Drakevarg
Troubadour
More of a bare-bones issue than my usual topic, but one that's been frustrating enough to keep it on the backburner for a while.
I decided a fair while ago that "forehead makeup" nonhuman races were basically pointless, and struck them from my setting. Outside of some minor longevity-based quirks that almost never really mattered, I found that you could replace most humanoid fantasy races (elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, etc) with fictional human ethnic groups and they'd remain basically the same, so I did precisely that because it conserved detail and made the world feel more like a real place.
Now, I still like having civilized nonhumans running around, but I decided that if I was going to include them they had to genuinely not be human. In the main world I write in this is fairly conserved, the only two known nonhuman races being the Fterota, a race of flightless avians that ruled the world before humanity, and a race of shark-people that currently lack a unique name because their non-amphibious nature makes them fairly isolationist and by extension mostly narratively irrelevant for the time being. Low on the to-do list, basically.
However, I have a second world running in tandem with this main world (same setting different place). It's out-of-universe designation is "Blacksky" and is considerably more alien, with no human presence whatsoever. I mostly use it for when I want to do something more high/epic/abstract fantasy and don't want to worry too hard about staying grounded with reality.
Now then, the issue at hand: there are five active races in the Blacksky setting. One of them - the Stalfolk - are meant to be the odd ones out, the intruders, and don't factor in my current problem. That being coming up with the names for these races. For story reasons and simple convenience there's a single language used between all four of these native races, that being Greek. While I generally use translation convention into English for place-names for simplicity's sake (for example the location of the game I'm working on is called Lonecliff Glacier, not Monachikovracho Pagetona or whatever the appropriate translation is), but for racial and personal names I want to use the actual language.
Here's where my problem arises. Greek is not a very compound word-friendly language. It's very easy to produce long, unpronounceable trails of mush (like Monachikovracho) out of fairly simple compounds. I of course don't speak a lick of Greek, so I could just be doing it wrong. However, this is important, so I need to get it done. As it stands, here are the four native races I need to name and their current placeholder names:
Petradichila ("Stonehoofed"): Name of the caprine race found on the Godhand continent.
Xiroderma ("Dry Skin"): Formal name of the reptilian race found among the cliffs and deserts throughout the Blacksky realm. Commonly called by the diminutive term "Dragonlings."
Sorka Trogon ("Flesh Eater"): Name of the enigmatic race of crablike beings from the Tree of Life.
Apotonero ("From the Water"): Name of the amphibious race found along the shores of the Blacksky realm.
Yes, I could in theory just call them things like 'crabfolk' or 'frog-people,' but that comes off as rather... juvenile, for lack of a better word. And for the Petradichila isn't so easy. They're basically centaurs, only with goat-features instead of horse-features. And while frequently called "Dragonlings," the Xiroderma are closer to being anthropomorphic pterosaurs.
In summation, I'd like to find a way to name all four of these races in a manner that is both aptly descriptive and consists of three syllables or less. In Greek. Any ideas? I have race-blurbs for a few of them if more details would be helpful.
I decided a fair while ago that "forehead makeup" nonhuman races were basically pointless, and struck them from my setting. Outside of some minor longevity-based quirks that almost never really mattered, I found that you could replace most humanoid fantasy races (elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, etc) with fictional human ethnic groups and they'd remain basically the same, so I did precisely that because it conserved detail and made the world feel more like a real place.
Now, I still like having civilized nonhumans running around, but I decided that if I was going to include them they had to genuinely not be human. In the main world I write in this is fairly conserved, the only two known nonhuman races being the Fterota, a race of flightless avians that ruled the world before humanity, and a race of shark-people that currently lack a unique name because their non-amphibious nature makes them fairly isolationist and by extension mostly narratively irrelevant for the time being. Low on the to-do list, basically.
However, I have a second world running in tandem with this main world (same setting different place). It's out-of-universe designation is "Blacksky" and is considerably more alien, with no human presence whatsoever. I mostly use it for when I want to do something more high/epic/abstract fantasy and don't want to worry too hard about staying grounded with reality.
Now then, the issue at hand: there are five active races in the Blacksky setting. One of them - the Stalfolk - are meant to be the odd ones out, the intruders, and don't factor in my current problem. That being coming up with the names for these races. For story reasons and simple convenience there's a single language used between all four of these native races, that being Greek. While I generally use translation convention into English for place-names for simplicity's sake (for example the location of the game I'm working on is called Lonecliff Glacier, not Monachikovracho Pagetona or whatever the appropriate translation is), but for racial and personal names I want to use the actual language.
Here's where my problem arises. Greek is not a very compound word-friendly language. It's very easy to produce long, unpronounceable trails of mush (like Monachikovracho) out of fairly simple compounds. I of course don't speak a lick of Greek, so I could just be doing it wrong. However, this is important, so I need to get it done. As it stands, here are the four native races I need to name and their current placeholder names:
Petradichila ("Stonehoofed"): Name of the caprine race found on the Godhand continent.
Xiroderma ("Dry Skin"): Formal name of the reptilian race found among the cliffs and deserts throughout the Blacksky realm. Commonly called by the diminutive term "Dragonlings."
Sorka Trogon ("Flesh Eater"): Name of the enigmatic race of crablike beings from the Tree of Life.
Apotonero ("From the Water"): Name of the amphibious race found along the shores of the Blacksky realm.
Yes, I could in theory just call them things like 'crabfolk' or 'frog-people,' but that comes off as rather... juvenile, for lack of a better word. And for the Petradichila isn't so easy. They're basically centaurs, only with goat-features instead of horse-features. And while frequently called "Dragonlings," the Xiroderma are closer to being anthropomorphic pterosaurs.
In summation, I'd like to find a way to name all four of these races in a manner that is both aptly descriptive and consists of three syllables or less. In Greek. Any ideas? I have race-blurbs for a few of them if more details would be helpful.
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