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noviceconlangers2011-12-04 11:11 am
aldersprig) wrote in noviceconlangers2011-12-04 11:11 am
Naming Rules
'kay.
I'm just about ready to start constructing a language, but I want to figure out what's going on with my names first.
I have a hopefully-complete list of names from my Reiassan stories here: http://reiassan.wikispaces.com/Words#x-Words and Names-People
Using (DR) to mean the time in which Reiassan was discovered & colonization began, the Lyuda timeline is about 200 DR, the Rin timeline about 500, 550 DR, and the Steam!Callanthe timeline ~1000DR. So there can be name shift in that time.
The proto!Callenian I'm making is, for ease of timelines, ~1000 years B-DR and ~500 years B-DR.
Rule One in naming:
Royals and those with royal ancestry begin their name with a vowel.
The vowels come from words meaning the untouchable things: sky, stars, moon, sun, small-moon. (Am I missing any?) So a prefix of a- or e-, etc. connects them to the untouchable.
Problem: It's often a syllable of vowel-consonant following another syllable starting with a consonant. How do the consonants figure in there?
Rule Two: I seem to have female names ending in a or I, men in a consonant.
Exception: Rin, Zaide.
...I may be blathering...
So far I seem relatively consistent in my naming, albeit accidentally for much of it. But now I get to figure this in to proto!Callenian language, and that might be trickier.
Example:
I was thinking of having a "soft" beginning consonant denote a "non-useful" gendered word, but that means, I think, that Lyuda's parents decided she was a non-useful child.
This is hard. O_O
I'm just about ready to start constructing a language, but I want to figure out what's going on with my names first.
I have a hopefully-complete list of names from my Reiassan stories here: http://reiassan.wikispaces.com/Words#x-Words and Names-People
Using (DR) to mean the time in which Reiassan was discovered & colonization began, the Lyuda timeline is about 200 DR, the Rin timeline about 500, 550 DR, and the Steam!Callanthe timeline ~1000DR. So there can be name shift in that time.
The proto!Callenian I'm making is, for ease of timelines, ~1000 years B-DR and ~500 years B-DR.
Rule One in naming:
Royals and those with royal ancestry begin their name with a vowel.
The vowels come from words meaning the untouchable things: sky, stars, moon, sun, small-moon. (Am I missing any?) So a prefix of a- or e-, etc. connects them to the untouchable.
Problem: It's often a syllable of vowel-consonant following another syllable starting with a consonant. How do the consonants figure in there?
Rule Two: I seem to have female names ending in a or I, men in a consonant.
Exception: Rin, Zaide.
...I may be blathering...
So far I seem relatively consistent in my naming, albeit accidentally for much of it. But now I get to figure this in to proto!Callenian language, and that might be trickier.
Example:
I was thinking of having a "soft" beginning consonant denote a "non-useful" gendered word, but that means, I think, that Lyuda's parents decided she was a non-useful child.
This is hard. O_O
no subject
Was she a firstborn during a patriarchal period? (I can't recall.) Because that would make it make perfect sense. You know how patriarchal societies feel about daughters. /cue eyeroll
How about male names tend to end in consonants, and female in vowels? Rin's nickname would then be entertainingly and ICly somewhat masculine, as well as decidedly not royal.
Another observation I've noted, which may be due to skewed sample data, is that your royalty seem to have longer names than your commoners. That could be an angle to look at and see how/if you want to run with it.
no subject
I'm liking Lyuda just being not-useful to her parents, yes. :-)
And she could have been.
And yes, Male names=consonant endings, females = vowels. And that doesn't seem to fit my language ideas in any specific way, but that's okay. It can have evolved.