: Re: Inventing names for Sci-Fi characters How can I invent names for fictional characters in a future-setting Sci-Fi story so they won't be connected to any existing culture? I considered the following

@Dunderdale623

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You want names that are entirely alien to us? Let me share a story - interestingly, an entirely real story about a species with most unique names.

Learning these names is within grasp of humans, although communicating them by anyone else than given name's bearer is nearly impossible.

The species is the horse, and the names are the scents of their breath.

You will sometimes see horses "sharing breath". They put their noses close, and exhale and inhale deeply. This is a friendly "How are you" in their language, and simultaneously getting accustomed to each other and introducing yourself. If you, a human, decide to get on "more personal" level with horses than "owner-pet", you'll fairly easily get them to greet you that way. Share breaths with a horse, feel the scent and marvel how unique they are.

So, one bears dry, cold, tomb-like emptiness. Another is summer herbs of a sunny meadow. Yet another is the scent of a frosty, midwinter day, another - sweet fruit, or a dusty road, or deep shade of forest, or stale midsummer river, or dry warmth of hot sand.

These are true names of horses. And understandably, you can't really copy these, tell them to someone else as given horse told it to you - you'd have to hold their breaths. So, humans use various silly substitutes. But smart humans will give their horses names similar to their true ones. The one with tomb-like emptiness was called Pharaoh, and the one with herbs of sunny meadow - Fairy Tale.

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