What's in a name? Cyphers in fantasy

[rounser]

An observation...JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett and Gary Gygax are giants of fantasy, and they all have something in common.

Tolkien: Started with an elven language, made world and story from that. Character names, history and songs echo it.
Pratchett: Most character and place names are thinly veiled allusions or puns.
Rowling: Latin buff, and also likes her anagrams, puns and similes for her names. e.g. What's In a Name? -- The Guide to Harry Potter Name Etymology
Gygax: Seemingly a thesaurus, anagram, cant and mythology buff in sourcing his names and concepts.

They also have something else in common: mindblowing popularity. I don't think that this is a coincidence. A concensus technique in songwriting is to start with the name. It's a very powerful weapon in the writer's symbolic arsenal.

Next edition, if there is one, I'd like to see D&D move away from the overt (e.g. Shadowfell, Feywild, Warmage etc.) and the trademarkable-yet-contrived (e.g. eladrin, wilden etc.) back to the resonant and unconciously suggestive cyphers and dusty old words in the core implied setting. Your thoughts?

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I'm SO with you.

Especially with the Eberron Dinosaur names.

Forgive my poor memory but "macetail behemoth"?

What does that evoke?



Yes. I love the idea that the name could be a real one and not a mere convenient description of what (well, one aspect of what) a creature does.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Macetail Behemoth certainly evokes more than Triceraptos.
Kinda like Sabretooth Tiger or Hammershark.
I think it's better than "Drider".

Of course, one could use some fake fantasy languages from Tolkien or maybe Klingon to translate these names into another language. Or we could use Latin and Greek, but then we should be fully aware that in some language, the monster name still is Macetail Behemoth. Or Terror Saurian...

 

[Bumbles]

ah, dupe, dupity, dupe dupe.

 

[Bumbles]

Next edition, if there is one, I'd like to see D&D move away from the overt (e.g. Shadowfell, Feywild, Warmage etc.) and the trademarkable-yet-contrived (e.g. eladrin, wilden etc.) back to the resonant and unconciously suggestive cyphers and dusty old words in the core implied setting. Your thoughts?

I think the examples you gave are quite evocative and resonant. If anything, I'd say the current edition is going out of its way to be more flavorful than the blandness that was in some of the older editions. Not that 1st, 2nd and 3rd didn't have any, mind you, but I'd say that 4th edition has more of it than you're giving it credit for, and that it's deliberate and intentional, if not necessarily appealing to you. The type may differ, but I really don't see how anagrams and puns would make for a better RPG overall. They may fit in some adventures and novels, but too much would be a problem.

PS, the Macetail Behemoth, wouldn't that be an Ankylosaurus?

 

[Doug McCrae]

An observation...JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett and Gary Gygax are giants of fantasy, and they all have something in common.

Yep, they're all writers. Tolkien's names are nothing like Gary's. Tolkien had a genius for language, his names are excellent. Gary's names are completely utterly awful. The nerdy love of puns and anagrams is, imo, totally at odds with good naming. Good naming requires an artistic, poetic, lyrical capability of which Gary possessed not one ounce. Yeah, he owned a thesaurus, and it shows in his writing, for instance he was obviously just copying it out for the AD&D class titles. That's not a good thing.

Tolkien, Vance, Howard and Clark Ashton Smith are all great at names (Zothique! - beautiful). Gary, Rowling and Pratchett aren't.

Compare the always gorgeous sounding Vancian spell names - Phandaal's Gyrator, The Excellent Prismatic Spray - to the almost always boring D&D ones - Fireball, Heal, Control Temperature 10' Radius. The only good one is Prismatic Spray, which is nicked from Vance but made slightly worse, cause Gary couldn't even steal a name without messing it up.

 

[Vicente]

Macetail Behemoth certainly evokes more than Triceraptos.

One thing: at least in Spanish those types of names (Macetail Behemoth) sound horrible when translated.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hammerschwanz Gigant sounds awful in German, too. I suppose the translators have to be a bit more creative. (No idea how they did actually translate it in Germany, don't own those books)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

<snip>Gary couldn't even steal a name without messing it up.

OUCH!

I think you're being a little harsh here...I'm not saying Gary was a poet, but I think at least some of his stuff is serviceable.

And he didn't change the name of Ioun stones.

 

[Jack7]

An observation...JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett and Gary Gygax are giants of fantasy, and they all have something in common.

Tolkien: Started with an elven language, made world and story from that. Character names, history and songs echo it.
Pratchett: Most character and place names are thinly veiled allusions or puns.
Rowling: Latin buff, and also likes her anagrams, puns and similes for her names. e.g. What's In a Name? -- The Guide to Harry Potter Name Etymology
Gygax: Seemingly a thesaurus, anagram, cant and mythology buff in sourcing his names and concepts.

They also have something else in common: mindblowing popularity. I don't think that this is a coincidence. A concensus technique in songwriting is to start with the name. It's a very powerful weapon in the writer's symbolic arsenal.

Next edition, if there is one, I'd like to see D&D move away from the overt (e.g. Shadowfell, Feywild, Warmage etc.) and the trademarkable-yet-contrived (e.g. eladrin, wilden etc.) back to the resonant and unconciously suggestive cyphers and dusty old words in the core implied setting. Your thoughts?

That all reminds me of an old story:


What but a name will sure invoke
The hammered tongue of time awoke
That calls to men when they're asleep
And troubles days of languished deep

When from the grave of ancient steppes
There rises up a shadowed depth
That stalks about deserted halls
And noiselessly forgotten calls

For timeless words like aeons pass
Upon the mind and then are last
To slip away into the night
For oft they linger like a fright

That men remember when all else
Is forced from them by consciousness
As if our mother tongues die not
But hang upon our hearts like knots

That Gordian twists cannot unturn
But slice through myths to yet return
When men tell tale of claw and fang
And tooth and blade, sturm und drang

For words do nail tails to the spot
When blood is spilt and fear is hot
They haunt the dark and wilderness
And so to souls they make agress

That cannot stand to stand so still
But turn and grind like stones in mills
And wearing that they wear away
To hide in sound what they convey