Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology - Blog Carnival Roundup

Throughout the entire RPG blogosphere in July 2024 this mysterious incantation was muttered, chanted, ululated unerringly and with great enrapt fervour: "Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology!" Below is an individualized account of those poor fellows who succame to the call and whose incredible verve and creative curiosity allowed them to create some pretty cool blogposts.

Once again my time hosting the Carnival has been rather rewarding. This month there was a total of thirteen entries which is pretty good. Find details about signing up here. Also check out the August 2024 Carnival 'It Came from Beyond Time'. Now, on with the roundup. Below is my roundup of all the entries received and a couple of entries I received late for my previous time hosting the Carnival; Anthropology and Archaeology. I'll do so through little micro-blurbs and sharing a thought or two on each post.  As for the etiquette of reading this roundup, take your time - there are a lot of blogposts to read, leave some comments on the author's blog, consider a follow, it's always appreciated - the Carnival is foremost about building blogger camaraderie after all.

Game Design Pattern: Concept Crafting by Maxcan7: 

- Maxcan7 of Weird and Wonderful Worlds brings us a post on Concept Crafting - a system that uses words as building blocks. Maxcan7 wants to spread the word for Concept Crafting through the RPG Carnival and I support it. Playing with and combining words is certainly something I really enjoy. My most successful blogpost by all metrics; Naively Simple Alchemy uses similar concepts as does its oft overlooked cousin Naively Simple Mad Science.
- I've long been intrigued by Maxcan's use of Concept Crafting for Mechs. One thinks of the components and armaments of giant robots to be these mechanical things rooted in technobabble, but when concept crafting is used for machines like Mecha, it gives them a quite surreal and dreamlike quality - which is wild and cool. 
- Check out Maxcan's post and deep dive some of those links. See if Concept Crafting tugs your creative strings, it might have given me an idea for a madlib-esque cooking minigame. 

Code Talking by Throne of Salt
- Throne of Salt reflects on using the cipher of the Navajo code talkers as a particularly successful puzzle in a  campaign of theirs as well as discussing its implementation, potential improvements, and suitability for games set in real-world-inspired settings.

- Using codes and ciphers is certainly a puzzle I had not actually considered up to this point and I'm interested in trying something going forward. In the comments of Throne of Salt's post Skerples makes a good point about book based codes, If you personally have any other code ideas, please leave a comment on Throne's post, I know we'd both like to read them. 

A Syllabary | RPG Blog Carnival of Words Entry #01 by Sofinho

- It's conlang time! What fellow doesn't want to, or hasn't already tried to make their own language? I know I have. July's Carnival has given Sofinho the impetus to begin his own conlang journey and he begins with a syllabary. 

- It's an ambitious task but Sofinho is really going for it, check this out.  

- Watch this space, wherever there is an Entry #01 an Entry #02 is sure to follow 👀. 


RPG Linguistics by Benign Brown Beast

- Benign Brown Beast suggests streamlining language in D&D by reducing the number of languages characters have to learn by emphasizing the narrative function of a language over cultural/racial diversity.

- The list of languages suggested is a very fun and novel idea and can be fluffed out in many different directions and will generally make you go 🤔.

AND Saying Magic Words
- In this post (which is a good companion to the RPG Linguistics post above) we explore the potential of integrating language with magic in D&D. Could certain spells  grant the ability to speak specific languages?

- I'm used to Lotfp style languages that don't predetermine a player's languages at character creation which certainly helps with the problems Benign Brown Beast sees - after 6+ months of play my current character can speak 16 languages for instance. That said, the system doesn't really cater to magical of extra-planar languages which is where this post could really prove useful.  

"Planars got a lot of words for 'ethereal'" by Xaosseed
- This headying post pairs quite well with the above writing of Benign Brown Beast. It deals with Xaoseed's own feeling towards using languages in games that align somewhat with my own; "that names, words, places and the like are the outputs of generic fantasyland slush and not actually backed by anything meaningful and thus not worth digging deeply into". But what to do about this? Perhaps a setting's language could be influenced by extraplanar connections, inhuman perceptions or cultural contact? 

AND Your great-grand-elf's elvish: long lives slowing language change
- Xaoseed highlights how the presence of long-lived species, such as elves, dragons, and giants, in a fantasy setting can influence the stability of languages over time and how this might affect your world building. 

- The post makes me think of some slumbering dragon in a lost cave who is the last fluent speaker of a extinct human language, a lost tongue that the players have to learn in order to save the day or steal a blue jewel or whatever. 

The Onomasticon Quernorum by Beneath Foreign Planets
- A post in which I give some obvious and meandering tips that I did or did not follow when coming up with the names for the Onomasticon.

- Over 900 names for a setting you know little about!

- Might inspire something?


How to Make Your Game In Tense by Cryptic Keyway

- Do you know what the Prophetic Perfect Tense is? You should, It's cool. 

- Do you you want to know how to use it in your games? I'm going to. 

- Here is my prophecy rendered in Prophetic Perfect Tense; "You read this post and enjoyed it, it made you want to add some prophecies to your own game".  

On Names by Empedocles the Wizard
- Empedocles presents some very good and clear advice on the topic of writing and generating fantasy Names. The post is practical, useful and festooned with interesting links. I particularly liked Kate Monk’s Onomastikon which was valuable to me when creating my own Onomasticon (it has a great URL too). In fact, this post is so good I edited my own post down and referred to this one instead.

- Empedocles has also done a lot of the work for you having created this d100 Random Name Prompter. 

- I love the notion of 'nominative destiny', it's much classier and precise than my phrase of 'definitional baggage'. 


Languages of the Sea of Stars by Sean H

- Sean shares some detail on the linguistic landscape of their Sea of Stars setting and the languages spoken therein along with sharing some practical thoughts and experiences with using language in game.

- Sean highlights the benefits of having a lingua franca for your game but what really interested me was how this common tongue can impart so much setting info and tone so simply, the Sea of Stars Imperial Tongue's origins bely interesting historical implications.  

- The other languages referenced in the setting each sound intriguing and almost function as plot hooks or rumours in of themselves. 

The Cool, Coded Version of Name Generator: Morpheme+Word+Epithet' by Dozens

- Inspired by my very own post Morpheme+Word+Epithet, Dozens has coded it up in a way I could not. They have properly factored in honorifics as well as introducing more variety by using different combinations of the eponymous Morphemes, Words and Epithets. 

- I am very grateful my work could inspire others to build upon it, and wish to say a personal thanks to Dozens. 

Place-names: the naming convention by TRAIPSE

- TRAIPSE solves his struggle with toponyms; Never run out of place names with this one clever trick!

- A good companion alongside the prosoponymic thinking of Empedocles' post and my own. 

- Generally check out this cool fellow's cool blog. 

Anthropology and Archaeology Latecomers

 

Feuds, Divisions, and Stability in Viking Society by Hex Brawler

- Hex Brawler might just turn your perception of conflict on its head. 

- The academic snippet Hex Brawler has selected is just right. 

- I need more of this kind of violence in my setting. 

The Trash Of Dead Empires by Pity Crit

- Enrich your world and dungeons with archaeology!You might know of dungeon rooms as being either trap, treasure, monster, empty, special or any combination of the above but have you ever considered archaeological?

- Pity Crit proposes the begins for a true archaeological minigame of sorts wherein the players quite literally uncover abstracted 'fragments' of lost civilizations and use those fragments to uncover knowledge about said civilization. Pretty cool stuff. 

- Pity Crit also gives plenty of examples of finds from their own lost empire and they're all pretty cool. I particularly like the weird Lacunae Crest.

The Onomasticon Quernorum

Or; On the Names of the Quernfolk

A Wennish penny pamphlet pithily titled 'an unbelievable account of the atrocious apparitional attack on a sleeping and sickly Miss Dyedred by the headless bear demon 'Old Bossbelow' and her noble defense by Mistress Sharpday, Miss Arena Palatine, Jonwith Middlestone, Harque the Younger, Master Winwalloe and the Magic-User Lakelie'  

Above is the Onomasticon Quernorum; On the Names of the Quernfolk. Contained within are over 900 names and they are presented without any expository information. 

Recently, I have had names on the brain. In my post morpheme+word+epithet, (which has proved quite popular) I shared the eponymous formula for making an interesting name. This specific method works well for individuals but what if I need a great many names to build out a specific culture? 

I have previously written how understanding of the cultures of your setting can be impressed on, and implied to, players via the personal trinkets and pocket loot of NPCs that belong to those cultures. I used my personal setting of The Querns to explore this idea and did some implied world-building by detailing several cultures in this way. In this post, I have given names to the owners of those pockets. With the names themselves and the contents of their pockets, the reader should have a good feeling for these cultures already. Implication builds interesting settings that engage the imagination.

In the Onomasticon Quernorum I have given names to six, mostly distinct, cultures. In addition to this list I had a whole spiel written explaining my thought processes and inspiration for each of the culture's naming styles. I cut it all down and it still wasn't 'working' so I have slung it in a doc you can find here. I also recommend this post by Empedocles the Wizard of Elemental Reductions for some more lucid and interesting commentary on their naming process.

But, what do you do? What are your thoughts on creating names for RPG characters? Please let me know in the comments as I really enjoy this stuff.

Another Wennish penny pamphlet titled 'The Mightily True Report of Sergeant Bov Pangweather's victory over the hulking Aldish Birch-Crone known as Jennie Snatchelflynda and her dread-familiar who some call Black Froggebighter'. 

This post was written for Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology for July's RPG Blog Carnival. 

'WORDS! Etymology, Onomatology and Linguistics' - A Blog Carnival Call-to-Arms!

Canto II, Tom Phillips, 1981

This July I will be stepping-in to host the RPG Blog Carnival. The premise is simple: create a piece of RPG content in-keeping with the month's theme by July 31st, 2024, link to it in the comments below, and at the end of the month I'll curate a spotlight post, linking to your site and writing about your content. Last year, I hosted the Carnival with the theme 'Anthropology and Archaeology' and it was rather successful, I'm hoping my second attempt will equal or surpass it. So, as July's host, I have chosen the theme 'WORDS! - Etymology, Onomatology & Linguistics'. Let's refresh our definitions via Merriam-Webster before getting to some prompts:

Linguistics: 

- The study of human speech including the units, nature, structure, and modification of language.

Onomatology (see Onomastics): 

- The science or study of the origin and forms of proper names of persons or places 

Etymology: 

- The history of a linguistic form (such as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language

Language families by Bosman Bos of the Border Baronies

As themes go, 'Etymology, Onomatology, Linguistics' is broad and can be summed up simply as 'WORDS!'. These themes lend themselves well to world-building and RPG theory. The central challenge running through these prompts is to consider what makes words in RPGs both 'interesting' and 'purposeful'. While many prompts ask you to detail words from your current or previous campaigns or worlds, you could also use them as a springboard to create a new setting or as inspiration for tables and generators, this what I find the prompt is leading me toward. 

Questions and Prompts:

Here are some potential topics to get you thinking before the carnival begins:

Toponyms

• What makes for a good RPG toponym? A good place name? Have you thought etymologically about place names? What are the toponym's origins and how did the name shift and change over time? Are the best place names in roleplaying, clear and evocative, are they more fantastic with a weird verisimilitude or somewhere in between? Where do you fall on the spectrum of place names? Are your towns more 'White River' or 'Lililingburlingan of the Sacroline Spire'? and why?
• Similarly, how do you name geographic features? What are the natural wonders of your world called? What about other planets, stars or fantastic celestial bodies? Is there a generator you could make for such names?
• What of your setting's nations, communities or collectives? What are their names (endochoronyms)? Why? And what are the (formal and informal) demonyms of their inhabitants? What are their exonyms?

Names, Names, Names

• How could you impart a sense of a particular culture via their personal names and naming conventions? A certain vibe is easy to achieve when creating names for a familiar culture with a familiar language (such as with hobbits) but can become trickier when dealing with deliberately foreign cultures.
• Do you have a list of spare names for NPCs? What is your thinking behind the names? Are the names naturalistic, cultural, gonzo, aptronymic or charactonymic? Is your knight called Sir Spear, Sir Chivalrous, Sir Bob, Sir Fuck-Vampires Flyingburger or Sir Eldo Serindal?
• Who are some of the mononyms of your world? People so famous, so iconic and with such a unique moniker, that they are known by a single name, such as Plato, Napoleon, Hitler, Jesus.
• Likewise, what about eponyms? Are certain places, spells, monsters, animals, plants or peoples named after an individual?
• What is the autoethnonym of orcs or any other 'monstrous' folk in your setting and what does that word mean?
• What makes for good monster names? Which is the better name, Hideous Ropey Snatcher Beast or Spitzlgangler? Or will the players just call it a grabby guy?
• If your game features political groups what are their politonyms and what are their origins?
• What can you do if you know a demon's true name, or anyone's true name for that matter?
• Make a zoonym generator for your setting focusing on the taxonomic name of the beast and from that extrapolating its stats and characteristics.
• Chrononyms are the names of historic periods, what are the names of the historic periods in your setting and why do they have that name?
• Epithets are great.
• How could your players gain epithets? Would there be special rules around gaining an epithet?
• Old school DnD classes gained a title each level, could you rewrite these titles to better reflect your game world or cultures within your game world?

Conlangs

• Dare you descend into the conlang rabbit hole? Do you dare become the DM who says to their patient players; "no, no, no it's pronounced 'bhänüt' not banût"
• Would you like to try designing your own alphabet or syllabry?
• Toki Pona is an art project micro-language, it has 137 words, so it's not unimaginable that one could create their own micro-language in a month. Perhaps, to name just a few possibilities, your own thieves cant, druidic language, hermitic whisper-speech, arcane tongue or hyperborean slave creole. Additionally, how would you use your new language in game?
• Can you provide an outline of the evolution of the different language groups in your setting? Such as how many modern languages spread from Proto-Indo-European?

Language

• Does your setting have unique slang or phrases?
• Have historic events in your setting shaped or influenced the language and sayings of its inhabitants?
• Tell us about your setting's Lingua Franca and how it developed.
• What are considered slurs, pejoratives, swear or taboo words in your setting? What is the consequence for saying them?
• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that language influences perception and thought. This can have some interesting implications for fictional settings that might want to push the idea. How does the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis interact with fantasy languages such as Elven or Black Speech and in turn how does speaking those languages affect a person?
• The Himba people's perception of colour is supposedly influenced by their language. In a fantasy or science fiction world, we can push this notion much further: for example, what if a society's language has many words for magic?
• What of non-human linguistics? How do non-human species in your setting communicate? What are the linguistic quirks and unique language structures of those species?
• Let's not neglect science-fiction. What future words, personal names and slang have developed in your future world?

Miscellaneous, Meta and Theory

• What are your thoughts on the language of RPGs on a meta, player facing level? What makes good vocabulary for the mechanics, rules and processes of a game? How do your players use language? How did they name the things they encounter?
• How should rules for learning new languages work?
• What happens if a character is not fluent in a language or only knows a few words?
• What happens if you read aloud an unknown eldritch language rule such as Aklo or an extract from the Necronomicon?
• Speaking of Aklo, could words themselves present a material threat? Sentient languages, memetic viruses, weaponized language and how would you rule those concepts in-game?
• Do have have particular favorite names that your players have named their characters?
• When world building, how do decide what deserves unique onymony? Does it benefit or confuse players whether their characters hear the peel of larks or of Velvety Spi spis? Or whether the tavern serves salted peanuts or salted jingandra seeds?

Your contributions are eagerly awaited and, thank you in advance for engaging in the RPG Blog Carnival.

The RPG Blog Carnival has been running since 2008 and helped to foster community and interconnectedness in RPG blogs. Check it out and consider participating in other months or even hosting yourself, it's not much of a commitment at all.