fantasy words all sound the same

Comments · 812

• BY

  @ByAtticus · 9 days ago · pinned

  Also, the T in Voldemort is supposed to be silent! Certainly not how that one turned out in practice (you can thank the French)

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• FA

  @Fabulist · 9 days ago

  George R. R. Martin was asked by a fan if he would share the Dothraki vocabulary. GRRM replied, “There isn’t one. I invented 9 words of Dothraki. If I need a tenth one, I’ll make it up.” 😆

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• US

  @User-dyn · 7 days ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SwDo1zTTJQ&amp;t=19">0:19</a> who is going to tell him tatooine is the name of a real place in southern tunisia...

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• SA

  @samwise5486 · 7 days ago

  Fantasy Name Generator did irrepairable damage

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• MA

  @matheusrossetti9144 · 8 days ago (edited)

  One thing I really like about Tolkien is that the names follow a grammatical structure, for example: &quot;mor&quot; means &quot;dark&quot; or &quot;black&quot;, so if you learn &quot;Moria -&gt; dark pit&quot; and &quot;Mordor -&gt; black land&quot;, when you read &quot;Morgoth&quot; or &quot;Morwen&quot; you already know it&apos;s something opposite to light/clarity.

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• ME

  @melonmusk8924 · 6 days ago

  Because Tolkien already created his own language, it&apos;s pretty easy to give realistic names to things, because he can just name something in English, like Treebeard and than he just translates it into his own language as Fangorn or Lothlórien, meaning Dream flower in Elvish. And that&apos;s pretty much how places are named in real life, if you know the original language most of the time their meaning is the simplest description that got popular and now everybody call it that. For Example I live in Hungary and the name of one town is called Várpalota, literally means Castle Palace, because we have both a Castle and a Palace.

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• CO

  @cosmic_jon · 9 days ago

  I love how in Morrowind they based a lot of names on ancient Babylonian and Assyrian languages. You get places like Nchardumz or Zergonipal which are very foreign, but also believable.

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• AD

  @adamsmith5118 · 9 days ago

  I think it&apos;s worth noting that the distinction you make between long=elegant and short=stark is fairly Anglophonic -- we have a cultural association between short=Germanic and long=Romance that then gets mapped onto the elegant-vs-blunt cultural roles those have in post-Norman English

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• E1

  @e1123581321345589144 · 8 days ago

  Tolkien&apos;s place names sound good because he mimicked the process by which real places get their names. By simply reading out the names of placese on the map you can get a snapshot of the world&apos;s history.

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• DR

  @drumgarlicbread · 8 days ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SwDo1zTTJQ&amp;t=98">1:38</a> The fact that Zug is a real place in Switzerland 😭 Honestly this is why I feel like fantasy names, or what &quot;feels&quot; like a fantasy name is very subjective to the place/culture/language you surround yourself with. &quot;Zug&quot; might sound like a fantasy word to people that dont speak a germanic language, but to germanic speakers might be the most basic day to day word. Some fantasy names might be boring to certain people, while to others they might be intriguing, which is a cool thing. I think you would almost have to make up a new language to truly &quot;satisfy&quot; everyone equally. Super cool video!!

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• ZU

  @zugabdu1 · 6 days ago

  There&apos;s a discipline in linguistics called &quot;phonotactics&quot; that studies how different languages construct their syllables. &nbsp;It&apos;s worth reading up on if you&apos;re making fantasy names and want them to sound like they&apos;re from a real language

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• JU

  @JulleVDB · 9 days ago

  Tatouine is a real place bro

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