: Re: Naming fictional races with original names vs with words from other languages My novels contain several fictional races, but I have been trying to decide how to name them. Therefore, I must

@Sims2267584

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In general, it can be both. Authors will often take a foreign language and edit it into a new language. For example, Tolkien's elf language was based off Finnish, and in fact, he was linguist. A reason why he made lord of the rings was to have somewhere to use his made up languages.

Because of the sheer difficulty of simply creating a name off the top of your head, I would have to say that copying another word and editing it is the more popular method.

On a side note, I should probably point out the amount of endings that are cliche in fantasy. They include: -dell (surrendell), -far (fellenfar), -fell (evenfell). Those make it so easy to make new words, that I literally thought of those examples off the top of my head.

A tactic I personally find helpful, is to say your idea's out loud, and see if they actually sound good in a sentence. Like, "The Urterall armies are going to attack.". I should actually point out how 'urgal' from 'The Inheritance Cycle' inspired me to think of that just now. I took the -ur sound at the start of the word, and took it from there.

I hope this helped with naming your races!

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