Gnedrnygr and the evolution of Colemian language

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A note to self and other people who write: If you think you make a good joke, hope you'll find it funny in a couple of decades. And, you may end up needing to live with it.

A good case would be Gnerdnygr Adithebadoggr. The character was first mentioned in Faira's backstory. Faira's backstory, of course, was written semi-jokingly; While I want the overall tone to stay fairly serious and realistic, I went consciously slightly over the top with that story.

At that time, I didn't think much about the character naming. Fantasy stories are always rather complicated what comes to naming of the people. After making the bad joke, it was time to get back to the reality and start rationalising this... challenging name.

I initially thought it'd be fairly simple; humans speak one language, elves another language, and Gnedrnygr is from a distant country with a completely different language. Nowadays, the languages would be Varmian, Elven and Colemian, respectively.

The real story behind Gnedrnygr's name is very simple: There's Grignr, widely known as "just like Conan but more difficult to pronounce". Then I rationalised my choice as "Okay, it's a good fantasy name. Good fantasy names are difficult to pronounce." And then I realized that hey, where Gnedrnygr comes from, there's more folks named the same way.

That's the lesson that you need to remember. Jokes may not kill you, but you end up supporting them if they get real enough!

So this is where the Colemian language starts evolving from. It's probably going to sound kind of like ancient Norse. Just that I don't know much how that sounds like, but still.

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This page contains a single entry by Urpo Lankinen published on November 15, 2005 3:12 PM.

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