world-buildng: naming deities

[gamecat]

I'm in the midst of designing part of a pantheon, but hit a roadblock: naming.

So far, i've used a technique of finding synonyms of the god/godess's portfolio and altering the spelling. blah. i don't like that...

Im using working names for the five sisters of virtue: (Impreza, goddess of truth; Miata, goddess of reason; Altima, goddess of grace; Integra, godess of law; and Altezza, godess of duty).

Too much magic and gran turismo takes a toll.

 

[Aesmael]

Heh. That method's good for creating names that 'feel' grounded, in my limited experience. But, do you want another method proposed or. . .?
Why not define for us the one's that need names? I'm willing to throw some out for you if you do that, if I can think of any. I'm sure others are too.

 

[DanMcS]

In the real world, gods got names from wierd places. For instance, in the greek pantheon, many of the familiar gods were the gods of certain cities, which were unified into a pantheon when the cities interacted more. Aphrodite, though, is a more foreign name, and probably belonged to a goddess worshipped in asia minor; she is noted in myth as having been a goddess that came out of the sea to Greece.

The older gods, the titans, were probably the gods of older people that the ancient greeks conquored or displaced. Similarly, many religions made demons or hill spirits out of the gods that were worshipped before them (the formorian, the sidhe, and the leprechauns, maybe).

Where am I going with this? The gods don't have to have a unified naming scheme. Give them varied backgrounds, create some conflict among them, and they might seem more real.

 

[gamecat]

Well, those "working names" are all names of cars... I would hate to pray to Corolla or Civic... but heres a list of deities:

_____ NG master goddess of good
(five daugters of aforementioned goddess, each a tenet of good)
______ CG goddess of truth
______ LG goddess of reason
______ NG goddess of grace
______ LG goddess of law
______ LG goddess of duty

Venpa, N goddess of despair
Ara, N western god of psionics
Jakt, CN god of swordsmen
_____, CN god of theives/rascals/etc

_____, NE Master god of evil
(five sons each representing a tenet of evil)
_____, LE god of lies
_____, CE god of horror
_____, NE god of things basal, an "anti-grace" of sorts
_____, CE god of avarice and selfishness
_____, NE god of sloth

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Going off your current names, you really need a god of fire named Pinto.

 

[Nightfall]

Beli'haal'zamun, master god of evil

His sons:

Ish'tarizum: Lord of Lies

Bruum: Lord of carnality. (Your anti-grace thing)

Kahaliss, Lord of Sloth

Ghruss, Lord of Avarice and Greed

Gelastos, Lord of Horror.

 

[Zuoken]

Well, for names you can never go wrong with real historical ones: http://www.godchecker.com/ is one of the best sites I know for the subject.

 

[Halivar]

One of my favorite places to turn for naming people and places is the appendix to The American Heritage College Dictionary by Houghton-Mifflin Company titled Indo-European Roots. I string together the proto-Indo-European roots together that mean something significant and it usually comes out sounding like a cool name.

 

[cybertalus]

Shouldn't Integra be the goddess of honesty, since "integra" sounds so close to "integrity"? And where's Allegra, goddess of pollen and suffering?

One technique I've sometimes used for character names is to pick a few words that best describe the character and then go trolling through online foreign language dictionaries until I find a cool-sounding word in another language that means the same thing. Yourdictionary.com is a good site for this, because they have links to dictionaries in lots of different languages. The key here is to pick words you can pronounce. (Sounds obvious, but I had to learn that one the hard way.)

I've also used anagrams, sometimes of something obliquely relating to the character. For example when I had an NPC who was an expert on vampires, I called her "Rasha", which is an anagram of "Sarah", referring to Sarah Michelle Gellar, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame.

 

[Aristotle]

If you had the time you could do a little research on conlangs (constructed languages). You wouldn't need to build a full working language, just a 'naming language' with enough information and rules in place to allow you to build names.

I'm no expert on conlangs. I've done a little research and have seriously considered developing a handful of naming languages for my own homebrew... but thus far, for me, it's been more frustrating than fruitful. I never was very good with languages other than (american) english. :\