Too much of the same stereotype?... Fantasy or imagination?

[Meshon]

Many years ago I was reading Glen Cook's Black Company series. He used descriptive words for the names of both places and people and I really appreciated it. It was almost as though he was just translating whatever the language of his world was. I think that's the key for me. Historically, place names tend to come from something and so to use names that aren't descriptive names… you kinda have to invent a language first. Or at least a lexicon of a couple dozen words for things like hill, town, farm, valley, river, city, etc., with permutations for different cultures. I've seen that done, and it can be pretty satisfying.

I guess the trick is not to jar the reader/viewer out of the world and I suppose if my rambling is to have any use to this thread it had best be that.

My example of a jarring moment also comes from Glen Cook. At some point one of the mercenaries is trying to get everyone to hurry and yells, "Chop chop!" and immediately I was like, "No, that is a specific utterance that has an origin in my own world's history." And yes, before I get too long-winded, I know that's ultimately the case with all language we use. I think I've dug myself into a rabbit hole and there's no end in sight!

cheers,
Meshon

[Midgardsormr]

Or Schwarzwald.

Touché, Touché!

[Chick]

Touché, Touché!

Call me ignorant if you wish, but I never heard of the name Schwarzwald for the Black Forest of Germany until today. Perhaps an example of why a name that actually describes the terrain is so much better than something obscure to a stranger.

[Azélor]

Call me ignorant if you wish, but I never heard of the name Schwarzwald for the Black Forest of Germany until today. Perhaps an example of why a name that actually describes the terrain is so much better than something obscure to a stranger.

Unless you understand German.

[Mark Oliva]

Why name a forest "Daerish Swar" or "Schwarzwald" when a descriptive name tells the reader so much more information? Cryptic is not the same as imaginative.

Nor is insisting that everything be written in English.

I'd rather see a name like "Mirkwood" that conveys an image of exactly what the author wants me to see when I envision the forest as I read the story.

Good. But this applies to you, not to everyone. There are many of us who want and even seek the opposite.

Names are invented by the local inhabitants, and almost always relate to either the natural terrain ("Black Forest" of Europe (SNIP)

Exactly. And the local inhabitants in Badinia named it the Schwarzwald, because they speak German, not English. If you go there, you will not hear locals calling it the Black Forest. That's only an English translation of Schwarzwald for people who don't understand German. When you're in your fantasy world, you apparently want everything to be in English. That's fine for you. When I want when I go through my fantasy world what I want is a collection of many lands where many languages are spoken. When my PC wanders into a new area with a new language, I have no desire to have him run into English everywhere. I want him to see words in whatever the local language is and then have to learn what that name means.

That's how it works in the real world too. Many years ago when I was in western Bohemia for the first time, I looked for the first time in wonder at the waters of the Černé jezero nestled in the mountains known as the Šumava. The last thing I wanted was a sign telling me what the names were in English. It's part of the fascination of being in a new and foreign (in many senses of the word) place. But my curiosity certainly was piqued. Therefore, I learned as quickly as possible that the lake name meant Black Lake and the mountain range name means Dense Forest. It was all the more interesting to learn that the English name for the mountains was quite different, Bohemian Forest, which simply is an English translation of Böhmerwald, the German name for the Šumava. It became even more interesting when I learned that Bohemians also have something that they call the Bohemian Forest, in their own tongue, the Český les, which is the name that they give to the forest atop the mountains.

The question then is whether we want this type of lingual color in our fantasy RPG setting. Your apparent answer is no. Mine is yes. Neither of us is right or wrong, and neither of us has a better answer than the other. But there's room for both of us here.

In my own maps, I try to use names such as "Windwhisper Plains" or "Dragontooth Mountains" because those names also give a mental image of how the local inhabitants think of the region.

But only if the local inhabitants (as opposed to the PCs) speak English.

But Schwarzwald is descriptive, and pretty famous I would have thought. You mentioned it in your comment, i.e. the Black Forest in Germany.

Exactly.

I rather like non-English, or completely made-up, languages on a map as they help to convey that air of 'different' that fantasy worlds often strive for. Ultimately it all down to what impression you want to convey.

And there we have it ... the other equally valid side of our coin.

[Mark Oliva]

Call me ignorant if you wish

I won't call you that, nor do I wish to. But elitist might be an interesting alternative, now that you bring up the idea.

Nix für Ungut!

[Coreyartus]

Wow, Mark Oliva, way to miss the entire point Chick was trying to make, and be completely rude in the process. You totally inserted your own interpretation on what she was trying to say and made it about nationalism. Get off the high horse.

She's not insisting on everything being written in English. You've missed the boat on that one, and become offended by something you're reading into it.

What Chick's saying is that she feels a map is stronger when the nature of a geographic location is indicated to the reader of the map through its name. If the reader doesn't understand the language, that opportunity is lost on the reader. German, English, Alien, Lunar, Martian, Whatever--it doesn't matter what the language is--if the reader can't understand it the map-maker has lost an opportunity to suggest something.

If that's not important, or if the map maker wants to communicate different things (like naming things for fictional local preferences or helping to establish a world's fictional language or any of the virtues you've outlined) then that's a choice, too. But Chick is saying that's not one she prefers. The fact that the name of the Black Forest in German didn't mean anything to her has nothing to do with being "elitist" or preferring English. It means, for her, its name might as well have been named in Ancient Summerian or Neptunian or N'avi. "Lingual color" is irrelevant if the reader of the map can't understand the intent.

If discovering that "intent" is important for the map-reader to make during the course of the reading of a book or playing a game or whatever, or the map is supposed to be in another real-life language, by all means use the language you need to for your intended audience and outcome. But her comment isn't about naming everything in English. Good grief.

[Deadshade]

Wow, Mark Oliva, way to miss the entire point Chick was trying to make, and be completely rude in the process. You totally inserted your own interpretation on what she was trying to say and made it about nationalism. Get off the high horse.

She's not insisting on everything being written in English. You've missed the boat on that one, and become offended by something you're reading into it.

.

In full agreement. I also understood Chick's point and tend to agree with it. It is all about the amount of information that a map is conveying to the observer and it seems trivial to me that an observer prefers when it is more rather than less.
Of course it is not always possible because the observers are not equivalent so the amount of information that different observers recover is not equivalent either.

[waldronate]

ON the subject of toponymy, we turn now to the work of a master:

“The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.

The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic


How the map is labeled will depend largely on why the map was made.

See also http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names.html for good examples.

[Naranja Limones]

In my own maps, I try to use names such as "Windwhisper Plains" or "Dragontooth Mountains" because those names also give a mental image of how the local inhabitants think of the region.

I think the biggest problem with this approach is repetition and like... you're kind of trading a name that gives a feeling of culture for the effect of "how locals perceive the land." I would much prefer to have a bunch of more individually memorable translated names than a bunch of "Adjectivenoun Mountains" all over the place. I feel like this works for local maps of areas that are supposed to be familiar, like the Shire in the Hobbit or something, but as far as maps of multiple countries go I think it's better to translate.