: Re: How do i properly name a fictional species and describe it? I'm currently developing a fictional species set in a fantasy world, and I want to name it, but I don't want it to sound too...

@Deb2945533

Vote Up Vote Down

Let's start with description: how to describe a living creature, without referencing other living creatures. What does it have - scales, tail, wings? How many limbs? On how many does it walk, if at all? Describe what is. For example, if I described a creature as "covered with soft brown fur, possessing a bushy tail as long as its body and curling at the end, sometimes running on all four legs, other times standing up and holding nuts in its forepaws", you'd recognise it as a squirrel. I don't need to mention that it's "rodent-like", or "the size of a rat, but with more points in Charisma and less in Intelligence".

If your world doesn't have humans, you'd be telling the story, and describing individuals, from a non-human POV. That means that general physical features would be taken for granted by them, just as having one head, two hands, two feet is taken for granted by us. You'd need to introduce whatever features your creatures have in such a way that it wouldn't be comparable to "John had two eyes and one nose". Consider instead:

Tom looked at Alice across the classroom. Her scales were pink and glossy, her fingers were green and delicate. He would so much like to hold her hand, and then slide his hand down her long tail, to caress the golden tuft on the end. If he could summon up the courage to ask her to the spring dance, and if she said yes...
(No reason Dracanopi can't be creeps, OK?)

In this example, the reader understands that at least the females of the species have scales, hands and a tail with a tuft on the end, that pink, green and gold are considered pleasant colours for those features (respectively), and that other colours exist.

Now to the name. In many of Earth's languages, at least one of the words for 'humans' just means 'people'. Basically, when we say 'humans', we mean 'us'. So it stands to reason that your creatures could also refer to themselves as 'us', 'people', unless there is more than one species in the story. I remember reading a fantasy short story, in which you very gradually realise that the first-person POV character is a dragon, and that the enemy, who's described as sort of disgusting and worm-like is human. No species names were given at any point - only "us" and the "others".

If you do insist on the creatures having a name, it should be in the language you're writing in. Consider: no people on Earth routinely use another language's word for 'people'. (There is a scientific name, in the language that's most associated with science, but that's separate.) Sure, your creatures won't really be speaking English, that's a translation convention. And you should be using it throughout, unless those creatures are not the ones from whose POV you're telling the story (in which case, use the name the POV species gave them, perhaps inspired by whatever they call themselves in their language.)

It's not a bad idea to use the 'Draco-' element in your species' name, if you use a name at all: it conjures an image of something dragon-like. Such an image would be helpful to the readers. I wouldn't, however, use any 'antropo-' element: it implies that humans not only exist, but are sufficiently dominant for a sapient species to be comparing themselves to humans. That's a bit strange.

(0)

Login to post a comment!