Character creation

[LadyKas]

So the writing im currently restarting is something i had started writing like in middle school but i lost all my work on it a couple of years ago do to moving. So im restarting. I need to think of "race" names for the kingdoms in it. The main character is the princess of the main race in the story (think the fae court) and she is different her father came from a different branch of same said race but that branch was cursed, characters mom rejected her for said curse, so she has a chip against anything princess. Her "court" consists of a princess from the shapeshifters whos form is a panther, a princess from the woodlen elf type race, and one from a third race i cant figure out but needs to be short and graceful i think fairy but actual almost human size. I need some help with race names, Any sugestions?

 

[CupofJoe]

One of my aids for getting names working inside my tired brain is to type in to google translate the verb, noun, or phrase I want for each character [race etc.] and then look through the different languages until some stick out to me... Sometimes I listen to how they sound as well.
At the moment I'm riffing off Finnish names.
There are a lot of double vowels [and other repeated letters] that feel right for what I'm writing. [So you can't use Finnish ]

 

[LadyKas]

Awesome idea and dont worry i wont use finnish but Greek and Gaelic (that doesn't look right is it?) Might fit in with the theme of the story.

 

[Night Gardener]

If I'm really stuck, I combine west-east words or phrases until I get a combination I like. Especially for naming cities, groups of people, geographic regions, etc.

I'm ok with completely made-up words and names, so long as there is some hope of pronouncing them phonetically. I'm not going to make up an entire language from scratch, but mad props to those more ambitious than myself.
(*cough* Tolkien )

It's helpful to start by combining words from languages with similar roots (Germanic, Gaelic, Roman/Latin, etc.)

If you're feeling more creative, mix it up. I'd go so far to say that Creole languages combine words from not-similar roots. For example, Creole from the southern U.S. and Carribean islands are heavily influenced by French (Romance language) but use East African, Carribean-Native, Spanish/ Portugese (another Romance language), Dutch, English and even some Manadrin.

There might be some issues with 'cultural appropriation', so tread carefully. Take inspiration, yes. But do so respectfully. ( I probably wouldn't lift... say, Navajo, straight-up wholesale as a language for magical elves traipsing the British Isles. But... that's me. )

I've also had fun with spelling words backwards and adding stuff to it. (Mostly vowels). You can try it in any language.

I'll use 'water' as an example. Maybe it's a surname for a character that's needed. Start with 'Retaw'. Interesting, but not quite there. Let's add some stuff to it.
Rhetaw (improvement!)
Rheataw (I think the 'w' is lonely)
Rheatawn (better! Can I spell it out phonetically?)
Rheiatahn (Sounds like a name? Yep. Done.)

Just remember that your audience (I'm guessing English-speakers/readers) are going to approach the words you make up from their native language perspective and language rules. Basically, try to have an even'ish distribution of vowels and consonents so the words seem unique to the book, but not extraordinarily difficult to discern in your head or bordering on incomprehensible gibberish to the reader.

Hope this helps LadyKas

 

[Sam H.]

While I very much see the value in the answers already given and sometimes use similar strategies in my worlds, I think there's an equally strong case to be made for using intentionally "native" as opposed to "foreign" sounding names. In general, I try to use foreign names and words from other languages only when the name still conveys meaning to an English speaker (assuming you're writing for an English-speaking audience). Most of the time, a name composed of existing English words or widely-used borrowings conveys more than one that's strictly made up, that lives only within the fiction, and that has to be explained.

"Elves," "dwarves," and "goblins" were all a part of readers' vocabulary before Tolkien repurposed them for his stories. The name "hobbit," meanwhile, only had meaning before Tolkien's use of it through the sound of the word. Tolkien fascinated himself with his proposed etymology (a Modern English form of hypothetical of Old English *hol-bytla, "hole builder") for the name, but that etymology isn't the least bit clear until explained. "Hobbit" is effective anyway because it sounds right. To me the particular string of sounds that make of the word feels bouncy, springy, and small and reminds me of the words rabbit and hop.

George R. R. Martin is both a good and a bad example of native-naming. Aerys, Dothraki, Qarth, and Meereen all sound cool and have different ethnic connotations and "feels." But they don't immediately say what they're about. Even the word Meereenese (adjectival form of Meereen) conveys more than just Meereen by using the by-then-familiar Meereen and English -ese. On the other hand, Winterfell, Riverrun, Westerlands, Crannogmen, White Walkers, and Stormlanders are all, to some extent, descriptions of what they are within the story. That makes them accessible memorable.

Gene Wolfe is purposefully confusing, but nonetheless a great namer of things. His strategy is to repurpose English words, often obscure ones, rather than make up his own when possible. From the appendix of the first volume of The Book of the New Sun,

In rendering this book – originally composed in a tongue that has not achieved existence – into English, I might easily have saved myself a great deal of labor by having recourse to invented terms; in no case have I done so. Thus in many instances I have been forced to replace yet undiscovered concepts by their closest twentieth-century equivalents. Such words as peltast, androgyn, and exultant are substitutions of this kind, and are intended to be suggestive rather than definitive.

I'm far from a great namer and further from a great writer, but my advice would be to name the races in your world using simple descriptions of what they are. If it helps, you could try mapping out all the concepts you associate with each, or, if you have multiple races that are associated with one another in some way, you could name them using a shared scheme (wood elves, high elves, dark elves; Westermen, Crannogmen, North Men).

By filling your world with immediately meaningful names, you can make what they're attached to immediately stand out to readers.

Hope that's helpful!