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I agree that it sounds like a Lantanese expression. If it was eggheaded Joon who said it, I could believe it from his mouth.

For that phrase you could really invent a lot of alternatives. My bellows has a hole in it. My fire's fading.

Yossarin wrote:

My bellows has a hole in it. My fire's fading.

There's a herb I can give you for that.

I keep having to catch myself from using a lot of "train" references. "Train of thought", or "derailed".

Train of thought and derailed wouldn't neccesarily be a problem. They could refer to a wagon train in the first part (or caravan of thought?) and minecart rails in the second.

It's definitely way more specialised in Faerun than over here though. For us, trains are all over the damn place. For them, you'd only really use it if you had experience working in mines. But yeah it can work.

I've always had a problem with "radar"... "Under my radar" and all that. "Scrying sensor" doesn't really work as a direct replacement, especially if you're not a mage... >.>

"Beyond my scrying range."

Playing an elf, I've tried to stop myself from referring to being "in the dark" about anything. I twitch a bit when I hear an elf or a dwarf use that phrase. People who can see in the dark wouldn't think of darkness as being confusing or disorienting or scary.

Not much to that but using a different word or phrase.

Personally, it is more fun solving actual words that might not exist in FR. I was ashamed when an NPC slipped up on my watch and described a place as "spartan".

Elves only get low-light vision anyway, not darkvision. Granted they would only rarely have to deal with actual pitch-blackness because of where and how they live, so that's a moot point...

Alright, what do you call those Corinthian helmets? You know the one with the sorta Y-shaped face-holes. You can't just call them Corinthian... Oh I guess they're all technically "barbutes"...

Bumping this. Fresh faces in the playerbase and curious if they can bring up any new examples.

Okaaaaaaay...

A slightly different approach. Although this thread primarily deals with words and phrases that do not translate from English into the vernacular of a different world, there is also a slightly related issue: how to properly term peoples who belong to certain places (or certain faiths) that are themselves neologisms!

For example...

Are people from Kohlingen called Kohlingers? Kohlingeners? Kholingens?

People from Cordor are widely accepted as Cordorians...but what about folks from Uhm? Uhmams? Uhmans? Uhms? Uhmi?

Tarkuuligans? Tarkuuli?

We could apply the same questions to the followers of faiths, although many of these have actually already been established in canon literature and sourcebooks, such as Waukeenar (Waukeen), Umberlandts (Umberlee), Sharrans (Shar), Helmites (Helm), etc.

So what do you call people from different settlements/islands/areas that we have made up specifically for the server? What's the consensus?

Individuals?

I've got a good one: castle in Spain. I'm not actually certain where the word derives from, but it sure sounds cool.

Kohlingen: Kohlinger(s)

Cordor: Cordorian(s)

Uhm: Uhma (Uhmi)

Winya Ravana: Winyan(s)

Brogendenstein: Steiner(s)

Wiltun: Wiltonian(s)

Frozenfar: Norther(s)

Just some thoughts and suggestions.

Righteous Anger wrote:

Kohlingen: Kohlinger(s)

Cordor: Cordorian(s)

Uhm: Uhma (Uhmi)

Winya Ravana: Winyan(s)

Brogendenstein: Steiner(s)

Wiltun: Wiltonian(s)

Frozenfar: Norther(s)

Just some thoughts and suggestions.

I go by this:

-Kohlingenites -Guldorandi

-Cordorians -Wiltuners

-Uhmen -Forrstakkri

-Wharfmen -Hin

-Winyans, Elves -Druids

-Dwarves -Lowmen

-Northmen -Khemites

I believe Khemite is what me and Kjetta established when we wrote the introduction, yeah. And Nesekan, without the apostrophe.

It is worth noting that these may vary even in a microscale. Cordor might be a bit of a special case because it has the Recorder which probably has by now managed to set the standard (though I'm not sure how systematically it uses "Cordorian"), but before its mass distribution I imagine conventions varied between Cordorian, Cordorean and Cordoran, even within the town itself.

Uhmen is kind of nice. I would have said "Uhm who?" but that's taking the joke a bit far.

I like "Wiltunian" personally. The middle syllable is pronounced like "tune".

Also, ish bin ein Kohlinger?

What about someone from Underport? Flayers/Illithids is fine I guess. ... Underporter just doesn't sound right.

Conversely, Wharftowner is okay, though it sounds colloquial no matter how you slice it.

I'm fond of Steiners myself for the Broggers dwarves.

Not very fond of creating names 'just because'. Naming population is probably more a human thing anyhow ? 'Bendirians' sounds odd and I'm pretty happy with my Nana being called 'a dwarf hailing from Barak Runedar.' rather than a 'Steiner', which I never heard IG.

But maybe I'm too grumpy?

It isn't just because. It's natural aspect of any language, and not just English. An English example is, well, we don't call folks from New York "people from New York". We call them New Yorkers. Now, the IG analog for English is Common, and thus you may have a point that dwarves in Brogendenstein speaking dwarfish probably would not call themselves Steiners. Or Broggers. Or anything like that.

But people who speak Common? Probably something easy!

General consensus doesn't mean the dwarves of Barak Runedar couldn't demonstrate collective dissent. Ultimately it's up to the players to decide what people of different regions are called. Back in the day the playerbase used to call Kelemvorites Kelemvorans quite solidarily. Then The Kraut, or the group who took over in general, came and started calling them Kelemvorites instead, so as the faction itself changed its spelling so did the server.

Apart from the few actual words that might matter (such as Christen, as introduced at the beginning of the thread), this thread is reserved for hopeless pettifoggers that are absolute sticklers for their RP. The citizens of Uhm or Brogendenstein are referred to ever so rarely that the playerbase would just get utterly confused and lost memorising the words and squabbling over the proper spelling for each type.

They are colloquials, yes. No one is trying to make these the definitive. I just want to know what most peopke are using and thus what the current majority is.

Please forgive me for a moment of nitpicky bitching.

Elves of Winya Ravana would not refer to themselves as "Winyans." Or at least, not in Elven. The words "winya ravana" mean "new forests" in Elven; calling an elf a Winyan is literally equivalent to calling a New Yorker a "New." Given that elven nomenclature in general is not especially shy about wordiness, I think the elves would refer to themselves as "Winya Ravana-tel'Quessir" ("People of Winya Ravana") or some such thing, and the more preachy or pedantic elves would go out of their way to correct the lazy humans who can't be bothered to speak properly.

I've never even realised that. That's hilarious. I'll just start calling them New Foresters.

That is awesome.

Sure is.

Last edited by Pony on Tue, Apr 16 2013, 18:49 PM, edited 2 times in total.

What I would love to see are some common insultive names. What are the people of Uhm and Wharftown to the people of Cordor? Mucklanders?

Odd that the word for Forest in Elven is also the name of the Demon King of Sri Lanka.

I don't really know enough yet about most of the cities and factions to guess at names for them, but one thing I have been puzzling over is what to refer to some of the religious groups, as some characters dislike speaking the names of certain Gods to avoid drawing their attention.

So far I've had Acarian referring to Banites as The Black Hand - admittedly, it's one of Bane's titles, but it seems to work decently enough as a term for their group as well.

Knife ears, is always good to put down those uppity elves in general with!

Cordor, wiltun, ostland, uhm, Wharftown, Kohlingen, Bendire dale, caraigh, winya....

Are known just Wetlanders.

Rigela wrote:

Knife ears, is always good to put down those uppity elves in general with!

I never understood this one, to be honest. Why is it an insult, exactly? I mean... elves do in fact have pointy ears, which might be thought to resemble knives. What's so insulting about a mere physical observation? It seems fairly value-neutral to me. Like referring to hin as "Small Folk."

Anything of observation said with derogatory intent is inflammatory...

Like colored people, needle dick, ginger, or raghead, etc...

Seriously.

From a dwarf perspective, having pointy ears makes you weak. Therefore calling someone a 'pointy' is insultive. 'Beardy' is cool, because beards are cool. Get the gist?

Why would having a pointy ear make you weak from a Dwarvish perspective? People who aren't born with pointy ears usually get them by having their ears mangled.

Insults are insults. Intent behind them can play a large part. It's calling them out for being different to the person saying (likely humans, I imagine, mostly) Elves themselves may just be baffled at the insult (knife ears), unless they were a city elf. In which case it would be a form of shunning and letting them know they are 'different and do not belong'.

Uncle-Opustus wrote:

From a dwarf perspective, having pointy ears makes you weak. Therefore calling someone a 'pointy' is insultive. 'Beardy' is cool, because beards are cool. Get the gist?

So by this logic would dwarves peddle popular "bearded" wares? Bearded mirrors, bearded chairs, bearded beer steins, bearded 2 bdrm 2 bth homes, bearded swimming pools, bearded maseratis, bearded shaving foam, bearded fine bone china?

Unrelated, but amusing mental image. Dwarven revolutionaries.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created bearded."

That said, is it really FR canon that Dwarves are that obsessive about their beards? Funny as it is, and as...well, let's be honest, stereotypically Fantasy as FR is, do we really want to emphasize the Dwarven obsession with facial hair that much?

I should know better than to make posts purely in jest. Someone somewhere inevitably has an impetus to take it seriously.

Yossarin wrote:

I should know better than to make posts purely in jest. Someone somewhere inevitably has an impetus to take it seriously.

+1 Beardiness.

Eurgiga wrote:

Yossarin wrote:

I should know better than to make posts purely in jest. Someone somewhere inevitably has an impetus to take it seriously.

+1 Beardiness.

I lol'd mightily. Never stop, that was beard

Yossarin wrote:

Uncle-Opustus wrote:

From a dwarf perspective, having pointy ears makes you weak. Therefore calling someone a 'pointy' is insultive. 'Beardy' is cool, because beards are cool. Get the gist?

So by this logic would dwarves peddle popular "bearded" wares? Bearded mirrors, bearded chairs, bearded beer steins, bearded 2 bdrm 2 bth homes, bearded swimming pools, bearded maseratis, bearded shaving foam, bearded fine bone china?

Yes. The china is a collector's treat. As for the urbane, not fully bearded dwarves there are stubbled villas, barbate palazzos, and bewhiskered pavilions as exclusive hangout places. A true dwarf would never care for such posh things, however.

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