WIP: Aardia and the Kyzian Empire

[Jalyha]

Oh, I think I like you

Okay, so... (I don't know where to start!!)

Thanks for taking the time on this. So far I've made the following at your suggestion:

Nordifying the North (as noted, Bath and points south are really "Central" despite geographic location):
Oarsberg -> Utland. The former wasn't really sensible to begin with, the latter ("outlying area") sticks to Nordic roots.
Wintersgaard -> Vintersgaard.
Oxenholm -> Oxholm. The plural in Nordic would be "Okser", and I don't like the look/sound of that so I went with the singular to keep it to its roots.

Romancing the South:
Dog's End -> Contracanis
Fort Briar -> Castravespis? I'm unhappy here. May punt on the original name and just go with something Latin. Or maybe this is an exception.
River's End -> Fons Alta ("High spring/source")
Hermitage -> Peregrinus (pilgrim/traveller)
Pine Harbor -> Porta Robura (Oak port)

Other (just doofus names to begin with)
Lochsberg -> Portishead
Cupsberg -> Broadkirk

Overall, I think it will feel more natural with these choices... and I (in no way) meant that there shouldn't be *any* exceptions... just that, with the small number of cities/towns you have listed, it felt like too many exceptions (between 1/4 and 1/2 of the names following no rule).

I think Fort Briar as an exception would be fine.. especially if it were so named during an event of great significance.

I haven't looked up the names listed here, but they *feel* more natural in this grouping.

Just going on instinct here... Broadkirk = Scottish? Feels that way. Honestly, I think your map would be fine with those changes alone.

But... for conversation's sake:

Yes, English has Moscow for Muscovy, Vienna for Vien, Prague for Praha...

Wasn't sure what the level of understanding was here. Most people don't realize exactly *how* prevalent this is. Not JUST for English.. Every culture has exonyms for every other culture in much the same way (until you get to the most recently integrated societies, but that's a whole different topic...) Point being, exonyms *ARE* far more prevalent than most people believe... and the further back you go in history, the more common this practice was.

Ahh, yes, I think this is the source of some of our disagreement. To me, calling places in the south or north by English names is incorrect use of exonyms unless those places were colonized by the central folk for a prolonged period of time (see: Cumbria). That I want to eliminate for sure.

But the central is messy and has been ruled by different regimes through the centuries and has different cultures living there; the endonyms are going to have different backgrounds.

Were we disagreeing? I think merely talking about two different influences on naming. And you're right, the use of exonyms IS/Would be incorrect. But people in earlier societies simply did not see it that way. You're imposing your views on your fictional cartographer (The Guy in your fantasy world who supposedly made the map - assuming that you, as yourself, don't exist there.) That's why I listed 2 directions it could go. If your world frowns on the use of exonyms as common practice, there would be barely any "english" sounding names on the map at all. If they are more like early mankind here on earth, it would be the majority of cities/towns considered worth mapping.

The variety of ENDOnyms in the central area would make sense if it were just that region (which, it sounds like, with the changes of names in the north and south, it is. )

This isn't exactly right. Those languages don't really have the same origin, except in the sense that they're all Indo-European: Norwegian and English, both being Germanic languages, are more closely related than Etruscan or Oscan (let alone Greek) are to Latin (or Italian or French or Provencal or whatever Romance language).

Etruscan predates Latin and died out around the 1st century AD; its closest relatives are Tyrsenian and Raetic--it's not even in the broad "Italic" family, let alone a Romance language or dialect of Italian. Oscan and Umbrian are Italic but not Latin/Romance languages which also died out between 100BC and 100AD; they are distantly related to Latin in the way that German and English are distantly related).

Sample of Oscan text, transliterated into our alphabet: "ekkum svaí píd herieset/trííbarak avúm tereí púd/liímítúm pernúm púís/herekleís fíísnú mefiíst".
Sample Etruscan: "pe raścemulml escul, zuci en esci epl, tularu. Auleśi, Velθina-ś Arznal, clenśi,"

The point in bringing them up is that place names are "sticky": even long-dead languages like this survive in place names. For some dead languages, toponyms are the only (or at least primary) place that they're attested, in fact.

Yeee....esss... sort of. Depends on which *theory* of language evolution you follow. (This is why I'm not a linguist... huge debate (he says argument) with the instructor on the first day of class when he put up something like this:




However... language evolution is MUCH more complex than that. It isn't linear at all and can't be expressed that way. It's migratory, in ways, completely fluid in others. All of those initial lines, shooting out of your Proto-indo-european origins? Those represent *centuries* of families and villages, spreading slowly further and further away, but as the populations GROW in some central areas, they develop a sort of merged dialect with the neighbors on either side.

It's a lllooooooonnnng time before you get anything recognizably different in one area as opposed to another... "Balto-Slavic" vs "Italic" vs "Tocharian". They're all very similar *at the start*. And, it's more of a ring, than a tree.

Balto-Slavic languages start out being most similar to Germanic in some ways and Tocharian in other ways.

Italic languages are VERY closely related, initially, to both the hellenic AND celtic languages...

I don't know how to illustrate it. Italic is grey. Grey is a shade of black (Hellenic). Grey is a shade of white (celtic). But black and white are, essentially, opposites.

Now expand that a bit further... cause... all your Proto Indo-European languages originate from the same shade of grey.

Well not grey... it's more like.. language is like color... it *blends*... like a giant color wheel. There's tons of variables that affect it, but initially..

I got it!!



Each star being a "language" in and of itself. If you follow any line outward, in any direction, it's no further than the next point in any other direction, but they get further away, nonetheless, and some more so than others.

You get to English by following an (originally) germanic line... but it's no closer to "german" than it is to spanish.

And some languages are just very different from others no matter their grouping.

And my point in this area originally was simply that that is why it *feels* wrong to have a Scottish "loch" in a german/latin continent, so... I lost my train of thought.



Which point is closest in color to any other?

Agreed, I brought it up as a counterpoint to older countries to show that even young countries who had a chance to name everything recently still have plenty of linguistic variation. But it's not really relevant.

Quite the contrary... there's no "even young countries" because young countries operate from a pool of already-established languages. There's simply no comparison. (Unless your world was originally colonized by futuristic earthlings who had a shared language history...)

Agreed, but you'll also find a minority of French and Spanish and German Swedish and whatever other names all over. Which is what I'm getting at in the central region: it should be MOSTLY Anglo/English style names, but making everything English/Anglo seems way too clean and neat to be true--it's the sort of thing you'd only find in a designed/fictional world. You need some messiness because things evolved haphazardly, they weren't designed from the ground up.

Yes and no. It depends largely on scale. If you take any one of those areas, and select the 15 biggest/most important cities in each, you might find 1 or 2 names, at the most, that don't fit a general language pattern. (That's the number of names you had in the north) IF you have a larger selection of cities/towns/whatever you'll find more and more descrepancies.

My point was simply that your selection wasn't large enough for that many obvious diversions.

I'm enjoying your comments, I don't want you to think I'm rejecting anything without considering them (see: the passel of cities I've already renamed at your suggestion!) and even when I don't necessarily agree I think you're raising interesting points that make me think. Thanks very much!

This is the most fun I've had in months

I'd write more, but I have like 5 minutes before I have to get my kid off the bus >.<


xoxoxo

[SumnerH]

Just going on instinct here... Broadkirk = Scottish? Feels that way. Honestly, I think your map would be fine with those changes alone.

Mostly. Kirk (which means "Church") was loaned into Middle English from old Norse, and is found sporadically in older English dialects of all kinds in placenames. So you'll find Colkirk and Kirkley in Norfolk and Suffolk counties (not far north of London), pretty far the realm of Scottish influence.

But it pretty much died out of everything but Scots English, where it's still found today.

Were we disagreeing? I think merely talking about two different influences on naming. And you're right, the use of exonyms IS/Would be incorrect. But people in earlier societies simply did not see it that way. You're imposing your views on your fictional cartographer (The Guy in your fantasy world who supposedly made the map - assuming that you, as yourself, don't exist there.) That's why I listed 2 directions it could go. If your world frowns on the use of exonyms as common practice, there would be barely any "english" sounding names on the map at all. If they are more like early mankind here on earth, it would be the majority of cities/towns considered worth mapping.

Well, this gets into another can of worms entirely--the opening post has variant maps of a few sorts. My "master" map of the world is, by definition, 100% accurate (when I change it, the world changes!), but if I were to make another rough hand-drawn map that some local yokel made it might tend toward many more exonyms (or even vague references like "Dwarf city" and "Northmen that way"). But even 100% accurate requires judgements--is it all in English, or should I be using Elvish runes to label their cities?* Going all English, with whatever names the educated class in the English-speaking middle of the country uses, seems like the best compromise for the first cut at a master map.

*This isn't out of the question, but if I overuse use runes now it takes away their ability to add mystery later.

Yeee....esss... sort of. Depends on which *theory* of language evolution you follow. (This is why I'm not a linguist... huge debate (he says argument) with the instructor on the first day of class when he put up something like this:

Language evolution is very complex, but I don't think it's at all controversial to note that Norse and English are far more closely related than Etruscan (which isn't an Italic language) and Italian (or Latin).

You get to English by following an (originally) germanic line... but it's no closer to "german" than it is to spanish.

I disagree quite strongly, but that's a debate for another message board I fear.

And my point in this area originally was simply that that is why it *feels* wrong to have a Scottish "loch" in a german/latin continent, so... I lost my train of thought.

There are almost no German names (as opposed to Germanic)--it's mostly UK languages in the center (including other Scots Gaelic names like Carisbrooke, Byerloch, and Harvieston) and Norwegian/Danish names in the north. The 2 dwarven cities up north are the only two that are consciously of German/Dutch roots, though there might be others by happenstance.

Yes and no. It depends largely on scale. If you take any one of those areas, and select the 15 biggest/most important cities in each, you might find 1 or 2 names, at the most, that don't fit a general language pattern. (That's the number of names you had in the north) IF you have a larger selection of cities/towns/whatever you'll find more and more descrepancies.

I think you're selling it a bit short, and that's maybe our biggest point of disagreement. I'd guess about half of city names come from earlier languages or overlapping/conquering/neighboring languages, though spellings are generally corrupted into the local vulgar.

E.g. the top 15 German cities include 7-9 of non-German origin: Latin (Cologne, Dortmund), Saxon (Bremen), Slavic (Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin), as well as mixed origin (Frankfurt) and disputed (Essen, Hamburg) origins.

France's top 15 has 7-8 city names of non-Romance origin: Celtic (Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Reims), Greek (Nice), German (Strasbourg), Aquitanian (Bordeaux, maybe Toulose).

England has 7-8: Latin (London, Manchester, Leicester), Cumbric (Leeds), Saxon (Nottingham), Welsh (Cardiff), Celtic (Teesside), disputed (Liverpool, perhaps Norwegian).

That's if you lump Old English together (Birmingham, Brighton, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol) which is a bit of a sticky wicket itself.