# Looking for languages to draw inspiration from:



## ChasingSuns (Mar 15, 2016)

Hello everyone! So I am trying to figure out some kind of naming pattern for a race of humanoids. I wanted to somehow blend syllables from names from two different languages together to create something new. Originally I was trying to blend Chinese and Arabic names together, but that didn't go so well. Are there any languages that might blend with either of these in a unique-sounding way?


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## Jim Aikin (Mar 15, 2016)

I'm not an authority on human languages, but can you give an example or two of blends that you didn't think worked well?

The Celtic languages (including Welsh) are rather interesting -- words without vowels. Hawaiian is interesting because there are, I think, only five consonants. And then there are the languages in Africa that use clicks (Bantu?). Clicks are hard to represent using our alphabet, so you may not want to go there. French is actually pretty interesting phonetically, but might be hard to represent phonetically if blended with Hindi or Old Norse.


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## Ban (Mar 15, 2016)

I often use this strategy as well for my fantasy world. An easy site to use for this is behindthename.com, in case you didn't use it already. Honestly I'd just try clicking on a few languages and see what you can mix and match. For Arabic/Chinese I came up with these. 

-Makrang Murtaching
-Yazyad Firli
-Zidhim Huadhat
-Jianraam Huswei
-Jingsef Noorlim

Personally I think Chinese/Arabic could work fine, but if you'd rather have something else you can for example choose Arabic/Norwegian

-Eirzar Fanreel
-Jibgeir Addagust
-Kamafar Folkdi

Or Chinese/Dutch

-Gerboyin Zemas
-Adwen Quan Kobten
-Rutgo Hongner

It isn't perfect, but with a bit of invested time you can find a nice basis for your languages. Once you've done a bit of playing around with mixing and matching I would write down some common vowels, syllables and word structures for your names to make sure they remain consistent.


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## TheKillerBs (Mar 15, 2016)

One of the more important things about Chinese is that it's monosyllabic, so perhaps take take Arabic names and turn them monosyllabic? Example: Mohammed -> Mow Ha Med.


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## ChasingSuns (Mar 15, 2016)

Thank you for the input! I'll definitely be looking into the listed languages, as well as behindthename. Also didn't think about breaking up longer names and whatnot. Definitely gonna start trying to think more out of the box on this!


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## Bekka King (Apr 23, 2016)

Combining Greek and Gaelic could produce some interesting results - and feasibly.


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