Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
world-buildng: naming deities
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="reanjr" data-source="post: 1793556" data-attributes="member: 20740"><p>As someone who has done some pretty extensive conlanging, I might be able to offer inspirational suggestions.</p><p></p><p>First, are all the gods named in the same language? Often times, historically, you'll find one set of gods to be named entirely differently because they came from a different culture. You could split it up between the gods of good and the gods of evil. Then give each god or goddess a title. Look for words that come up repeatedly (mother, father, of, the) and try to come up with some unique system for representing these words. -i- could be of (or genitive form), for instance, so a Mother of Law might be written as Mother iLaw (with the words for Mother and Law translated of course).</p><p></p><p>Basic concepts and common words should usually be kept short, while complicated ideas or things might be very long. Mother and Father, for instance, are rarely longer than two syllables in most languages, but this might be different if it is a culture that communally raises its young.</p><p></p><p>Decide what types of sounds are in the language. For instance, removing the S sound could deeply affect a language's tone. Are vowels usually found together, forming complex diphthongs (daiesmaeri)? Dominated by clusters of consonents (skratsen)? Does each letter (or diphthong) usually make only one sound (Spanish is like this) or are the sounds influenced by what is found around them (French, and to a much more ridiculous degree, Welsh)?</p><p></p><p>How are verbs (or nouns) conjugated? The concepts of unity and duality are universally understood by humans, but rarely is the concept of a number greater than 4 instinctually understood. This is often reflected in plurality. For instance, the word duck might be translated as "jin". The suffix -o might indicate one, -i for two, -a for three, -ez for more than three, or indeterminate. As an examplem, "I have..." is translated "Grinel" (the base word, grin, is the infinitive for "to have", while the suffix -el indicates self; One could also correctly say Eln Grinel or "I have", but it is usually shortened to just Grinel), the following would be:</p><p></p><p>I have one duck - Grinel jino</p><p>I have two ducks - Grinel jini</p><p>I have three ducks - Grinel jina</p><p>I have ducks - Grinel jinez</p><p></p><p>Or to make things more complicated, you can make the word "jin" have a particular form indicating possession by the speaker. So you would say something along the lines of "There are two-ducks-that-are-mine".</p><p></p><p>Think of word order as well as structure. In English, "small, red car" is the norm, while in most Romance languages "small car red" is the norm. Hyphenations might be common, as could be apostrophes to indicate either letters that are removed when contracting two words (as in English didn't) or as an additional pronunciation guide, so that the word Daar, being of ambiguous pronunciation, might be made Da'ar to indicate that the two "a"s are not a diphthong, but treated as seperate vowels.</p><p></p><p>Do verbs always begin with vowels? Nouns always end in consonents? These types of rules can often give the language a more flowing sound. How do you determine which syllable is stressed. In English, there is an arbitrary primary stress, and alternating sylables from primary stress get secondary stress. In some languages, the first syllable always gets stress and there is no secondary stress. In some languages, stress is used commonly to change the meaning of a word. TOno might mean house, while toNO means dog. This is why you have funny TV shows where someone says something like "I either asked where the bathroom was or how to get to the nearest camel."</p><p></p><p>Now, after these few hours of work, you will have the basic roots of a linguistic system. Now start translating each word of the god titles as seperate words. Don't translate the entire title as it will create too much phonetic influence. Once you have all the words, start placing them together for the titles. You will find alot of them don't sound good together. Alter a vowel here, remove a consonent there, etc. to get it to sound good. This is normal in the natural evolution of a language. The word starboard, for instance, was originally sterbord, which was literraly steering side-of-a-ship. Over time, the two words were used so often, that they mutated into their own word that, in modern times, seems to have absolutely no bearing on the original meaning.</p><p></p><p>Hope this was helpful to someone or at least interesting.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="reanjr, post: 1793556, member: 20740"] As someone who has done some pretty extensive conlanging, I might be able to offer inspirational suggestions. First, are all the gods named in the same language? Often times, historically, you'll find one set of gods to be named entirely differently because they came from a different culture. You could split it up between the gods of good and the gods of evil. Then give each god or goddess a title. Look for words that come up repeatedly (mother, father, of, the) and try to come up with some unique system for representing these words. -i- could be of (or genitive form), for instance, so a Mother of Law might be written as Mother iLaw (with the words for Mother and Law translated of course). Basic concepts and common words should usually be kept short, while complicated ideas or things might be very long. Mother and Father, for instance, are rarely longer than two syllables in most languages, but this might be different if it is a culture that communally raises its young. Decide what types of sounds are in the language. For instance, removing the S sound could deeply affect a language's tone. Are vowels usually found together, forming complex diphthongs (daiesmaeri)? Dominated by clusters of consonents (skratsen)? Does each letter (or diphthong) usually make only one sound (Spanish is like this) or are the sounds influenced by what is found around them (French, and to a much more ridiculous degree, Welsh)? How are verbs (or nouns) conjugated? The concepts of unity and duality are universally understood by humans, but rarely is the concept of a number greater than 4 instinctually understood. This is often reflected in plurality. For instance, the word duck might be translated as "jin". The suffix -o might indicate one, -i for two, -a for three, -ez for more than three, or indeterminate. As an examplem, "I have..." is translated "Grinel" (the base word, grin, is the infinitive for "to have", while the suffix -el indicates self; One could also correctly say Eln Grinel or "I have", but it is usually shortened to just Grinel), the following would be: I have one duck - Grinel jino I have two ducks - Grinel jini I have three ducks - Grinel jina I have ducks - Grinel jinez Or to make things more complicated, you can make the word "jin" have a particular form indicating possession by the speaker. So you would say something along the lines of "There are two-ducks-that-are-mine". Think of word order as well as structure. In English, "small, red car" is the norm, while in most Romance languages "small car red" is the norm. Hyphenations might be common, as could be apostrophes to indicate either letters that are removed when contracting two words (as in English didn't) or as an additional pronunciation guide, so that the word Daar, being of ambiguous pronunciation, might be made Da'ar to indicate that the two "a"s are not a diphthong, but treated as seperate vowels. Do verbs always begin with vowels? Nouns always end in consonents? These types of rules can often give the language a more flowing sound. How do you determine which syllable is stressed. In English, there is an arbitrary primary stress, and alternating sylables from primary stress get secondary stress. In some languages, the first syllable always gets stress and there is no secondary stress. In some languages, stress is used commonly to change the meaning of a word. TOno might mean house, while toNO means dog. This is why you have funny TV shows where someone says something like "I either asked where the bathroom was or how to get to the nearest camel." Now, after these few hours of work, you will have the basic roots of a linguistic system. Now start translating each word of the god titles as seperate words. Don't translate the entire title as it will create too much phonetic influence. Once you have all the words, start placing them together for the titles. You will find alot of them don't sound good together. Alter a vowel here, remove a consonent there, etc. to get it to sound good. This is normal in the natural evolution of a language. The word starboard, for instance, was originally sterbord, which was literraly steering side-of-a-ship. Over time, the two words were used so often, that they mutated into their own word that, in modern times, seems to have absolutely no bearing on the original meaning. Hope this was helpful to someone or at least interesting. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
world-buildng: naming deities
Top