: Re: Pretty flowers with clunky Latin names I am writing a fantasy novel set in the Middle East. For multiple reasons related to both plot and atmosphere, I'm using flowers and flowering trees a

@Mendez196

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+1 Secespitus.

However, I never use any name I don't think my reader would understand, especially not a name derived from the discoverer or a person being honored; those real-life people do not exist in my fantasy!

I will make up names. Even for my experts that do know the formal names, and I introduce them as such, with a description. I disagree that LOTR reads better with formal names than it reads with descriptions, to me the descriptions aid the imagination of the reader better than any formal name possibly could. You say that yourself, that the formal names feel flat. That's because they don't evoke any image for anybody except a trained botanist.

The job of the writer, IMO, to aid the imagination of the reader, so they see what is in the writer's mind.

The etymology of the words can help: Acacia may derive from a word for thorny and first referred to a thorny Egyptian tree; thus something like thorny tree would be fine, it is how it was literally identified by early people. Most names were like that.

Thus I introduce a fantasy formal name, and use it with a description. True formal names do nothing, if you trace them to their origin they are nearly always descriptive names.

Another solution is to provide some formality by way of teaching or introduction. Describe the flower or plant from the POV of a person that has not seen it before or doesn't know its formal name or calls it be a colloquial and descriptive name, in dialogue a character can prove her expertise by using the formal name.

I see little point in doing that unless the plot requires an expert botanist at some point to use plant resources to get out of a bind or solve some problem. In that case, a few random instances of showing this knowledge are all that is necessary for the reader to believe in the expertise.

The point isn't to educate the reader, it is to entertain them, and dumping information on them that is not descriptive, or character building, or emotionally influential on a character, and has no influence on the plot, is (IMO) poor writing. Nobody cares if the information has no consequences.

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