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Words–existing words–come with their own cloud of witnesses–all the meanings they’ve had, the meanings of their origins, the associations they now have. Some words strongly evoke the specific places on this planet–and specific cultures on this planet. For that reason it can be hard to find an existing word that works for a specific person, place, or object in a fantasy set other-where. When I was writing the first Paks books, for instance, I was faced with a decision about what to call the places the Girdish met. All the usual words connected to a specific religion alive here and now: church, mosque, synagogue, chapel, temple, etc. They did not belong in Paks’s universe. I spent a long time with various dictionaries–a lot of thought–before grange and barton proved themselves the right words. Yes, they already existed…but they worked.
Sometimes, however, a fantasy writer needs a new word. If dealing with an invented language–it needs words. How, then, can a writer make up unfamiliar words and make them understandable to readers? It’s like hugging the porcupine…you do it carefully. This was brought to my mind with this set of copy edits, as the style sheet the copy editor used contained an astonishing number of words. In the course of eight books in this world, I’ve made up more words than I thought I had. Names of people and places make up most of them but still…names of spices and animals and musical instruments, descriptive terms for rock, and so on.
Then the copy editor tripped over a word new in this book. It’s another case of making up a word because the existing words for the meaning are all too tightly bound to existing religions and cultures and places. In this instance, because people are talking about the possibility of it–it’s being talked about but not shown–the CE didn’t get the meaning. I think you will. I think you will especially because (in a fit of annoyance) I’m going to tell you here and now.
In many cultures, there’s a belief that you can put a curse on someone by putting an object (the nature of the object varies, but it carries the curse) into their home or workplace. Hidden, of course. So if things start going wrong (hens don’t lay, milk spoils, people keep having minor injuries or even major ones–any kind of “bad luck”) you go looking for it. The Old Human culture of the north have such a belief. They call the object a “tippin.” Tippin is a form of sneaky magic, hidden both in intent and in execution.
So when someone’s cook announces firmly that there’s no tippin in her kitchen, she keeps a clean one, you now know it’s a small mouse-sized object which–if hidden under your bed when you’re pregnant, might cause a miscarriage or your child to be born with three eyes. Or so it’s believed.
This demonstrates why it’s easier to make up names for things that will appear onstage than things merely discussed. When someone notes that a dish is spiced with figan as he/she eats it, figan is onstage and therefore “real” even though the taste isn’t described. Redroots, though some people want to know more about them, are “real” because people eat them, order them when eating out and eat them again, etc. Although I think regular fantasy readers would figure out “tippin” without this explanation, the word that names something offstage does need more help from context than one whose referent is standing there, being used (or eaten.)
Another thing about making up words is that they need to be recognizable, distinct, and either easily pronounceable or short enough you can figure them out. They also need to convey the tone of the culture they’re from. Dross and nedross are easy to say and remember. Kteknik has a distinctive visual appearance, but isn’t as easy to say. Dwarf language (in my imagination) has more “open” vowels than gnome language, even though they’re closely related and both races can understand both. (English, both in England and in its colonies, developed vowel changes that made the variants almost-but-not-quite different languages.)
My youthful writing was set here, on this planet, so I didn’t make up many words, except names for horses and dogs. My characters had relatively familiar names; the places were on maps. Two things changed that. One was reading SF (I didn’t start reading fantasy until later, other than mythology.) The other was learning (painfully and not happily) to type. Because I had trouble with some letter combinations, and typing letters alone was boring, I made up sentences for myself that included those letters or combinations…and in the process made up some place names.
The place names–combined with the SF readings–immediately generated stories about what happened, and turned into (at that stage) verse as much as prose fiction. A few of the names survived to end up in books (not related to the original verse or story in which they appeared.) Chaloquay (river name in Paksworld) began as the typing exercise “The Chaloquay lilts like the lyrics of larks.” Years–decades–went by before that river (always perceived as a river) found the landscape through which it flowed.
SF/F fans and reviewers have cast stones at writers who “call a rabbit a smerp” and argue that if something hops like a rabbit, is furry and has big ears, and eats carrots, you’d better call it a rabbit. Or, on another planet, a pseudo rabbit, if you must. And in Paks’s world I call sheep sheep, and cattle cattle, and wild plum wild plum. Bread is bread and ale is ale.
But what about the less familiar (to most people) critters? Here the ground softens, eventually into swamp. If you’ve read The Wind in the Willows, where weasels and stoats are the bad guys, any mention of “weasel” or a weasel-family critter is going to evoke those weasels. (though if you pick mink or sable from the family, it will also evoke “fur coat.”) Ecologically speaking, a forest is going to have some smallish predators that can zip up and down trees, and into holes, and reduce the population of the plant-eaters. So…is it OK to rename that kind of creature (and in your mind, perhaps, give them some distinctive not-ours characteristics?) Yeah, I think so….hence the levet. (Yes, I know leveret is a young hare…levet is intended to evoke–subconsciously for those who know “leveret,” the agility and speed of a hare with the sinuousity of a ferret. The animal itself is small, and its habitat is largely the trunks and lower branches of large trees. Like a squirrel, it’s a prodigious leaper from branch to branch. )
Other critters are made up along with their names, on the basis of existing animals but not the same as. Given the ability of iynisin and (some) magelords to purposely mix species or design from scratch, the folokai (for example) can share characteristics of wolf, hyena, and wolverine. Want big scary dangerous predators to terrify humans? Folokai work perfectly for that.
I find making up names to be great fun (though sometimes difficult when I want a particular sound, with the right possible roots, for a meaning.) Then I try to embed the new word in sufficient context that the reader understands it without much, if any, effort. Sometimes this works…and sometimes, no doubt, it doesn’t.
Back to tippin. A wizard caught selling tippins (not that most wizards would anyway) will be driven out of town in Tsaia, and publicly whipped in Fintha. If a Girdish yeoman finds a tippin in his/her house, and reports it to the Marshal, the Marshal will mount an investigation and whoever placed it is in serious trouble. Angry children sometimes make one (or what they think is one) and wait for a big sister or cousin to come out in spots, but theirs don’t work and the culprit (if identified) has to do the target’s chores for a quarter year and admit his/her guilt in public, in the grange.
Tippins are made, as are the equivalent in this-world cultures where they exist, in various ways, but usually involving something poisonous or otherwise harmful (a needle, blade, thorny twig, sharp stone), something identifying the intended target (hair, nail clippings, something belonging to the target), and something indicating the power being invoked to do the harm. Tippins made by Achrya’s worshippers, for instance, will have strands of spider web wrapped around them. Liartians use blood from a sacrifice. Followers of Nayda may include something with the target’s name on it, the name then being defaced–“un-naming”; followers of Gitres burn the identifying objects and smear the ash on the other components.
I may still go back and tinker with the context in the book so even a copy editor won’t have a problem with the word.
Comment by Rolv — May 21, 2011 @ 10:47 am
Brilliant! “Tippin” sounds exactly right!
And for much the same reasons as “grange” and “barton” fits, but “church” would be mistaken, it’s perfectly OK to talk of the temple of Esea. There, it’s no dicrepancy between their use and our understanding.
I also guess that some rabbit-like animals may actually BE smerps …
Rolv
Comment by elizabeth — May 21, 2011 @ 11:03 am
If space colonists had rabbits with them (which they well might) and the planet where they landed had furry-looking hopping animals with big ears, they would come up with a name for the natives that didn’t confuse them: rabbits for the Terran ones and (maybe) “hoppers” for the indigenous ones. If they didn’t have rabbits with them, they might start out calling the indigenous ones “pseudo-rabbits” or “faux-rabbits” or “planet-name-rabbits” , but in time would either drift toward “rabbits” or some contraction of the whole, as–a few generations down the line–no one would’ve seen or experienced a Terran rabbit.
If there was an indigenous culture that called them “smerps” then the newcomers might well call them “smerps.”
Some of the “rules” for writing SF were made by those who didn’t really think through the implications (biological, cultural, linguistic) of their rules. They were “gotcha” rules that let the person who made them feel smart at someone else’s expense.
Comment by Rolv — May 21, 2011 @ 1:45 pm
Yes, that was that kind of situations I was thinking of. But you said it clearer than I would have.
One of my favourite places in Deed is where they think they met a hool, and then, much later, it turns out it’s a gibba after all. The fact that we (so far) haven’t met any hool just adds to the versimilitude. By such hints, we realize that there is a world to explore, as well as the ignorance of Paks.
Similarly, to speak of a Imam or a Mullah as a “priest” is probably more confusing than illuminating, since their respective roles and duties are different. But it makes sense to talk of Hindu or Taoist priests, as their offices are of the sacerdotal kind. Words matter.
Comment by Dave Ring — May 21, 2011 @ 3:18 pm
I love this topic and the occasional challenge of inferring the meaning of a new Paksworld word.
Off topic but may interest others. The current series is making it clear that not all elves and dwarves always act with good intentions. What about the inverse? Are all Iynisin evil in all their acts and purposes? And Orcs?
Comment by Ulrika — May 21, 2011 @ 3:32 pm
As an European, I often find it confusing how some animals and plants are named in North America. One example is that Poison Oak and Poison Ivy are not relatives of (European) Oak and Ivy, but instead related to each other. Another is Elk and Moose. Of course this is due to how the European settlers used the names known to them to describe what they found in a new environment, exactly as humans on another planet probably would do.
The made up words in SF/F have rarely bothered me while reading the books; since I am not a native English speaker, I am used to learning new words through context (or maybe I am just too lazy to use a dictionary). However, this has tripped me up once or twice when I believed the nice new word could be used outside the books where I learnt them. “Dross” still confuse me sometimes since its dictionary meaning is something negative while my feeling for the word (based on the Paks-books) is that it is something positive.
To conclude my ramble, I do like made up words used in SF/F. They convey the “otherness” of the world portrayed. And keeps a language learner alert! 😉
Comment by arthur Piantadosi — May 22, 2011 @ 1:17 am
This is Arthur. Well, I think we have not met enough Dwarves, at least, to really say what the Dwarven race is like. And it is made clear that there are many clans and tribal groupings, and that not all of them like each other. They live under the stone and do not claim land that is above ground except in the mountains. We know more about the Gnomes than the Dwarves, because of Liars Oath, but not everything. Dwarves are organized like the Germanic tribes, and do not always agree. But they seem to hate the guts of the iynisin because they live underground and foul the rock and stone with their presence. Dwarves do not seem to understand the quarrel of the First Tree, and seem to think Elves a bit silly, and probably the Elves think the Dwarves stolid and stuffy. But for all that, they respect one another most of the time. I have always liked Dwarves, and been a Tolkien fan most of my life. The earth and stone are sacred to Dwarves, and I always liked the character of Balkon. Oh, I have been meaning to ask, do daskdraudigs die when they are hit with daskin arrows? You sort of say in Oath of Gold that they do not, or something like that.
Comment by Daniel Glover — May 22, 2011 @ 11:55 am
Arthur,
Read the ending of the daskdraudig in KotN again. I found the explanation there quite enlightening.
Ulrika,
Just to add to the confusion about elk and moose we here in Minnesota also have the various Native American names floating around on occasion.
Comment by elizabeth — May 22, 2011 @ 12:31 pm
The poison twins (oak and ivy) got the names because the poison oak has leaves that look much like some of the native saplings’ leaves–and the ivy looks very much like other (harmless) ivy that climbs trees. The names may have been assigned before Linnaeus got his hands on specimens…it’s possible that early on people thought poison oak was an oak, for instance. Poison ivy and Virginia creeper (another robust high-climbing vine) look much alike from a distance, change color in the fall at just about the same time (both turn brilliant red)–and the difference is in the leaf count: “Leaves three, quickly flee; berries white, take flight.”
The first time I saw pictures of the European red deer, I thought “That’s no deer; that’s an elk” and the European “elk” was clearly a “moose.” We don’t have fallow deer; we have two other cervid species: the white-tailed deer and the mule deer. Settlers would have seen the white-tailed deer first (eastern US) and not seen the red-deer-equivalent until they made it across the Great Plains…by which time they were already using “deer” for the white-tailed deer (and, as they got to the west, its obvious cousin, the mule deer.) And once you name our elk “elk” (because the “deer” category is already full, so to speak), then clearly a moose and an elk (our elk) aren’t the same animal.
Comment by Ulrika — May 22, 2011 @ 2:08 pm
Daniel,
Good to hear some Native American names are used! I believe names were much more fluid before books (and now the Internet) made it easy to check for the “correct” name. Some plants have dozens of local names in Sweden, many names which overlap with those used for other species in other regions. Linné lived in a more confusing time than we do!
Elizabeth,
After some translating by Wikipedia (find the term/name, then switch language – very useful!), I can tell you that neither red deer nor fallow deer are found in the forests around Uppsala (someone might protest, but I have never seen either except for further south). We do have roe deer and moose (Swe: älg). I have heard the explanation that the settlers didn’t believe that deer could get as large as the North American elk, so the called it elk (since they had not yet met any moose at the time). Today a leveret (another new word learnt) ran away from me at top speed! They can be surprisingly fast and agile.
Comment by FrancisT — May 22, 2011 @ 2:13 pm
I like the explanation. I find it interesting that the main races (Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Orcs) are at first glance more or less stock fantasy races of the same name (and others such as Dragons and Gnomes are more or less recognizable) – as indeed are many domestic and farmyard animals – but that once we’ve got that anchor to help us suspend our disbelief we then get the stranger less familiar names to describe the “bit-player” species. Its these words that build the world and help us appreciate that Aare, Aarenis and the 8 kingdoms aren’t either this world or a clone of any other fantasy world but are a “real” wolrd of their own.
Mind you the more we learn about gnomes the less I see them as being like anyone else’s fantasy race and indeed on closer inspection neither dwarves nor elves are precisely the standard Tolkeinesque sort that one first thought but turn out to have some foibles and curleques that are unique. I’m wondering when we’re going to meet Orcs as anything other than hero-fodder, I bet they have some interesting quirks too…
Talking of names and (ne)dross rock, I just ran the Trail des Maures which started in a village tucked away in the hills called Kolobia – err Colobrieres, but I kept on misnaming it for some reason to my wife’s confusion. 🙂
The trails were very dusty and sandy which made me think nedross immediately. Fortunately I didn’t mention that because she’d probably be alarmed rather than confused.
(The Massif des Maures in the S of France is a range of hills. It’s pronounced much the same as the way British people say moors (either hills or people) but I think that’s coincidence)
Comment by Patrick Doris — May 22, 2011 @ 7:57 pm
I just reread Liar’s Oath today I find your term Laup very apt to the time and the story. Also I think I understand the plot problem you set yourself. I have found King of the North and Oath of Fealty to be wonderful books true to the spirit of Deeds but so much more texture and mature . Taking on the challenger of completing the saga is an act of true creativity and craftmanship I am so looking forward to the next three books.
Comment by Kamil — May 22, 2011 @ 9:40 pm
As someone who always struggles with names (ask my poor pets) I found this fascinating. I’ve found your naming conventions to be in the proverbial ‘Goldilocks zone’: not too convoluted and forced (the aforementioned smerps), but not so familiar that it pitches you right out of the universe (discovering farmers in Tsaia playing rugby)(not that they’d have the time, but it was what came to mind =). I really enjoyed getting to see into the thought processes behind how that happens.
Oh! Reading this just brought something back to me. I’ve played an online game called Neopets for yonks now, and somewhat recently there was a site-wide plot event. One of the challenges was to taunt the villain with one of a group of phrases. The order in which you did so varied from encounter to encounter and your score for that section depended on how well you chose your replies.
I tell you all that to tell you this: one of the responses was: “Sib Paks Gird”. My hand to Adyan. The site staff have a decades-long history of adding geeky references to things, and I was really pleased to see Paks’ universe added to the mix.
Plus, it gave me a giggle in the middle of an otherwise deadly dull part of the plot. xD