Fantasy Names

[glynndah]

The Mull Berry tree: Where one goes for some serious contemplation.

Amethystle: Quite the prickly plant. It's often found growing near gem deposits.

Rain Bows: Very handy for travelers and gardeners alike. Keep one of these handy and fire it off into the sky whenever a bit of rain is desired.

 

[slyc_willie]

The Mull Berry tree: Where one goes for some serious contemplation.

Amethystle: Quite the prickly plant. It's often found growing near gem deposits.

Rain Bows: Very handy for travelers and gardeners alike. Keep one of these handy and fire it off into the sky whenever a bit of rain is desired.

I like the mull berry idea. I can see it as a plot device for when an otherwise dim-witted character needs to figure out a trap or riddle.

 

[glynndah]

Just in case you need a little inspiration: Moonlight Wood. No naughtiness at all. You could read it to your little one.

 

[Handley_Page]

FROM THE WORLD OF ELECTRONICS
Pen T Ode and his eager brother, Try Ode.

 

[RedMonkeyButt]

This kind of reminds me of Piers Anthony books.... rubber trees and whatnot.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Back in the heyday of spam mail, one name might be taken from a celebrity roll, and the other would be a noun or verb. At one point I was getting email after email with 'nature' words, like Benson Sky and Hedges Charlotte and Micheal Duck. they were wonderful, and I lost maybe two hundred of them in a computer crash.

 

[slyc_willie]

Just in case you need a little inspiration: Moonlight Wood. No naughtiness at all. You could read it to your little one.

I'll give it a look later when the world calms down.

This kind of reminds me of Piers Anthony books.... rubber trees and whatnot.

Yeah, I kind of had Piers' books in the back of my mind when this idea came to me. I figure there will be some similarities. But I won't have shoe trees and colored urine.

Back in the heyday of spam mail, one name might be taken from a celebrity roll, and the other would be a noun or verb. At one point I was getting email after email with 'nature' words, like Benson Sky and Hedges Charlotte and Micheal Duck. they were wonderful, and I lost maybe two hundred of them in a computer crash.

I still get quite a few of those. Interesting inspiration for character names. I may have to look closely at my throw-away email account.

 

[slyc_willie]

Just in case you need a little inspiration: Moonlight Wood. No naughtiness at all. You could read it to your little one.

That was a pretty insightful bit of prose, Glynndah. It's amazing the things you gloss over in our culture, without thinking how the names of things like various products would be entirely insulting to the actual creature it was named after . . . if they existed, anyway.

What, they do?

 

[CWatson]

I started a screen name the other day called "Decapitato". As in decapitation + potato.

Actually, I work at a gaming company, so I have to come up with throwaway usernames on a regular basis. I did "wuddlesmung" once, and "chanchigwong", and a bunch of other gibberish. My coworkers complain that the names I come up with are too complicated, but they just jam their hands on the keyboard and come up with unpronounceables involving too many X's and J's.

Vulture-bears? Actually, check out the Nickelodeon show Avatar: the Last Airbender. In addition to plot and characterization that beats most of the stories here and voice-acting that puts Disney to shame, they also just started throwing in a bunch of silly animal hybrids: turtle-ducks, platypus-bears, panda-ferrets, baby saber-tooth moose-lions... (And also adult saber-tooth moose-lions, but they big.) Might be a good source of ideas.

 

[glynndah]

That was a pretty insightful bit of prose, Glynndah. It's amazing the things you gloss over in our culture, without thinking how the names of things like various products would be entirely insulting to the actual creature it was named after . . . if they existed, anyway.

What, they do?

Of course, they do!

Actually, I spent more time trying to think of other mythically named products than I did writing the story. I'm sure there are others out there I missed.

 

[slyc_willie]

I started a screen name the other day called "Decapitato". As in decapitation + potato.

Actually, I work at a gaming company, so I have to come up with throwaway usernames on a regular basis. I did "wuddlesmung" once, and "chanchigwong", and a bunch of other gibberish. My coworkers complain that the names I come up with are too complicated, but they just jam their hands on the keyboard and come up with unpronounceables involving too many X's and J's.

Vulture-bears? Actually, check out the Nickelodeon show Avatar: the Last Airbender. In addition to plot and characterization that beats most of the stories here and voice-acting that puts Disney to shame, they also just started throwing in a bunch of silly animal hybrids: turtle-ducks, platypus-bears, panda-ferrets, baby saber-tooth moose-lions... (And also adult saber-tooth moose-lions, but they big.) Might be a good source of ideas.

Sounds like somebody wrote a bunch of animal names on pieces of paper then drew them from a hat.

Just playing around with the concept, though, I can imagine foxbears, ratdeer, moosebunnies and tigerhawks roaming around my little fantasy land . . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

Ratdeer!
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmnqzsBWDP1qjhgdqo1_400.jpg
Or, Deerrat;
http://www.zooborns.com/.a/6a010535647bf3970b01156f3fe4c6970c-800wi

 

[slyc_willie]

LOL!

Find any moosebunnies?

ETA: Holy crap, a foxbear!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3583/3675310068_27f5f2dac8.jpg

Yes, I know it's a red panda

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Call the Friendly Hispanic Fairy "Sodamigo.'

 

[NaokoSmith]

I like using the names of people who pissed me off as characters who get fucked over.

Acksherly my sister was at college with a real nice guy called Blofeld. It seems Ian Fleming's nephew came home from school (Eton of course) one hol and complained he was being bullied by two boys called Blofeld and Scaramanga, so Fleming named two of his villains after them. . (The Blofeld bully was my sister's friend's uncle.)

 

[slyc_willie]

Acksherly my sister was at college with a real nice guy called Blofeld. It seems Ian Fleming's nephew came home from school (Eton of course) one hol and complained he was being bullied by two boys called Blofeld and Scaramanga, so Fleming named two of his villains after them. . (The Blofeld bully was my sister's friend's uncle.)

I always thought Francisco Scaramanga was one of the best Bond villains ever. I wasn't that much of a fan of Roger Moore as Bond, but The Man With the Golden Gun is one of my favorites. That Christopher Lee (who played Scaramanga) is somewhat related to Flemming just makes the movie better.

That's a pretty cool bit of personal history, Naoko.

 

[slyc_willie]

This is turning out to be an interesting challenge regarding the style of writing. I'm trying to strike a balance between Carroll's fanciful prose and more conventional, modern wordsmithing, since my main character is from our world.

I'm liking the idea of using various rhymes here and there throughout the story. Anything magical that results in an effect, I think, I will have triggered by a rhyme of some sort, complete with my own made-up words. For instance, my main character Dash has been told to use the "Whickering Rhyme" taught years before by his mother in order to travel to Evermore for the first time:

“Whicker me to
Whicker me fro
Whicker me wither I wish to go
O'er Lethe, o'er Styx
O'er Hades below
'Neath stars, 'neath Moon
'Neath Elysium swoon
To wondrous realm
Of Mordaven's lore
Whicker me now
To Evermore!”

I ain't no poet, but I figure that sounds Carroll-esque enough. I hope that sets the tone for the type of story this will be.

 

[glynndah]

This is turning out to be an interesting challenge regarding the style of writing. I'm trying to strike a balance between Carroll's fanciful prose and more conventional, modern wordsmithing, since my main character is from our world.

I'm liking the idea of using various rhymes here and there throughout the story. Anything magical that results in an effect, I think, I will have triggered by a rhyme of some sort, complete with my own made-up words. For instance, my main character Dash has been told to use the "Whickering Rhyme" taught years before by his mother in order to travel to Evermore for the first time:

“Whicker me to
Whicker me fro
Whicker me wither I wish to go
O'er Lethe, o'er Styx
O'er Hades below
'Neath stars, 'neath Moon
'Neath Elysium swoon
To wondrous realm
Of Mordaven's lore
Whicker me now
To Evermore!”

I ain't no poet, but I figure that sounds Carroll-esque enough. I hope that sets the tone for the type of story this will be.

I like it.

 

[slyc_willie]

I like it.

Thanks. I'm having a lot of fun with this.

 

[PennLady]

I wish I could say this was mine, but in Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book," a young boy is hidden by spirits in a graveyard -- they are protecting him from the man Jack. As in, "every man jack of them..." There's a great scene where the man Jack meets up with the Jack of All Trades, that sort of thing.

There might be some inspiration there, perhaps.

 

[slyc_willie]

I wish I could say this was mine, but in Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book," a young boy is hidden by spirits in a graveyard -- they are protecting him from the man Jack. As in, "every man jack of them..." There's a great scene where the man Jack meets up with the Jack of All Trades, that sort of thing.

There might be some inspiration there, perhaps.

I suppose that is generally where I'm hoping to go. The original impetus for this story came to me while watching the movie Hook, and I've been sprinkling in inspiration from Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum and even Tim Burton as I've been going along. The common theme between all those is a dark, menacing yet almost childlike view of a fantastic world (well, maybe not so dark in Hook, but it's by no means all happy-go-lucky).

So Gaiman wouldn't be too far removed from that.