Need help choosing a name

[Venusian Broon]

Thanks, some really helpful comments here. I'm tempted to avoid our own foreign languages. Since I'm trying to make a world that has its own languages it might look out of place if suddenly there's a Spanish or Latin name in there.

Just as you posted this, I was thinking exactly that! EDIT - but then I noticed you actually said the opposite - oops! My skim reading is not what it once was...

First I thought, could you do a compound word like Ouija - yes, yes from French and German - and go for 'Never-Never' and find a pleasing mix from two different languages.

Then I looked in some latin lists -
nusquam : nowhere, in no place, nothing, for nothing, never

looks nice and seems to cover a lot of your concepts? The nusquam has a ring about it . I must point out the above word may not work at all, I just took it from an online dictionary - no Latin skills whatsoever!

 

[Venusian Broon]

Apolgies MT for the above post, it's only when I got another idea that I realised I was a buffoon .

Anyway, from some bits of philosophical writings there are some interesting terms that might fit...

"The real is both "transdefinite" and "transfinite"; and in both respects it eludes conceptualization. "Everything finite," Frank declared, "is given against a background of infinity. … The knowable world is surrounded on all sides by the dark abyss of the unfathomable"

So perhaps a denzien of this unfathomable is an abyssal?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Stop worry about titles and just write the damn thing!

 

[Colbey Frost]

Stop worry about titles and just write the damn thing!

I agree, when it comes to titles, character names, places etc, just put something, anything down. Once you've written it, you can change it...

 

[Kylara]

Call them all Greg, then at least you can keep track of them all until you decide to call them something different...or you could go all Czech and call them the nebyly (it means 'were not') which I think sounds pretty fun...Czech is full of great words...

 

[mithril]

i like nebyly

I voted for fateless mainly because it sounds better to me but I agree with the rest of the folks that something better would be... uh.. better

 

[Kylara]

It is a great word...pronounced something like nehbeeli I think, but it doesn't really matter how you say it, as it is written, each reader can have a play themsleves...check it out on google translate, I think they have an audio pronounciation...

 

[Hammerhand]

I'm a little confused as to how this works; are you saying that he manages to go back in time but when he gets there there is now a whole lot of people who were never there before?

Surely the only person who would realise would be the time traveller himself, and if we are talking about an alternate history type thing, then everything and everyone would be completely different? The collective name would be everyone.

If you are saying that it is mainly the same but there are also a whole lot of new people are introduced, then again who would notice at all? How would even the time traveller know unless he knew absolutely every person in the world?

The People who become aware; how does this happen? Does he tell them? do they believe him?

I am terribly sorry if I am coming over as negative as that is not what I'm intending, I'm just trying to understand a bit better. There just has to be a way that these people are different. Here lies the key to your question, I believe.

Maybe these new people have a particular personality trait that is what marks them out as the neverborn (that was meant to be never were but I thought it was cool so left it in!) or something. Maybe they have no belly button because they never needed one. I think your collective name should be based on something like an observation about their appearance or behaviour patterns rather than an greko-latin posh-sounding name that someone in the story is going to have to either explain or think something along the lines of 'I've got a cool name for them folk who shouldn't be here....'. That way it will be more instinctive a label and a more believable in my opinion.

If it is a blip or schism in the time-space continuum thingy-bob (I won't pretend to understand that stuff!), then maybe they are all completely identical like a glitch on a computer game or something - this would lead to all kinds of conflict and confusion that would add a real spin to the story. They could even all be John Doe-s because they have no past or identity (then it would make sense to call them the JohnDoes).

I am also in agreement with I,Brian. My WiP was full of name places like <big-human-city> and people like <Sam's-friend-from-school> until inspiration struck, then I went back and replaced them all. I'm actually still waiting for a name for <Orion's-house-in-the-woods> and my WiP is finished!

Food for thought, and again, I apologise if I have come over the wrong way, but at least I have managed to provide you with such gems as: everyone, neverborn, bellybuttonless, same-ies, JohnDoes and <others>.

Oh dear, maybe you should just ignore me lol!

 

[Venusian Broon]

I am also in agreement with I,Brian. My WiP was full of name places like <big-human-city> and people like <Sam's-friend-from-school> until inspiration struck, then I went back and replaced them all. I'm actually still waiting for a name for <Orion's-house-in-the-woods> and my WiP is finished!

My system is similar but I'm not writing out a descriptor like <shop keeper with dark secret> or whatnot everytime .

-Firstly think about the name you want to find for 20-30 seconds.
-Clear your mind for a further 30 seconds and try and not think of anything.
-Pick the first name that pops into your head when you re-engage with the question of what to name person/ship/country/ecology of timeless beings/whatever.

You'd be surprised how successful 'names popping out of your subconscious' is. And if in the course of your writing, it starts to annoy and look stupid, you know it hasn't worked - do it again - that's what ctrl-H is for (for us M$ wordies) and it only takes a minute.

Or give it a serious think and then leave it for a full day to stew in the subconscious if you need a name for a finished draft. Nine times out of ten (at least it seems to me) you will get a bolt out of the blue that really does work.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

I'd go with something completely different, as people generally don;t have a flair for the dramatic. If it was me I'd just call them Anomalies. However, I'm 100% with Brian; get writing.