Monster Manual 3 Available at Gencon [merged]

[Von Ether]

Hah...so very well put.

Actually before the middle ages, wolf was vulf, and even that name was inaccurate sine the animal's real name wasn't spoken by some Germanic tribes in fear that using its real name would give it more power. ... Something that some language student told me once.

The impression I got was that the funky names were translations of the names from the tribal folk who actually lived with these dinos. Sort of like directly translating T-Rex into "King Lizard" if you do that with enough dino names, the Eberron ones don't sound so off anymore. Then again, you can think about all the Westerns and Safari films you seen over the ages.

"We call that a pather, what do you call it?"

"He who walks in shadow and screams like a woman."

"... well that's an accurate, but strange name."

"It does sound strange ... in your tongue, white man."

 

[Gez]

Don't forget that dinosaurs (and similar prehistorical beasts) were never named by common folk, but by scientists. Not wanting to recreate the millenia of etymological variations there would have been if they were still alive, they decided to give descriptive names, in the universal languages of scholars, ancient greek and latin. That's why you have names like Tyrant-Lizard King (Tyrannosaurus Rex) or Fastthief (Velociraptor).

Plain ordinary people would have called them things like "dragon", or they would have eventually got a name like "wampa" or "rancor".

Without this evolution of language that eventually give names, rather than nouns, to the various things, you would have strange stuff. Etymologically, "Dragon" would be "Eye" or "Gaze", "Sphinx" would be "Grappler"...

 

[pierworker]

We're gonna need saprager and sacred gardener prestige classes to deal with all those topiaries...(and why are plants always so angry, anyways?!?!?!?)

So how does the flind look in 3.5?

 

[Incenjucar]

Don't forget that dinosaurs (and similar prehistorical beasts) were never named by common folk

Well, technically... they gave them names like Herakles, Griffon, and Cyclops

 

[kilamanjaro]

So how does the flind look in 3.5?

I'm also wondering about the flind. How do they justify it being a 'new' creature when it's so easy to just advance a normal gnoll? BTW, how does everyone pronounce flind?

 

[Knight Otu]

I'm also wondering about the flind. How do they justify it being a 'new' creature when it's so easy to just advance a normal gnoll?

As a guess: Because it isn't really an advanced gnoll. In the same way that a bugbear is not an advanced hobgoblin. Different alignment, different place in society, different mental abilities - things that are not really bound to HD advancement. And most humanoids advance by class level (which doesn't meant that they can't advance by HD, but that is much less common).

(Admittedly, I believe I've read that Gygax(?) originally created the hobgoblins and bugbears pretty much as "advanced" goblins)

 

[NiTessine]

Lumi (Interestingly enough, Fans of Days of our Lives (the American Soap Opera) refer to the romance between LUcas and saMI as LUMI)

It also means 'snow' in Finnish. This also has (hopefully) nothing to do with the monster. Or does it?

 

[s/LaSH]

Ehh, time to beat a dying horse. I trust you'll indulge me.

Well, technically... they gave them names like Herakles, Griffon, and Cyclops

Cyclops: from the Greek Kuklos (round) + Ops (eye).

Griffon: from the Greek Grups, OED unclear on meaning (if it's changed at all). Probably means vulture, if I'm reading between the right lines.

Heracles/Hercules: 'Glorious Gift', if Babynames.com can be trusted.

Two of these are therefore compound words invented and used at the time the legends were invented (or thereabouts), similar to 'king tyrant', 'arm lizard' and all the rest. And, in fact, the scientific dinosaur names are becoming more and more vernacular; if I said teerex, you'd know what I meant, although the word bears only a passing resemblance to its original meaning-laden form.

Most words start off as combinations of others. They may eventually be forgotten; my name's Benjamin, and you'd be hard pressed to say what it means, but in Protohebrew it had a specific meaning still recorded today: Son of my Right Hand. What common word is your name?

Anyway, those words that don't start off as combinants are often based on onomatopoeia (some generations down the line). And it's difficult to mimic the cry of something with lungs bigger than you, so combinants are probably how dinos are going to get named by common people (there's no caste of people speaking an elitist language in fantasy worlds rushing out to discover them first, or if there are, there are enough common folk around to forget them and start calling them Bonesplitters or what have you).

To sum up: I don't mind descriptive names. They have more linguistic consistency.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

We're gonna need saprager and sacred gardener prestige classes to deal with all those topiaries...(and why are plants always so angry, anyways?!?!?!?)

So does that mean it's less silly now to get sent on a quest for a shrubbery?
And another shrubbery?

So how does the flind look in 3.5?

Yeah!

 

[VirgilCaine]

"We call that a pather, what do you call it?"

"He who walks in shadow and screams like a woman."

"... well that's an accurate, but strange name."

"It does sound strange ... in your tongue, white man."

Same here, hyumon.