Vlürch wrote: ↑11 Apr 2020 03:35
How do you come up with a cool but simple name for your conlang and conpeople that has zero hits on Google and doesn't sound like any real-life language name or ethnonym or anything like that? EDIT: I mean, after thinking about it, what I want to ask is: can it be justifiable if a conlang's name is just one or two letters different from something that already exists? Because obviously it can't be identical to someone else's conlang's/concountry's/conwhatever's name or a real-life language's/people's/whatever's name... (at least unless it's meant to have a connection to them or something)
Why 'obviously'? I mean, really, who the hell cares?
I mean, sure, some caution may be needed. It's best not to use a really well-known real name, or a really contentious one. Calling your language "German" or "Muslim" might be unwise (although I know there's a conlang on this board called 'Austrian', so..). You may also want to take care not to use any ethnic or homophobic slurs, or swearwords. Although even that depends, particularly with shorter names that can easily be coincidental - once the initial giggling subsides and people can see that there's no ill intent, you could probably get away with talking about Fag or Jap - I mean, there might well be languages with those names already, who knows?
And I would avoid any famous fictional names too, so that there's no suspicion of copyright infringement. I'd stear clear of calling your language "Klingon", or "Quenya", or indeed "Hufflepuff". And among conlangers, people may raise eyebrows if you call it "Verdurian" or "Ithkuil".
But if your name just happens to have previously been used by one conlanger five years ago on their private website... who cares if you had the same idea? If after some study you notice that the name is the name of one imaginary city in one imaginary country described on one little-visited website, is that really a problem? Why?
There's only a finite number of letters to use, after all. Some repetition is inevitable!
[this goes double for a posteriori languages, of course. If you're setting a language in Britain, for example, then it's inevitable you're going to end up with languages with names like "Britainese", "Sassonais", "Engleska", "Hibergnol", etc...]
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