dictionaries and creating names

[magician2magici]

greetings,
i have made a tour here , found a lot of questioning about creating names in fantasy , and their strength , also the fitness for the species
so i decided to share with you my little experience in this field , hopefully you share with me yours too

i had a novel series , with two parts till now , unfortunately not in english , anyway i faced the name problem so much , so i've developed my own way of creation..

since my novel happens in japan , i used japanese words for spells , also for names of regions , even for species..

for example , if i wanted to name a storm-making spell , i use my dictionary to find the word meaning of storm , which becomes -arashi - , them find the word meaning of summounning , calling , or saying the spell , or search for any related word , then write down the words i have , make so many combination as i can , choose the best one ever , then it becomes my name..

if i found an interesting name , i make it as an underground basis for other names coming from it , it really hopefull

now i'm away from my home and not having that dictionary

i think to have something like this , it must be all in english , the words of the desired language is written also in english , so we can all read and use them..

i hope i can help you all , and i hope we all help each other

salam...

el-saher>>
-sorry for any mis spelling-

 

[iansales]

Have your books been published? I wasn't aware of any high fantasies (i.e., like Lord of the Rings and such) published in Arabic.

 

[magician2magici]

no , unfortunately i'm so new at this world , also the situation of fantasy is so bad in arabic world , but i'm going for its publish soon near the end of this year at most , so you'll hear of a thing so big but for sure not to reach tolkien at all...

 

[Black Razor]

Creating Names

I honestly dont stress over names too much anymore, mostly because names dont really matter until your ready to publish. I just pick a name that I like to begin writing with, and over time it changes if I can think of a better name. It doesnt matter while writing is underway, what matters is character development, story telling, and plot progression. You can simple replace all instances of a name later with its new name, with a simple "Find and Replace".