Place and personal names are important to creating the "feel" of a novel.
My process for coming up with names is a bit of a mixed bag. When I first start a story, I tend to throw a bunch of things together that sound cool without too much thought for consistency or coherency. This is particularly obvious in the map I created for The Templars of Metirno (see the document to the right). I made the map when I was bored during the first day of an undergrad philosophy class, and the naming conventions are all over the place.
For example:
- "saaristo" is a complete copy from the Finnish word, which means "archipelago." One of my first inspirations for this story-world was that I wanted it to be reminiscent of Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea series; I wanted a slightly aged-up version of these stories. "maalisto" came with the idea that these were twin islands with similar names.
- "the five divisions" is a new sort of name for me. I wanted to try my hand at descriptive place-names, as you see in other forms of fantasy or in older places in the UK and Europe. "the chainlands" for similar reasons.
- "qartal" and "alir" and "amara" I wanted to have more of a middle-eastern feel to them, with "qartal" being just a slight variant of Qatar.
- "longorius" came because I knew I wanted there to be some classic Greek or Roman influences in the architecture and dress of this culture, and also because the government is loosely based on early attempts at democracy.
As I've been writing in this world for four years now (made this map in January 2020), I've made small changes to create a better sense of consistency.
One element has continued to annoy me, however. While I still like the notes of Greek/Roman influence in my story, linguistically those have all been removed, with the exception of "Longorius" which stands out as a distinctly Roman name. This inconsistency has become even more apparent as I've begun giving Longorius and the Longorians aspects of Welsh culture and language as influences. Welsh and Latin don't go together particularly well, and so having characters named things like Anwen Farygl, Mesandra Lleweli, and Fergyn Hanock coming from "Longorius" always feels jarring to me as an author and reader.
So today, while I'm editing Chapter Four of The Engineer's Craft, I've decided to rename this island and the people that come from it to have more of a Welsh feel. I have a few criteria for making this work:
- I think I named the island this originally because it's long-ish, skinnier than the others in the Archipelago. So I want it to maintain those sounds.
- Similarly, I've grown fond of the name "Longorians," so I want something that is distinctly Welsh while also maintaining some of the core phonemes.
- If it can have a cool meaning in the inspo-language, bonus points.
- It has to be easy to do a find-replace function so that I can change it through all three of the novels I've already written.
Workshopping Names for "Longorius"
Longorius Shifts
Longora (too much like "Angora")
Longor (too ugly)
Longori?
Langor (doesn't make sense)
Names from Welsh
Hir (means long, too short though)
Ynys (means "island")
Longanys (ew)
Longyns (too much like "London")
Logyny (not sure I want "gyny")
Llwgr (means "corrupt")
Llwgryn (not enough vowels)
Legryn
-iaeth is the abstract suffix
Legiaeth
Lonoriaeth
Lonrieth
Longoria
Longorid
Cyngora (looks cool but no)
Cyngoreth
Llechryd
Hmmm, I notice here that "ynys" is similar in sounds to "ius." Which makes me want to do something with "Longynys," but that's too many weird letters smashed together. The idea of "Long Island" is funny.
There's a delicate balance between "Welsh-inspired" and "waaaay too Welsh"
Difficult to have the "ryn" when "Mawryn" is a character in the series
I like this one, but it feels too much like an abbreviated anagram of "Loth Lorien" from LOTR
In fact, generally using Welsh it's difficult to not sound like Tolkien :/
I like this, but I feel like the "cy" at the beginning is distracting enough to pull readers from the story
Time for an old standby--get on Google Maps and look at Welsh towns until I find something I like
Contenders...
Right now, I'm looking at these four:
- Cyngoreth/Cyngorians
- Cyngora/Cyngorians
- Longoria/Longorians
- Longorid/Longorians
I've submitted them to my writing group to get their opinions, but right now I'm leaning towards Cyngoreth or Longorid. I like how Welsh Cyngoreth sounds, and its meaning (coming from "cyngor" meaning council), but Longorid keeps the original word parts while adding a Welsh twist at the end. It also allows me to keep the "longorians" for the name of the people there, which I've kinda grown to love over the past three novels.
I'll post an update once I've heard back from the writing group. After that, it will just be double-checking on the internet to make sure nothing else has the name that I select, or that it doesn't overlap with any major fantasy franchises.
**UPDATE**
My writing group favored the first two, Cyngoreth and Cyngora. At first, I agreed with them. But then after using the find-replace function and reading through a few sentences, it didn't feel right. Both of these variations sounded too wild, somehow. Not a good reflection of the distinguished and refined attitude that the Luminaries put on. After playing around with a few different spellings, I went with Longorid. It has the feeling that I'm looking for, even if I can't entirely explain why. I'm going to stick with "Longorians" for the people of the province, even though apparently that's what some fans of Eva Longoria call themselves. It's not a big enough fanbase to worry about confusion. And "Longoridians" is just way too long.