Using foreign languages to create names...

[Pythagoras]

Right now I am going to derive all the names for my religion and magic from Finnish. I am very very bad with names and I am fascinated by Finland. I am not going to just translate since I have a Finnish character so that might be a bit strange. But going to add extra things to the translation or use the sound and do something with that

I may be mistaken, but Tolkien's invented language for the Elves of Middle Earth stemmed from his fascination with Finnish. You're in good company.

 

[Scribble]

Right now I am going to derive all the names for my religion and magic from Finnish. I am very very bad with names and I am fascinated by Finland. I am not going to just translate since I have a Finnish character so that might be a bit strange. But going to add extra things to the translation or use the sound and do something with that

I also quite like Finnish names. They are vaguely Germanic, which lends a flavor of "antiquity" writing in English, but different enough from actual German words which are often very close to English.

 

[Ireth]

I may be mistaken, but Tolkien's invented language for the Elves of Middle Earth stemmed from his fascination with Finnish. You're in good company.

You're half-right. Tolkien made up more than one elvish language -- Quenya is based on Finnish, while Sindarin is based on Welsh. And apparently some Black Speech words come from bastardizations of Gaelic, like "nazg" (ring) from "nasc".

 

[Mythopoet]

Of course, Tolkien didn't base any of his created languages on just one real world language. For instance, with Quenya, the word sounds used mostly come from Finnish, but the structure of the language has much in common with Latin and Tolkien referred to it as Middle-earth's Latin. Tolkien, being a linguist, had a lot of knowledge of many languages and of the principles of language in general to draw from, which is why his languages are so realistic and detailed.