: 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

@Lee1909368

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As others advise, first try to find English names of the flowers as much as you can. For example, Wikipedia suggests "karamoja, umbrella thorn" for vachellia tortilis, "winter daffodil, autumn daffodil, fall daffodil" (very creative) for sternbergia lutea, and "apple-ring acacia, ana tree, balanzan tree and winter thorn" for faidherbia.

If you want the names to sound less descriptive and more "compact", to imply that the characters know the flowers well, go for the short ones. If you also want to at least describe what the thing you are talking about it, append "flower" or "tree" to it. Not very poetic, but that's how English works.

Next candidate would be the local name of the plant, possibly equipped with a modifier in some places to introduce the plant (e.g. "thorny sunut trees", "apple-ring haraz acacias" etc.) so that next time you could drop them and the reader will retain the sense of description.

For the remaining group of plants which have no (short) local or English name, Englishify the Latin name! Many word in English come directly or indirectly from Latin, hence it is not that hard to introduce a Latin name to the language (when compared to e.g. Arabic). Using once again your example, it would be something like "vachellias", "sternbergs", "faidherbs" or something similar. Be creative, you'll make a nice "translation" of the name to English, yet retain its exotic sense and as a bonus, readers who are familiar with the Latin name will still understand the translated one. There's no shame in that, since that's how many names got into English in the first place. Using modifiers as above to introduce the plant is also recommended.

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