
• 25:50
  Well, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 25:52
  Well, I was just going to say in this case, that's why I'm saying
• 25:54
  I'm specifically talking about fantasy naming convention
• 25:57
  because that's kind of where I'm, I'm focusing this on and
• 26:01
  there are differences. I was going to just say I had I
• 26:04
  had a lot of fun naming the post apocalypse weapons because it's
• 26:10
  just they just had they you have to you have to hit a a balance
• 26:13
  because they either have to be a joke that a character said to
• 26:17
  themselves, or it's got to be the thing that they thought was
• 26:20
  the coolest shit in the world. What isn't?
• 26:23
  So like the the big mid campaign boss had this like warhammer
• 26:30
  with like a gnarled hook in the back of it.
• 26:33
  And what did I call it? Spine Breaker.
• 26:36
  Right. Yeah, yeah, very.
• 26:38
  Yeah, but they had a they one of their their allies who died had
• 26:48
  a silenced SMG. And because, you know, the SMG
• 26:53
  is silenced, it sounds like a like a like a sound.
• 26:57
  He called the SMG salt and pepper.
• 27:01
  Yes. Yeah, that's actually when when,
• 27:04
  when that character died. Ant took that gun and really
• 27:08
  funny. But that's exactly, it's mine.
• 27:12
  Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, right?
• 27:15
  Salt and pepper for your like your machine gun that you like a
• 27:18
  lot feels on brand. Whereas if if the the fantasy
• 27:22
  wizard named his staff salt and pepper, it would just sound like
• 27:25
  a goofy joke, right? It doesn't.
• 27:28
  Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't fit the same.
• 27:31
  The other disclaimer I wanted to bring up is most of us GMs. I
• 27:37
  say most 'cause I'm sure there's probably a couple out there.
• 27:40
  Most of us GMs are probably not linguists or authors like
• 27:46
  Tolkien or Sapkowski of Witcher fame, right?
• 27:51
  We don't need any of these methods to be perfect.
• 27:55
  We don't need them to be based on a deep, deep language
• 27:58
  knowledge. We don't even need them to be
• 28:00
  super complex, right? What we're talking about here is
• 28:04
  talking about using techniques for your personal table to make
• 28:07
  your world feel like it's more fleshed out and more genuine.
• 28:14
  All that being said though, authors also use the techniques
• 28:20
  I'm about to bring up. And if you don't believe me when
• 28:23
  I say that, pick your favorite fantasy setting in a book or a
• 28:27
  video game or whatever and just do a little reverse engineering
• 28:31
  and try and see if you can figure out where the words that
• 28:35
  they're using come from, like the names of things and shit
• 28:37
  like that. Good chance your favorite author
• 28:41
  or like writer for a video game studio has probably talked about
• 28:44
  their methodologies and they're doing the same shit I'm talking
• 28:47
  about here. So like.
• 28:48
  Oh, that, That's always my favorite shit.
• 28:50
  They're just doing it. On a more.
• 28:52
  Advanced level, right? They are, yeah.
• 28:55
  My favorite shit is because I so I don't.
• 28:57
  I'm not a linguist, but I do like to study language.
• 29:00
  It's always fun to. Look into when you look at a
• 29:03
  character's name and you're like, you know, you're like, oh,
• 29:09
  this character is so cool. What's their name?
• 29:11
  Achilles. You're like, oh, no, oh, oh, oh,
• 29:16
  oh, no, you know what I mean? Right.
• 29:21
  That's I'm good. It's like, you look up something
• 29:23
  and it's like, ah, yes, this word translates to traitor.
• 29:26
  And you're like, fuck. I it's funny you say that.
• 29:30
  That's one of my one of my points I'm I'm gonna make.
• 29:34
  So all right, so let's get into the to the techniques proper
• 29:37
  here. All right, so option number one
• 29:40
  and and I've kind of ordered these in, in levels of
• 29:46
  complexity in terms of like execution.
• 29:50
  So option number one is just what I call the mouthfeel
• 29:52
  maneuver. And like, this is the, this is
• 29:57
  the easiest and this is the most common method that GMs are
• 30:00
  probably going to go with, right?
• 30:03
  The the mouthfeel maneuver, it's the most simple, but it can
• 30:09
  work. So it's the lowest effort and
• 30:14
  it's the simplest method. And you know, it's the quick and
• 30:20
  dirty when you need to get it done, right?
• 30:22
  You come up with something on the fly in your head, and then
• 30:27
  you just kind of say it out loud to yourself a little bit or
• 30:29
  think about it a little bit to yourself and see if it fits
• 30:34
  right. That's really all the mouthfeel
• 30:35
  maneuver is. You throw a couple syllables
• 30:37
  together for like a character's name or something like that, and
• 30:40
  you go, does this work? And you say it a couple of times
• 30:42
  in your head, and you say it out loud a few times, and you go,
• 30:47
  OK, yeah, that works. The trick to making the
• 30:52
  mouthfeel maneuver a little more successful is that you want to
• 30:57
  try a lot of different names and to actually say them out loud or
• 31:03
  at the very least mouth them with your mouth, like actually
• 31:06
  move your mouth muscles. Because words and names when you
• 31:14
  move your mouth to actually say them, you will be able to tell
• 31:18
  purely on the muscles moving in your face whether it it works as
• 31:24
  a word, quote UN quote or not. You know, you could just kind of
• 31:27
  tell and, and don't ask me how or why or what.
• 31:31
  Some psychologists or linguists could probably give you an
• 31:34
  answer on this. This is just like a thing humans
• 31:36
  do. I have no fucking clue why or
• 31:38
  how, but it's a thing we can do. We can say words and if they
• 31:41
  feel like words, they work in our mouth.
• 31:43
  And if they don't feel like words, they don't work.
• 31:44
  And it just. It just happens that way.
• 31:49
  I I think it it's got something to do with like the the human
• 31:52
  brain's natural desire to optimize something like if
• 31:55
  something doesn't like. It's also a pattern recognition
• 31:59
  thing I think, too. Yeah, right.
• 32:02
  Like, yeah, I think there's, you're probably right.
• 32:04
  Yes. If it doesn't roll off the
• 32:05
  tongue, then it can't, then your brain is like, Nah, can't too,
• 32:08
  too much. But it's also a little bit of
• 32:11
  like, yeah, did the, the, the syllables and sounds follow a
• 32:15
  pattern that makes sense to me. You know, I'm sure there's a lot
• 32:18
  of like study that could be done on this kind of thing.
• 32:26
  This particular method though, the mouthfeel maneuver, as, as I
• 32:29
  call it, best used for smaller characters or characters where
• 32:36
  you're OK with like the name being a bit goofy, right?
• 32:40
  If you're not that invested in the character, then doing it by
• 32:43
  mouthfeel will be all right. Because if it kind of doesn't
• 32:46
  work 100% or feels weird or whatever, it's fine.
• 32:49
  You can just go whatever, right? That's generally where you want
• 32:54
  to use it. I will say though, every once in
• 32:58
  a while you will have those mouthfeel names you come up with
• 33:02
  and you just fucking nail it and they hit and you go, I'm going
• 33:05
  with it. You know, it does happen.
• 33:07
  Don't get me wrong not to, not to, you know, suck myself off
• 33:15
  too much, but I got to give myself Zig Zags is pretty good.
• 33:20
  But no, I was actually going to bring up Ranak and Rune Deer.
• 33:24
  I mouth those ones IA 100% mouthfeel and I feel like those
• 33:27
  names are great. I love Rannok and Rune Deer.
• 33:30
  Both of those I just mouthfeeled it and I fucking nailed it like
• 33:34
  second or third try basically. And I was like, Yep, we're gone
• 33:37
  with that. That is a good one.
• 33:39
  I don't know what, I don't even know where I was pulling from
• 33:42
  really. I just kind of the old.
• 33:44
  Well, I know the one thing I did do is I came up with their mom's
• 33:48
  name first, which was Rune Terafox.
• 33:52
  And I kind of went to the Skyrim school of dragon naming where
• 33:56
  it's like long couple of syllables idea, right?
• 33:59
  So that's where Rune Terrafox like it's almost like a
• 34:02
  sentence. And then I was like, all right,
• 34:04
  Rune Deer and Ranak have to start with an R sound and it has
• 34:07
  to be kind of close to the R sound that her name starts with
• 34:12
  because that that idea of like the dragon lineage name being
• 34:16
  similar, I think is the thing that D&D does, if I remember
• 34:19
  correctly. So I was like, all right, like I
• 34:22
  think that's a Forgotten Realms thing I should say.
• 34:25
  So I started there and then worked my way to the to the two
• 34:28
  children and I was like, and then I just kind of mouthfeeled
• 34:32
  it and I was like, Yep, those perfect.
• 34:34
  So every once in a while it works.
• 34:37
  But I I have two of these. Two of these are funny to me.
• 34:41
  The one that of all the names that I came up with, I think the
• 34:44
  one that works the best, which is great because this character
• 34:48
  hasn't shut up in forever, is Luca my the Mystic and Luca's,
• 34:54
  you know, Luca Mortarosa. You're like, OK, that seems like
• 34:56
  a like a name that someone could have.
• 34:59
  I mean, Luca's a real name. It it is.
• 35:02
  Yeah. The the do.
• 35:03
  I don't think I ever told you this.
• 35:04
  I think you're learning this on air.
• 35:07
  Possibly the reason why his last name was Mortar Rosa is because
• 35:13
  you and I got into an argument about Devil May Cry like a week
• 35:17
  before and I was still mad about it.
• 35:20
  So more to Rosa just means like the the like dead Red.
• 35:25
  And I was just I was just a a play on Tony Redgrave.
• 35:30
  I wasn't mad that we got into a fight about something stupid
• 35:32
  about Devil May Cry. And I was like, I'm going to
• 35:34
  haunt this motherfucker, this character, for the rest of his
• 35:37
  days. No, that's a good one, though.
• 35:39
  That works. Yeah, more to Rosa.
• 35:40
  Yeah, it totally works. That's exactly what I mean.
• 35:44
  Every once in a while the mouthfeel just lands perfect.
• 35:47
  And but the the thing about the mouthfeel manoeuvre is that it
• 35:51
  has like a low hit rate I would say.
• 35:53
  You know what I mean? It can, yeah.
• 35:56
  A lot of the time you're going to mouthfeel it out, it's going
• 35:58
  to suck ass, but every once in a while those suckers land and
• 36:01
  you're like, hell yeah, dude. What's a bad 1?
• 36:04
  Is there a bad one for me? There probably is, but you tend
• 36:09
  to forget about them. You tend to like, remove them
• 36:11
  from your memory, you know? What I mean a little bit, yeah,
• 36:14
  you. Tend to push them out, that's
• 36:16
  the thing. I have one I have to give.
• 36:18
  I got to give this to to to Paladin because his character's
• 36:25
  name in Hellscapes I will never forget.
• 36:30
  And I had to build an entire naming convention convention off
• 36:33
  of it because his character's name is Ripley Tehran Slaughter.
• 36:41
  So RIP Tear Slaughter and I had to go.
• 36:45
  All right, Well, if his his dad is a captain dude whose last
• 36:50
  name is Slaughter, I need his name to be equally fucking
• 36:54
  ridiculous. Yep, Yep, Yep.
• 36:56
  So his father's name is vaik Ullerman Slaughter, Vehicular
• 37:02
  manslaughter. Oh, OK, I was going to say I was
• 37:04
  like Eulerman. His brother is Gene Cedric
• 37:10
  Slaughter or genocide Slaughter and his sister?
• 37:17
  Oh God, what the fuck was her name?
• 37:21
  You just reminded me of genocide Cutter.
• 37:26
  I thought you were thinking a genocide or show from Duncan
• 37:29
  Rampa. No.
• 37:31
  In in Fatal Fury, Rugal has a move called Genocide Cutter.
• 37:35
  I nice, yeah. Oh God, now you just reminded me
• 37:39
  of Carnage Scissors. Carnage.
• 37:41
  Scissors. What?
• 37:43
  That's from Blazblue, dude. That's, that's, that's Ragna's
• 37:46
  level 1 super, Yeah. Yes, yes, you're right.
• 37:49
  Yeah, it's the coolest attack. Carnage scissors.
• 37:52
  You're like fuck that sounds. Really.
• 37:56
  Some big God damn it sounds sick.
• 37:59
  Some big wind scar energy on that one.
• 38:01
  And yeah, it's got, it's got that energy for sure.
• 38:05
  Yeah. Oh God, awesome.
• 38:09
  Sorry. So that's, that's option one,
• 38:13
  all right? Option #2 And this is option
• 38:16
  number one. That's that's where every GM
• 38:18
  starts, right? Your brain goes there first.
• 38:20
  Just mouthfeel it out, it'll be fine, right?
• 38:22
  Option number 2 is probably the next most obvious thing people
• 38:25
  tend to jump to, which is to just simply steal names from
• 38:29
  other places and just use them like, and this could mean
• 38:35
  stealing from other fantasy IP like Lord of the Rings or Dragon
• 38:39
  Age or fantasy, etcetera, you know, the usual suspects.
• 38:43
  Or it can mean stealing from real life names of real people
• 38:46
  that you feel kind of resonate with the character.
• 38:50
  This tends to work best if you're trying to use the name to
• 38:53
  invoke a feeling on purpose. So for example, if you have a
• 38:59
  dark overlord type of bad guy and you name him Lord Vader and
• 39:04
  you don't tell the players anything else, you just say his
• 39:06
  name is Lord Vader. You're going to make the players
• 39:09
  feel a certain way about that character right away from the
• 39:12
  get go because they have an association with Darth Vader.
• 39:16
  Unless you're my lame ass girlfriend who hasn't watched
• 39:18
  Star Wars. But other than that, other than
• 39:22
  that, you're gonna associate, you're gonna have an association
• 39:27
  with Darth Vader. I'm sorry, I couldn't.
• 39:30
  I couldn't, I couldn't not say it.
• 39:35
  Conversely, though, if you have like a Valiant Paladin character
• 39:40
  and you name him Lord Vader, you're going to get an initial
• 39:45
  reaction of confusion or curiosity, which might be what
• 39:50
  you want, right? Because if you name the valiant
• 39:53
  Paladin character after the famous bad guy Darth Vader, your
• 39:56
  players are going to be like, well, that's an odd choice for
• 39:58
  the heroic Paladin guy. What are you trying to do here?
• 40:03
  That might be what you want. Or it might not be what you
• 40:06
  want. It kind of depends on what
• 40:08
  you're going for with the character.
• 40:09
  So you know, when you're pulling from real names like that, keep
• 40:13
  in mind that if your players know the name, it's going to
• 40:18
  elicit a reaction, so you want to think about what that
• 40:20
  reaction is. This can also work with real
• 40:24
  famous people too though. If you have a Duke of a town and
• 40:30
  he's named Vlad the Third, your players are probably gonna keep
• 40:35
  an eye on him right from the get go.
• 40:38
  If you name him after, you know the Impaler guy, right?
• 40:44
  So it's that idea of steal the name as is and then think about
• 40:52
  what the response will be based on the stealing.
• 40:57
  And or the other thing too though, is sometimes you can
• 41:01
  also steal a name where if you know, like I don't know if none
• 41:07
  of your players are into anime 'cause they're losers who don't
• 41:11
  enjoy culture and you name a character Ichigo, then they're
• 41:15
  probably not going to react to the name Ichigo.
• 41:18
  But if they are all big fucking weebs, as they should be,
• 41:21
  they're definitely going to respond if they hear the name
• 41:23
  Ichigo, right? Since that playing with that,
• 41:29
  what's the word playing with that like familiarity and shared
• 41:33
  cultural space between your players.
• 41:38
  Now option #3 Now this is really, this is where we get to
• 41:41
  the good stuff. In my opinion.
• 41:43
  This is kind of my personal favorite, which is steal names
• 41:47
  from real places and real languages, right?
• 41:53
  Oh, actually, no. So this is the high.
• 41:54
  Hello, it's me. Yeah, this is this is really
• 41:57
  the, this is the real secret sauce maneuver in my personal
• 42:00
  opinion. So you start right by you, you,
• 42:06
  you pick a peoples in your game, right?
• 42:09
  Let's just say like, you know, there's some dwarves that live
• 42:13
  on the northern part of the continent in your game,
• 42:15
  something like that, right? You pick a peoples and you
• 42:18
  decide what kind of ethnicity slash nationality you want that
• 42:24
  that group of people to invoke, right?
• 42:27
  It doesn't need to be a close comparison.
• 42:32
  It doesn't need to be 1 to 1. And in fact, it's probably
• 42:35
  better if it's not a close comparison.
• 42:37
  It's actually probably better if it's like a loose association.
• 42:40
  It just needs to go. It just needs to be a kind of go
• 42:43
  by feel sort of thing using your and your players real life
• 42:49
  knowledge. So if we take said dwarves that
• 42:53
  I mentioned, if you want the Hardy mountain dwarves who can
• 42:58
  handle brutal winters, right? Like that's their thing is
• 43:01
  they're these Hardy dwarves that live up in the mountains and
• 43:03
  they can handle really brutal winters.
• 43:06
  Consider giving them real life Russian names because
• 43:11
  immediately you give them Russian names, good chance your
• 43:14
  players are going to go, Oh well, people are used to the
• 43:16
  winter. People are used to the Hardy
• 43:17
  tundra people who are a little more gruff, right?
• 43:21
  Those cultural associations are going to roll in instantaneously
• 43:24
  just by nature of they're going to meet a dwarf character, his
• 43:28
  name's going to sound a little Russian.
• 43:30
  And your players are going to start making that association
• 43:32
  subconsciously like it's it's instantaneous.
• 43:36
  Now, of course, you do want to be a little careful to avoid
• 43:39
  stereotypes or like over generalizations, and you do want
• 43:46
  to make these people in your game still be your own.
• 43:52
  So don't make them 1 to 1 copies, but you do.
• 43:58
  But you want to use the actual culture as a starting point.
• 44:02
  And that little starting point can go a long way for kind of
• 44:07
  filling in the gaps in your players minds and in your mind
• 44:10
  actually as AGM, right when you're trying to come up with
• 44:13
  characters from that particular culture by associating it with a
• 44:17
  real life culture, it can kind of fill in your mind of like,
• 44:21
  what might they say? What might they do?
• 44:22
  What might might might their opinion be on this particular
• 44:25
  thing? And if for some reason you need
• 44:33
  some convincing on this method and you feel like this might be
• 44:36
  like a cheesy, unserious way to go about doing this, well known
• 44:42
  authors do the same thing. So I'm, I'm going to keep
• 44:48
  bringing up the Witcher because it's the thing that I'm
• 44:49
  currently like, you know, deep in the sauce on in the Witcher,
• 44:54
  there's an area on the continent called Toussaint.
• 45:00
  And Toussaint literally in French in real life just means
• 45:05
  All Saints Day. It's just a real French word.
• 45:09
  And the place Toussaint in the Witcher is meant to feel like a
• 45:12
  bit of a fusion of France and Italy.
• 45:16
  So Cebkowski just took a real French thing and slapped the
• 45:20
  name on there. And all of the characters you
• 45:23
  meet in that area have French or Italian sounding names, like
• 45:31
  pretty much across the board. For example, the Duchess of the
• 45:34
  area is called Anna Henrietta. And immediately you're like,
• 45:40
  you're like, yeah, that sounds quite French.
• 45:44
  I'm not Henrietta, right? Like, yeah, instantly you're
• 45:48
  like, oh, I know what we're doing here.
• 45:51
  Additionally, there's a fun little side effect, and you can
• 45:54
  do this in your game too. And actually, in fact, I did
• 45:59
  this in my game right now. Having the a particular people
• 46:05
  or a particular area pull from a specific culture can also help
• 46:10
  to push the idea that a different character is very
• 46:14
  explicitly not from that culture.
• 46:17
  Right? That different characters from a
• 46:18
  different land. Because in Tucson, when you go
• 46:22
  there as Geralt, the Witcher, Geralt's name sounds out of
• 46:28
  place when he's standing next to Anna Henrietta or oh God, what's
• 46:35
  the other? What's the knight Dude?
• 46:37
  There's another gay guy who's like Percival Percival part
• 46:42
  pars. Oh God.
• 46:47
  Oh no, what's his name? I should have wrote him down.
• 46:50
  No, not not route of it. Damn it.
• 46:55
  He's got like his last name is like Percival Pumencival or
• 46:58
  something. Like he has like a double last
• 47:00
  name. That sounds like this really.
• 47:01
  Hoity toity, goofy French. French name.
• 47:08
  Hold on, I'm going to give up right now.
• 47:09
  I'm trying to, yeah. I'm trying to remember what it
• 47:12
  is. Oh God damn.
• 47:14
  It shooting Bach. No, no, no, no no no.
• 47:18
  It's something with AP. It's literally you meet these
• 47:21
  two Knights at the very beginning of the of the DLC and
• 47:26
  the one guy has such a funny name Knights Knight who gets
• 47:38
  I'll Yeah, what? No, not that one subject to blah
• 47:48
  blah. This is going to annoy the crap
• 47:54
  out of me. Oh no.
• 48:00
  Oh, I found it. I found it.
• 48:02
  His name is Milton Depeyrak. Depeyrak Payrin.
• 48:08
  Milton Depeyrak. Payrin.
• 48:12
  That's his last name. Yeah.
• 48:14
  So by contrast, you've got Geralt standing next to Depeyrak
• 48:19
  Payrin, right? So it, it emphasizes that I,
• 48:24
  that idea that oh, Geralt's from a different place because during
• 48:27
  the main game when you're in Vellen, Geralt's name doesn't
• 48:31
  sound that weird. Next to a bunch of like Dutch,
• 48:34
  Welsh, Germanic style names, Geralt doesn't stand out as
• 48:37
  much. But next to the aggressively
• 48:39
  French Knights, his name stands out.
• 48:47
  So the point I'm getting is that that feeling adds to the sense
• 48:54
  that you're setting is a real place, right?
• 48:57
  It adds to that verisimilitude, that idea that there's different
• 49:01
  peoples with different styles of names, and the world is bigger
• 49:05
  than just the characters. Like, there's not just a little
• 49:08
  tiny bubble orbiting around the characters.
• 49:10
  Now, of course it's a tabletop game.
• 49:14
  Obviously everyone knows that. In reality, yes, the game is the
• 49:18
  world is just a little bubble orbiting around the players.
• 49:22
  But extending that bubble as far as you can makes the world feel
• 49:29
  more legitimate. And by pulling from real life
• 49:32
  names in real life languages, that's how that adds to that
• 49:37
  sense of the bubble growing. A nice little added bonus to
• 49:42
  this method of stealing real names is that it will inform
• 49:48
  your players a very general sense of the kind of characters
• 49:52
  they're dealing with without you saying anything.
• 49:55
  So if they meet the Russian dwarves, they might go, ah,
• 49:58
  Russian sounding dwarves. They're probably Hardy and well
• 50:01
  versed in living in cold environments, and your players
• 50:04
  will just assume that purely based on the naming convention
• 50:08
  you gave them, right? That's the that's the power of
• 50:11
  this using language thing. So option #4 though, and this
• 50:22
  one might sound like a bit of a joke, but I'm not really joking.
• 50:25
  Just name it the thing of the place or the place with a thing.
• 50:30
  This this works frustratingly well.
• 50:32
  Because. This this tactic works so well
• 50:35
  that you you develop a bad habit of doing that for a lot of
• 50:38
  things and you're like, no, wait, places need actual unique
• 50:40
  names. Sometimes, yes, but what you
• 50:42
  what you realize is if you start looking into how places are
• 50:45
  named in real in real life, this is what people do in real life,
• 50:49
  right? It may it may seem a little
• 50:52
  silly or a little too easy, but when you look around you, you
• 50:56
  realize in real life names, the way things are named is pretty
• 51:00
  simple. A great example.
• 51:02
  Wow, that Canyon in Arizona is really big and grand.
• 51:08
  What should we call it? What should we call this very
• 51:13
  Grand Canyon in Arizona? Would it by any chance be called
• 51:17
  the Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon or said Rocky Mountain?
• 51:21
  No, although that's another great example.
• 51:24
  Wow, these mountains have a lot of rocks.
• 51:26
  Yeah. What should we call them?
• 51:27
  That's the same thing, right? Oh, I think I know why I thought
• 51:30
  the Grand Canyon naming something place of thing in just
• 51:32
  the amount of times you were in Colorado and going like the
• 51:34
  megaducks. The Megaducks.
• 51:35
  Yeah, things in real life are often just named after really
• 51:41
  basic things, like what is there or a simple descriptor of what
• 51:46
  you're looking at. The Grand Canyon is called that
• 51:48
  because it's a big ass Canyon. That's it.
• 51:53
  So if you have a town in your game that gets caught that's
• 51:58
  known for having high quality blacksmiths and it's named
• 52:02
  Smithy Town, that might seem a little silly, but that's
• 52:07
  probably something that would happen.
• 52:08
  That's probably something that did happen in the past, right?
• 52:14
  So probably, yeah. You don't like sometimes, that's
• 52:18
  the move, right? To give you an example from my
• 52:21
  current game of where I did this, the area my players
• 52:25
  currently are presiding in and where all the game is happening
• 52:28
  is called the Dragon's Maw Province.
• 52:30
  Why is it called the Dragon's Maw?
• 52:33
  It's a peninsula where there's mountains around all of the
• 52:36
  edges, so it looks like a Dragon's mouth and the mountains
• 52:39
  look like teeth. It's the Dragon's Maw.
• 52:43
  Boom bang boom. Done.
• 52:48
  Really, should we should have the the anime Wow sound effects?
• 52:52
  Yeah, now I did. Did you, did you notice that
• 52:54
  side note as a player, did you pick up on?
• 52:57
  That's where that idea came from.
• 52:58
  Yeah, yeah. I was just curious if that came
• 53:04
  across or not. No, I I presumed it was because
• 53:07
  of the landmass. Yeah.
• 53:09
  We're also like on an archipelago, like in my head,
• 53:13
  you know, the, the what's up? You're on a peninsula.
• 53:18
  Peninsula. My bad.
• 53:21
  Yeah, it it just seemed like Dragon's Maw Peninsula.
• 53:27
  We're using some silhouette shaped language here to to
• 53:30
  describe what we are. Correct.
• 53:32
  Also worth pointing out, I did also give it two names, right?
• 53:36
  It's the Dragon's Maw Province. It's the Septuca Peninsula,
• 53:40
  right? Which is also a thing that
• 53:41
  happens in real life where things kind of get two names or
• 53:45
  multiple names based on like context they're being referred
• 53:47
  to, right? They do, yeah.
• 53:50
  That's another real thing that happens.
• 53:52
  OK I have another example of my players didn't get it in in my
• 53:58
  first campaign in in my post apocalypse campaign and the name
• 54:02
  of this the discord server we all hang out is called the land
• 54:05
  of free. Yes, I I remember.
• 54:08
  Because I described in session one of my campaign the like
• 54:12
  Borderlands style, you know, you follow the car as it's driving
• 54:15
  through. And I specifically described a
• 54:19
  the like the sign when you enter a new like state or country and
• 54:23
  it was welcome to and like the the poster, the Billboard was
• 54:29
  destroyed and then the only thing that was left of the
• 54:32
  Billboard was land of free. So the place as far as all the
• 54:37
  NPCS call it, like, where are you standing right now?
• 54:40
  Oh, we're in free. Yeah.
• 54:41
  Like the place is called free, not the land of the free, The
• 54:45
  like the, the the land that you are standing on is literally
• 54:47
  called free. Free with a capital F, Yeah.
• 54:50
  Yeah. So people be like, where in the
• 54:52
  name of free are we right now? And, you know, it's like, oh,
• 54:56
  you know, some people would be like, oh, well, you know, we're
• 54:59
  in the land of free or, you know, land of the free.
• 55:00
  It's like, no, no, no, no, that's no one here is free.
• 55:04
  This is the apocalypse. The place is called that.
• 55:06
  It's a little ironic. Right.
• 55:09
  And wasn't your idea for that from the phrase land of the
• 55:12
  free, home of the brave, right. Wasn't that where you got the
• 55:14
  idea that? Yeah, I, I wanted something like
• 55:18
  it was a part of it was that a part of it was the like again,
• 55:21
  I, I wanted the like irreverent humor of Borderlands, right,
• 55:25
  Right. Of, you know, I was kind of
• 55:29
  making a joke on immigrants because the US is in the post
• 55:32
  apocalyptic shit hole in my campaign and Mexico was actually
• 55:37
  kind of a thriving, you know, returned to a more tribal
• 55:42
  society. Like they're like riding T rex's
• 55:45
  down and fucking in Chile. It's great.
• 55:48
  Hell yeah, dude, yeah. It was, it was a couple things,
• 55:54
  but yeah, no, the, the, the place was called free.
• 55:58
  Right. And, you know, here's the thing,
• 56:01
  The fact that your players didn't necessarily latch on to
• 56:05
  that or, or didn't, like, say anything or notice it is kind of
• 56:11
  OK because it still makes the world feel more fleshed out,
• 56:15
  even if they didn't specifically ask or comment on it, you know
• 56:19
  what I mean? Like, yes, true.
• 56:21
  They were like, well, there's a name for this place and there's
• 56:24
  a reason for the name. And I don't know what the reason
• 56:26
  is, but there's a reason. And that's all I need, Right?
• 56:29
  Yeah. It makes perfect sense that the
• 56:34
  the the characters wouldn't think twice about it.
• 56:37
  Yeah. Why didn't name anything
• 56:38
  anything, Right. Exactly.
• 56:41
  Yeah, I actually, there is a place, there's a city in that
• 56:46
  campaign called Forge World, which when I was talking to
• 56:50
  Cardell about it, he was like, oh, are you making a joke about
• 56:54
  like 40K? Because they're, you know,
• 56:56
  obviously the forge worlds in 40K are like a known thing, but
• 57:00
  there is a website where you can get models from 40K that is
• 57:04
  called Forge World. See, and I was like, yes,
• 57:09
  reference to the first technically, but not actually
• 57:13
  referenced in the latter, right. No, it it like the reason why
• 57:17
  Forge World is called Forge World is because they kind of
• 57:19
  tried to like like LA it right. It's like, oh, like welcome to a
• 57:25
  forged world. You know what I mean?
• 57:27
  Like, but yeah, right. An extension on this one though
• 57:36
  too, because maybe maybe you understand that the town being
• 57:41
  called Smithy Town is something that could happen, but maybe you
• 57:45
  just don't want to go with that. OK, something else you can do is
• 57:50
  if you want to spruce up the name a little bit when you just
• 57:53
  name it, you know, think of the place, place with the thing you
• 57:56
  want to spruce it up a little bit.
• 57:57
  Take the basic name that you came up with in your native
• 58:00
  language and just translate it to another language, right.
• 58:06
  This is something that happens a lot in real life again, and it
• 58:13
  doesn't need to be a perfect translation.
• 58:15
  In fact, it's probably more accurate for it to not be a
• 58:20
  perfect translation because that tends to be what goes down in
• 58:24
  real life. The river Avon in Bristol, that
• 58:29
  name means river, river because Avon is just based on the Welsh
• 58:36
  word for for river, which is basic.
• 58:40
  It's pronounced Avon. It's spelt AFON Afon.
• 58:44
  It's pronounced very similar to Avon.
• 58:46
  And it's almost certainly just people back in the day thought
• 58:52
  that Avon in Welsh was a name rather than a word.
• 58:56
  So they asked, hey, what's this river called?
• 58:59
  And the Welsh guy said Avon. And they were like, oh, OK.
• 59:02
  And so now there's a bunch of rivers in Britain that are
• 59:05
  called river, River, just river, River.
• 59:10
  And it's just because there was a slight misunderstanding
• 59:13
  between languages. I love that you brought this up.
• 59:19
  Why you have a specific? Story here.
• 59:21
  I do. I keep doing this.
• 59:22
  I'm sorry, I think I told you I think about this shit a lot.
• 59:24
  No, I know. I that's kind of where I brought
• 59:26
  it up too, because I had a feeling you did think about it.
• 59:29
  The planetary delicacy on New Xanadu in Lancer is called Lomo
• 59:36
  Bashmu Bosh MU is a reference to a Mesopotamian snake creature,
• 59:42
  like a giant poisonous snake. But lomo is just a a Spanish
• 59:49
  word a a a middle American slash Caribbean word for loin.
• 59:55
  But snake loin. Exactly, That doesn't make any
• 59:58
  fucking sense because I took the dish lomo saltado which is
• 1:00:05
  sauteed loin or jump loin. But I don't like the way Bashmu
• 1:00:09
  Saltado sounds. I like the way Lomo Bashmu
• 1:00:12
  sounds and I specifically made it a fucked up translation.
• 1:00:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That.
• 1:00:18
  Well, that because you think, sure, snake loin doesn't make
• 1:00:22
  any sense because snakes don't have loins.
• 1:00:24
  But the idea of a pork loin being a kind of dish, and the
• 1:00:28
  idea of we're cooking a snake kind of like we cook the pork,
• 1:00:32
  and then that being a weird mistranslation confusion makes
• 1:00:35
  perfect sense. Yeah, 'cause that kind of shit
• 1:00:39
  happens all the time. All the time, Yeah, all the
• 1:00:42
  time. I I explained it to my dad and
• 1:00:45
  he was like, well, you would call it Bosch musaltado.
• 1:00:47
  I'm like, no, no, no, I know that.
• 1:00:49
  I know. But in the same way that people
• 1:00:52
  like I, I got this idea, think, 'cause I watch.
• 1:00:55
  I don't know if you ever know this Tasting history with Max
• 1:00:58
  Miller. I've watched like a video or
• 1:01:00
  two, yeah. So a lot of the time that's the
• 1:01:03
  case where he's like, why is this dish called that?
• 1:01:06
  And it's like, well, it was likely translated from.
• 1:01:08
  It was this thing that got translated to this thing, and it
• 1:01:10
  got translated to this thing, and it got translated to this
• 1:01:12
  thing and eventually kind of lost its meaning.
• 1:01:14
  But this is what the name is now.
• 1:01:15
  Yep. That happens so often with food.
• 1:01:18
  So I was like, yeah, it makes sense that someone thought Lomo
• 1:01:22
  bashmu sounds better and, you know, sounds tastier than bashmu
• 1:01:27
  saltado. Yep, Yep.
• 1:01:30
  And I was just like, yes, dude, I.
• 1:01:33
  You want another look, these those are the little things when
• 1:01:36
  you're jamming that get you really excited.
• 1:01:39
  Bro it gets me so like every time I come up with something
• 1:01:43
  this I'm like I am amazing you. Want it's true, It's true.
• 1:01:48
  You want a great example from Fabula?
• 1:01:50
  Yes, please. I I've said it quite a few
• 1:01:53
  times. None of you guys have have asked
• 1:01:55
  for anything. I assume probably because it
• 1:01:57
  just sounds like it fits. So you didn't ask Saved with?
• 1:02:03
  Did you hear me say that? One quite a few times.
• 1:02:06
  Couple times, yeah. So Aethma keeps referring to
• 1:02:09
  himself as a Sagwith I I basically took, I think it was
• 1:02:15
  the Welsh word for druid and I want to say the Scottish word
• 1:02:19
  for sage. And I cross like cross them
• 1:02:23
  together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a, a, a sage
• 1:02:25
  like a sather, which is, you know.
• 1:02:28
  It's something like that yeah, something like that.
• 1:02:30
  I forget exactly what the word was, but I basically crossed
• 1:02:33
  them together and then the spelling for said with has the
• 1:02:37
  double D Welsh thing at the end. It's SAY or how do I spell it
• 1:02:42
  Actually Hold on, Let me let me open my notes real quick to get
• 1:02:46
  the point across here. Hold on, hold on.
• 1:02:49
  Please hold bamping for time. God, God.
• 1:02:53
  Bamp for time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:55
  Oh, Nope. Wrong, wrong.
• 1:02:57
  Hold on. He's looking.
• 1:02:59
  There we go. There we.
• 1:02:59
  Go. There we go.
• 1:03:00
  He's got. No, I got it.
• 1:03:01
  I got it, I got it. I just got to Scroll down real
• 1:03:03
  quick. Hold on.
• 1:03:04
  So I spelled it SAEDWYDD. It's pronounced sedwith because
• 1:03:14
  I took the, I took the pronunciation from the 2
• 1:03:17
  languages roughly. Now, obviously going back to my
• 1:03:20
  original disclaimer, right, I'm not literally a linguist.
• 1:03:23
  This might, this word may not be actually pronounced this way if
• 1:03:27
  it were to be created in real life, but it sounds legitimate
• 1:03:32
  enough that that pronunciation works.
• 1:03:34
  And so I smashed them together. And I know the double D makes
• 1:03:37
  the TH for Welsh, so I stuck with that.
• 1:03:41
  So that's a, that's another example of, you know, one of
• 1:03:46
  those, one of those ideas you come up with and you're like,
• 1:03:48
  I'm a genius. Oh yeah.
• 1:03:51
  And if you guys were to ask one of the, I mean, I, I, I don't
• 1:03:57
  know, little spoiler, if you guys were to ask one of the
• 1:04:00
  elves, their answer would be, oh, it kind of means like druid,
• 1:04:03
  but not exactly right? It's basically their word for
• 1:04:06
  Druid and but I didn't want to just use the word druid 'cause I
• 1:04:10
  was like, I was like, no, the elves would probably have a
• 1:04:12
  different name for it 'cause I want them to feel a little bit
• 1:04:15
  distant from all of the human settlements, especially because
• 1:04:20
  they're clans that live like away from the human settlements,
• 1:04:25
  right? I also did the same thing with
• 1:04:30
  like the cobolds for example. Like the I forget how what it
• 1:04:37
  what now I got it. Well now I'm now I got to pull
• 1:04:39
  it up again since I'm bringing it up.
• 1:04:42
  It's fine while you vamp for time.
• 1:04:43
  I have a I have a phone, a fun one that I I have that that
• 1:04:47
  sticks with me is the the handler for my players.
• 1:04:50
  Oban has a sister named Shivan, right?
• 1:04:54
  She's the older sister. She is space Irish named him
• 1:04:59
  Oban even though he's almost certainly like a a a weird mix
• 1:05:03
  of like South Asian like either like Malaysian or something like
• 1:05:09
  that. He calls her CEO Bond because he
• 1:05:12
  saw her name before he heard it pronounced.
• 1:05:16
  So only calls her CEO and Cassie or sorry the moon who is Irish
• 1:05:23
  was like you know that's not how you pronounce her.
• 1:05:25
  I'm like, yes, I do know that Obon doesn't 'cause he's
• 1:05:29
  fucking. Stupid, right?
• 1:05:30
  I know that has a me. Isaiah knows that.
• 1:05:33
  The character doesn't know that. No, no.
• 1:05:35
  So yes, he refers to her exclusively as CEO.
• 1:05:39
  But yeah, you were saying right. Well, I was just going to say I
• 1:05:41
  did another thing like the Cobalts when they were talking
• 1:05:44
  about the soul stream, right? They called it the Sulala
• 1:05:46
  Kataja. Because yeah.
• 1:05:49
  Because the why would they use the same word, right?
• 1:05:52
  Because again, they're very distant from humans.
• 1:05:55
  So what would be the point of like they would have their own
• 1:05:58
  word for the soul stream because it's a really important thing,
• 1:06:00
  right? And if you're curious where I
• 1:06:03
  got the idea for how the Cobalts work, I took the very odd naming
• 1:06:08
  convention from the, from the Lalafel in 14 and I, I don't
• 1:06:17
  know where they pulled the idea for that in 14, but I'm sure
• 1:06:21
  it's from something very specific in 14.
• 1:06:23
  Also, because 14 is really, really what's the word?
• 1:06:31
  They're really picky about how they handle names and, and
• 1:06:34
  languages and all this shit. They're very specific about it.
• 1:06:38
  Like all of the Elizyn use very French styled names, but they're
• 1:06:43
  not like 1 to 1 French, you know what I mean?
• 1:06:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like yeah or or Alphano, Alphano, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:55
  Level year, yeah. Level year, yeah, level year is
• 1:06:58
  a big one. So yes.
• 1:07:01
  But going back to the original point, the idea of just naming
• 1:07:05
  the thing, a really basic name that would just be something
• 1:07:10
  people would call it is perhaps not as silly as it seems.
• 1:07:16
  But it is true that you don't necessarily want to like overuse
• 1:07:19
  that idea because you can get into a habit where everything is
• 1:07:22
  just named the something, right? The the Smithtown, the big rock,
• 1:07:28
  the magic sword, right? You don't want to like overdo
• 1:07:30
  it. It is true that that can get
• 1:07:34
  like weird and annoying, but when you add in the translating
• 1:07:40
  through another language, that tends to shake that up quite a
• 1:07:43
  bit. Also think about the history of
• 1:07:48
  the thing that you're naming, and then that will inform you of
• 1:07:51
  whether you should just go with like basic name or translated
• 1:07:54
  name or some combination, you know?
• 1:08:00
  By the way, I just looked up the Lalafel naming convention.
• 1:08:02
  It's fascinating. So plainsfelk Lalafel use a
• 1:08:06
  phoneme pattern system of ABCB for males and ABBAB for females.
• 1:08:14
  It doesn't follow any particular cultural like real world
• 1:08:19
  cultural real. World cultural naming
• 1:08:23
  convention, yes. But it's it's main rules are
• 1:08:27
  rhythm, repetition, rhyming and alliteration.
• 1:08:31
  That makes sense. That you have zorrito monorrito.
• 1:08:36
  Yeah. Teledyatileggi.
• 1:08:39
  Ledyatileggi. Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  For females, Meemo. Meemo Kiki Toki Ulala.
• 1:08:44
  Ulala, Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:46
  Yep, Yep. What is it?
• 1:08:48
  Tataru Taru. Tataru Taru.
• 1:08:50
  Yep, fucking namo namo namo namo namo.
• 1:08:57
  Wow brain brain help. What?
• 1:09:00
  Oh my God, why am I blanking on her?
• 1:09:02
  Name 00. The accountant The Ataru Tataru
• 1:09:08
  Tataru Tataru Jesus Christ Brain.
• 1:09:11
  No, I I thought you were talking about Oh no, you did Teledy
• 1:09:13
  Adeleji, the fucking mustache man.
• 1:09:16
  One who fucks you. Over, yes, that's another one,
• 1:09:21
  yeah. And then actually it's brutally
• 1:09:25
  bisected by around. He he does, yes.
• 1:09:31
  And then actually another example of a character whose
• 1:09:34
  culture is different, right? You have Pippin, whose name
• 1:09:38
  feels slightly out of place, but he's adopted by Rao Bond, so his
• 1:09:42
  name doesn't follow the Lala felt thing as much, right?
• 1:09:45
  It been and cryo, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:09:51
  Again, just you having a system will inform your players of a
• 1:09:57
  lot. So my my last option, this is
• 1:10:02
  kind of where we get into like the advanced technique.
• 1:10:04
  This is the this is the hardest one to pull off that works.
• 1:10:08
  This can have the best success when done right is take real
• 1:10:13
  names from other languages and then smash them together with
• 1:10:18
  each other or smash them together with some degree of the
• 1:10:23
  mouthfeel. And so like the, the trick here
• 1:10:30
  is if you do this right, this will have like the best success.
• 1:10:35
  If you do this wrong, it will sound really bad.
• 1:10:40
  Like this one, this one can be really tricky.
• 1:10:43
  But this is kind of what Isaiah was talking about with the food,
• 1:10:46
  which I've now my brain has immediately just blanked on what
• 1:10:49
  yes, this is kind of what Isaiah was talking about of the
• 1:10:52
  smashing the 2 languages together.
• 1:10:56
  So the idea itself is not necessarily that complicated,
• 1:11:00
  but it requires the most consideration.
• 1:11:04
  So you take the name from whatever language you're using,
• 1:11:09
  and then either you take another language and try and mix and
• 1:11:13
  match the syllables, or you take some syllables from the base
• 1:11:18
  language and throw in some of your own mouthfeel syllables and
• 1:11:23
  sounds and then kind of see what comes out of that.
• 1:11:26
  Right. So very quickly, I, I, I threw
• 1:11:29
  together my own little example here, going back to our Russian
• 1:11:34
  dwarves. If we take the real name
• 1:11:38
  Poltanov, and I'm sorry if I'm saying that wrong, I good chance
• 1:11:42
  it's probably pronounced differently.
• 1:11:44
  But Poltanov is the real Russian name.
• 1:11:47
  And we throw on something like rock at the end, right?
• 1:11:51
  Dwarves, rocks. OK, let's throw a rock at the
• 1:11:53
  end. You get a name like Poltaroc.
• 1:11:58
  And Poltaroc sounds close enough to a real name to be plausible,
• 1:12:03
  but different enough from the actual name to sound a bit
• 1:12:07
  unique, right? And then you might say to
• 1:12:10
  yourself, all right, but pronunciation, and in terms of
• 1:12:14
  pronunciation, it's a name and names can be pronounced however
• 1:12:19
  you want. And also it's your own made-up
• 1:12:21
  word, so you can pronounce it however you want, right?
• 1:12:26
  So just kind of rock with whatever, go with whatever
• 1:12:31
  pronunciation, whatever pronunciation you feels like
• 1:12:34
  work works best. So for that particular example,
• 1:12:38
  I was like Pulte rock. Yeah, OK, yeah, that
• 1:12:41
  pronunciation works. But you could probably do
• 1:12:45
  something like Pulte rock and you could say that's the
• 1:12:48
  pronunciation and that could work too.
• 1:12:53
  Again, the the real trick with this one, this is like this is
• 1:12:57
  the real like 5 head maneuver, but it also can be the one that
• 1:13:03
  fucks up the most if you don't take the time to really think
• 1:13:09
  about it. Like really it's like a
• 1:13:13
  combination of like the mouthfeel, like saying it, but
• 1:13:17
  also thinking about it and just kind of pondering how that name
• 1:13:22
  might come about. And just, you just basically,
• 1:13:25
  you just got to give it a little more attention when using the
• 1:13:28
  idea of smashing 2 languages together.
• 1:13:34
  And it is something, languages getting smashed together is
• 1:13:37
  something that happens in real life.
• 1:13:40
  But there isn't really, there's not really a rhyme or reason to
• 1:13:47
  it usually in real life because that's not really how language
• 1:13:52
  is formed, right? Like human language just mix and
• 1:13:55
  matches kind of at random. There isn't like a rule or a
• 1:13:59
  system to it. So when you're trying to emulate
• 1:14:03
  that, you kind of got to take a shot in the dark because that's
• 1:14:07
  really the only way to do it. Yeah, it it can get a little
• 1:14:13
  fuzzy if you if you don't nail it honestly, you don't have to
• 1:14:17
  nail it. You just got to got to get
• 1:14:19
  close. You just got to get close, but
• 1:14:21
  also you can't try to, you can't try to mimic any kind of real
• 1:14:25
  life thing because there is no real life system to mimic in
• 1:14:31
  this regard, right? Where when languages, when
• 1:14:35
  languages cross pollinate with each other, it just happens at
• 1:14:40
  random. Like just weird shit happens.
• 1:14:42
  You know what I mean? Like it's just like, I'll give
• 1:14:45
  you, I'll give you kind of a really a funny example of French
• 1:14:48
  and English, right? We use a lot of French words in
• 1:14:51
  English. So if I say Harry Covert green
• 1:14:56
  beans, you know what I'm talking about, right?
• 1:14:59
  It's a very specific kind of green bean, right?
• 1:15:01
  If you go to the grocery store in America and you get Harry
• 1:15:04
  Covert green beans, they're a specific kind of long, thin
• 1:15:08
  green bean that have very particular look to them.
• 1:15:12
  Harry Covert, First of all, that's not how you say it.
• 1:15:15
  It's pronounced. Hold on, I gotta Harry Covert,
• 1:15:20
  right? You have to on it.
• 1:15:21
  Eli Colbert, Ari cover. Yeah, you have to say the H,
• 1:15:25
  like at the back of your throat. And Ari, cover just means green
• 1:15:30
  beans. That's all that word means.
• 1:15:34
  It's Chai tea, bro. Chai.
• 1:15:35
  It's Chai tea, Yes. It's literally the Chai tea.
• 1:15:38
  Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's the Chai tea scenario.
• 1:15:41
  That's exactly what it is, right?
• 1:15:42
  Another example, legumes. If you go to an American grocery
• 1:15:47
  store and buy legumes, you're buying a very specific kind of
• 1:15:50
  bean. Legumes is the French word for
• 1:15:53
  vegetable. That's really funny, I did not
• 1:15:57
  know that. Yeah, that's all legumes are.
• 1:16:00
  Legumes means vegetable, right? So how did the French word for
• 1:16:04
  vegetable translate over to America and become an English
• 1:16:08
  word for a very specific kind of being?
• 1:16:11
  No fucking clue. But that's what happens when
• 1:16:14
  languages smash into each other. It's like weird confusing
• 1:16:20
  mixtures just kind of happen and.
• 1:16:23
  So. There's no rhyme or reason to it
• 1:16:26
  usually. I will asterisk this there.
• 1:16:29
  The the rhyme or reason can exist.
• 1:16:34
  Not always, but it can. So like, I, I, I bring this up
• 1:16:38
  because as, as 1/2 Puerto Rican, half Italian American, a lot of
• 1:16:46
  Americanized Italian is like speaking, speaking Italian
• 1:16:52
  through American grammatical structure, right?
• 1:16:55
  So the one that, the one that drives me up a fucking wall is
• 1:17:02
  anyone who's seen The Sopranos knows what Capicolo is, right?
• 1:17:05
  It's a, it's a, a cured ham from the neck of a pig.
• 1:17:10
  You're a fucking animal. You call it Gabagu.
• 1:17:13
  And then that was, you know, Gabagu and to Gabagu or Persuto
• 1:17:20
  is prejute. Prejute, prejute.
• 1:17:22
  Yep, Yep. Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  So like there there can be a rhyme or reason OK when you when
• 1:17:26
  you understand the math of it you can discern one, but there
• 1:17:30
  isn't always 1 so. Let me rephrase slightly.
• 1:17:33
  When I say there's no rhyme or reason, what I mean is there is
• 1:17:37
  no structure to how languages get smashed together.
• 1:17:42
  There is history to how they get smashed together.
• 1:17:47
  What happens is there's usually a story behind how these words
• 1:17:51
  got cross pollinated, but there isn't like a mathematical system
• 1:17:56
  to it, right? So yes, when you're translating
• 1:17:59
  that idea to your game, if you're smashing 2 languages
• 1:18:03
  together to create a new name for something or a new word for
• 1:18:07
  something, what you want to do is create that fictional history
• 1:18:14
  in your head, right? Why, Why did these two words get
• 1:18:19
  slammed together and then come up with a story behind the logic
• 1:18:24
  for it in your head, and then that will help you make sense of
• 1:18:28
  how that word should come out. That's really what I'm that's
• 1:18:31
  more what I'm talking about. There is a system.
• 1:18:33
  The system is different every time it for the system is
• 1:18:37
  different for every word because there's a history that is
• 1:18:40
  different for every word, but there isn't like a mathematical
• 1:18:43
  equation to how it ends up happening.
• 1:18:45
  That's that's what I'm saying. There isn't like a a thing you
• 1:18:50
  can point to like every time this happens, this happens.
• 1:18:53
  That just doesn't language just doesn't work that way.
• 1:18:56
  Another fun example of besides Chai tea and naan bread, both of
• 1:19:01
  those are very funny. If you so if you go to a bakery
• 1:19:07
  or like a coffee shop, right, and you have chocolate bread,
• 1:19:12
  it's almost certainly going to be called a chocolate croissant.
• 1:19:17
  That is not the name of that thing.
• 1:19:19
  It's called Pan du chocolate, which is chocolate bread.
• 1:19:23
  Chocolate. Bread.
• 1:19:24
  But because Americans saw croissants and then they saw pen
• 1:19:29
  du chocolate and the pastry is a similar style of pastry, they
• 1:19:34
  were like, oh, croissant and chocolate croissant, not
• 1:19:39
  acknowledging the fact that croissant means Crescent.
• 1:19:42
  And the reason croissants are called croissants is because
• 1:19:44
  they are Crescent shaped. But the Americans didn't know
• 1:19:49
  that or didn't care or whatever. And so they looked at the poncho
• 1:19:52
  chocolate and were like, ah, chocolate croissant because it's
• 1:19:54
  the same style of pastry but in a different shape, right.
• 1:19:58
  So it's like that kind of shit. That's what that's what I'm
• 1:20:02
  talking about where there's there's a story behind how the
• 1:20:05
  word came to be the way it was, But there isn't like a
• 1:20:09
  mathematical system to this kind of crap.
• 1:20:12
  So the take away here being. Take take the real names and
• 1:20:18
  smash them with either some mouthfeel kind of vibes or smash
• 1:20:22
  them with another language. And then as you're doing it,
• 1:20:25
  think about what that history might be like.
• 1:20:27
  Isaiah was talking about with the dish on the Planet Lancer,
• 1:20:31
  right? That same idea.
• 1:20:32
  What would the history be? Oh, well, they're eating the
• 1:20:34
  snake thing and people are eating pork.
• 1:20:37
  People eat pork loins. And like the word loin could
• 1:20:41
  potentially crossover, even though snakes don't have a loin.
• 1:20:45
  But those words could cross maybe because of the style of
• 1:20:48
  cooking or maybe because somebody thought it was a
• 1:20:51
  different animal or something like that, right?
• 1:20:53
  That history and concocting that is how you make it feel legit.
• 1:21:02
  So that's my last, that's my last option, my last method for
• 1:21:06
  for coming up with your fantasy names.
• 1:21:09
  I have a little a little bonus mentioned at the end here,
• 1:21:13
  'cause this whole time I've mostly been talking about coming
• 1:21:16
  up with fantasy names, right? Names for people or names for
• 1:21:21
  places. But these exact same techniques
• 1:21:26
  you can also use to make up a new language or a few words from
• 1:21:31
  a language. Right now, how hard or not that
• 1:21:37
  you want to go down this rabbit hole is up to you, because
• 1:21:42
  coming up with like your own language is obviously a very
• 1:21:46
  fucking deep rabbit hole if you want to make it that.
• 1:21:51
  But a little bit of spice can go a long way when it comes to
• 1:21:57
  coming up with some words in a different language, right?
• 1:22:01
  Using our Russian dwarves example, if you have your
• 1:22:04
  characters meet the Russian mountain dwarves and the Russian
• 1:22:08
  mountain dwarves, throw out a couple of words that you came up
• 1:22:12
  with using these methods that I mentioned.
• 1:22:16
  It's going to make the Russian dwarves feel like a people all
• 1:22:20
  their own within the setting because they're using a couple
• 1:22:23
  of words from their language. They're referencing things in
• 1:22:26
  their language. It makes it feel like they have
• 1:22:28
  their own culture, and them having their own culture then
• 1:22:32
  makes the world feel like a legitimate place with lots of
• 1:22:35
  different people. It doesn't need to be super
• 1:22:40
  complicated, it just needs to be enough to indicate to your
• 1:22:44
  players that this is another culture different from their
• 1:22:49
  character's culture. That's all you need.
• 1:22:53
  And now you might say to yourself, like, all right, but
• 1:22:57
  does that? Is that really gonna work that
• 1:22:59
  like if I do that? And allow me to give you another
• 1:23:02
  real life author example to prove my point here using
• 1:23:07
  exactly this method, We can look at the Witcher again.
• 1:23:11
  In the Witcher we have a group of non human rebels who are
• 1:23:18
  called the Squiatel and in universe we're told that the
• 1:23:23
  Squiatel are called that because they have squirrel tails
• 1:23:30
  attached to their like armor or their hats.
• 1:23:32
  They wear a little like squirrel tail medallions.
• 1:23:35
  Like literal or not medallions, but like literal squirrel tails
• 1:23:39
  attached to their armor. And we're told that Squiatel
• 1:23:43
  means squirrel in the elder speech, which is the Elden
• 1:23:46
  language, the word scootel most likely.
• 1:23:52
  Now technically we don't have 100% confirmation on this, but
• 1:23:55
  most likely Siepkowski got the word scootel from the Italian
• 1:24:00
  word skoya tolo, scootelito squoya tolo, which is the
• 1:24:06
  Italian word for squirrel. So he took the Italian word for
• 1:24:11
  squirrel, made a couple of adjustments, came up with Skoya
• 1:24:15
  Tau. That's basically a combination
• 1:24:19
  of option #1, which is the mouthfeel combined with option
• 1:24:23
  #3, which is stealing real names and real things, right?
• 1:24:27
  That's how we got squirrels. Another good example also in the
• 1:24:31
  Witcher universe is Geralt is often referred to as Gwynn
• 1:24:34
  Blythe by the elves and the Dryads in universe and Gwynn
• 1:24:38
  Blythe is straight up just Welsh for White Wolf.
• 1:24:42
  The White Wolf. That's all that means and I
• 1:24:45
  don't, and I don't mean he adjusted it.
• 1:24:47
  I mean Gwen Blythe is real life Welsh scores White Wolf.
• 1:24:51
  That's it. He just took the Welsh word as
• 1:24:55
  is. Nothing to me is funnier than
• 1:24:58
  fucking people playing Elton Ring.
• 1:25:00
  It's like, oh I love Blythe. What?
• 1:25:01
  Like I wonder what his name means.
• 1:25:04
  Wolf, Yes. The dog man in Elton Ring is
• 1:25:10
  called Wolf because he's a wolf. And why is he called that?
• 1:25:16
  Well, because to the Japanese devs, Blythe sounds like a cool
• 1:25:20
  fucking word. And it is.
• 1:25:22
  That's why. But it also just beats.
• 1:25:24
  But it also just beats off. So if a Famer, if a famous
• 1:25:31
  author, a famous and well regarded author can do it, then
• 1:25:35
  you could do it too in your games.
• 1:25:38
  That's kind of the key take away here.
• 1:25:40
  If Tolkien and Szykowski can get away with this kind of shit, you
• 1:25:44
  can too. And I'm sure there's examples of
• 1:25:47
  Lord of the Rings doing the same kind of thing.
• 1:25:48
  I just don't know Lord of the Rings as well so I can't like
• 1:25:51
  cite any examples, but I'm sure there's plenty.
• 1:25:57
  I I got you the Balrog. Oh yeah, yeah, that's just an
• 1:26:04
  actual Christian demon or some shit, right?
• 1:26:06
  Or or. The Dude Algarock was just a
• 1:26:08
  guy. I was.
• 1:26:08
  Just a guy. Oh yeah, there you go.
• 1:26:10
  Yeah, not even Christian. He's just, he's just a dude.
• 1:26:16
  Didn't know that. Nice.
• 1:26:18
  Another good one being, as people will famously joke,
• 1:26:22
  Treebeard, right? That's Treebeard, yeah.
• 1:26:27
  Treebeard is a great example of thing of the place or place with
• 1:26:30
  the thing, right? The really basic name of just
• 1:26:33
  he's a tree with a beard. He's Treebeard.
• 1:26:37
  That's it. So like I said at the top here,
• 1:26:46
  you don't need to do it any kind of perfect fancy way or
• 1:26:49
  anything, but authors are doing these methods, so use them for
• 1:26:55
  your game. It's it's really that's what it
• 1:26:59
  comes down to. As the saying goes, good artist
• 1:27:03
  borrow, great artist steal. I, I do love to say, oh sorry, I
• 1:27:08
  I fucked up a little bit. Oh Balrog.
• 1:27:13
  The real world equivalent of Balrog was a title of Odin's,
• 1:27:17
  which was Alegar, which just meant fiery eyed or fire eyed.
• 1:27:24
  Ah. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 1:27:28
  So it was a it was another name for Odin that Tolkien was just
• 1:27:33
  like, I'm going to take that just.
• 1:27:35
  We're just going to steal it. Yep, yes, Sir, That's the that's
• 1:27:42
  the secret sauce. Any any last little little add
• 1:27:48
  on you want to throw in here? I will.
• 1:27:50
  I will throw an honourable mention to a series that I like
• 1:27:54
  that a lot of people don't, that I think has a really fun naming
• 1:27:56
  convention. That's right motherfuckers.
• 1:27:59
  I'm bringing up Ruby because Ruby has a fantastic naming
• 1:28:02
  convention. That is, that has a reason in
• 1:28:05
  the lore. It's not just for the gimmick.
• 1:28:08
  Basically in Ruby's world after the crazy calamity where where
• 1:28:13
  God and Satan had a pissing contest and destroyed the moon.
• 1:28:16
  It's a whole thing, don't worry about it.
• 1:28:19
  Everything sucked so bad and the the negative emotions brought
• 1:28:23
  all the monsters that people started naming their children's
• 1:28:27
  children's their children after colour as a way of like
• 1:28:36
  literally bringing life back into things.
• 1:28:39
  So that's why characters are named like Ruby for red Blake,
• 1:28:43
  Vice, right? Right, right.
• 1:28:46
  Yang actually, hilariously, is not named after a colour.
• 1:28:49
  Not a colour. Shaolong just means the sunny
• 1:28:51
  little dragon. But you guys, you could count
• 1:28:56
  Sunny as like a, a, a golden color.
• 1:29:01
  And then you know, you have you have ones like Ren Leyren.
• 1:29:06
  So Ren is just Lotus, so his color is pink, like stuff like
• 1:29:10
  that. Oh yeah.
• 1:29:13
  I love the way there's literally a character named Pira who
• 1:29:19
  that's literally the her name just means is just a spoiler for
• 1:29:23
  pyrrhic victory because she spoilers.
• 1:29:25
  Fucking dies but. Pira also met fiery haired so
• 1:29:31
  she has like a Crimson red hair. Makes sense.
• 1:29:36
  Makes sense. Yeah, again, there's a lot of
• 1:29:39
  power in using language and and naming conventions to deliver
• 1:29:46
  information without saying anything.
• 1:29:50
  It's pretty good, yeah. Hell, Ruby even does it for its
• 1:29:53
  fucking weapons. Because, you know, the weapons
• 1:29:55
  are a big part of the series and all the weapons have interesting
• 1:29:57
  names with like real like the dumbest 1.
• 1:30:00
  The dumbest one in my opinion. There's a Sun Wukong character
• 1:30:04
  because of course there is. Of course there is, and he's got
• 1:30:08
  his. His weapon is a staff that
• 1:30:11
  disconnects into two nunchucks that are lever action short
• 1:30:16
  barreled shotguns and the weapon is called Ribang Jingubang,
• 1:30:23
  which is a reference to Wukong's staff, the Rui Jingubang.
• 1:30:30
  But it's got 2 uses of the word bong as in bang because they're
• 1:30:37
  shotguns and gun is another word for staff.
• 1:30:41
  So it's a staff Staff also just called the gun gun because in
• 1:30:45
  everything, every weapon in Ruby is a something gun.
• 1:30:48
  It's a sword gun, a psych gun, fucking a whip gun.
• 1:30:51
  And then son has the gun gun. The gun Gun.
• 1:30:56
  That's pretty funny, actually. It goes deep.
• 1:30:58
  It's it's good. It's a.
• 1:30:58
  Good one. I like that.
• 1:31:00
  Yeah, that's funny. Wow.
• 1:31:04
  Look, say, say what you will about Ruby, most of it is fair.
• 1:31:07
  I love it. But the name of conventions were
• 1:31:10
  always on board. Yeah, there you go.
• 1:31:15
  Only does. All right, that has that has
• 1:31:19
  been us. Take these take this advice into
• 1:31:22
  your game. It will.
• 1:31:24
  It will. I don't know.
• 1:31:27
  Do you? Well, what am I trying to say?
• 1:31:29
  It'll help you out. It'll help you unless you're
• 1:31:32
  Paladin, in which case you're only ever going to go with
• 1:31:34
  option one. Option one is the only one you
• 1:31:36
  live for. Sometimes option 2 because his
• 1:31:39
  his fucking chanter character in Fabulous is called Axel Knockout
• 1:31:42
  as a reference to Axel Rose. It's fine, but 90% of the
• 1:31:46
  fucking time it's option one. And there's always a pun.
• 1:31:49
  There's always a fucking pun and it drives me fucking insane.
• 1:31:53
  Every single God damn time. He's like so my OC has a new
• 1:31:57
  name and I'm like please brother, my blood sugar I don't
• 1:32:00
  have it, I don't have it in me today my blood pressure threw
• 1:32:03
  the roof already I can feel it. Oh my God.
• 1:32:06
  Every time. If you like this nonsense, you
• 1:32:09
  have heard Papa, so follow. Appreciate it.
• 1:32:15
  That's it.