Hello Writers, Ok so I'm outlining for a new novel. It is set many light years away from earth and is in the fantasy genre. There are five planetswhich revolve around the planet with the most government power/authority. I cannot think of any names for these planets for the life of me. Each planet has a specific class where they train the newcomers to become that class. My classes are as follows - Rogue, Wizard/Mage, Fighter and Healer/Cleric. So each class is assigned a planet. There is also a Starter planet where people who are not of age learn the basics of education and they can make a choice on which planet they wish to enter. As I said before, I can't think of any names for the planets, so this is why I'm here. THANKS FOR ANY REPLIES )
I'm not sure it matters much. Consider that the planets in our solar system were named after characters in Roman mythology. You could work a similar mythology into your main planet's culture.
When I wrote my story I simply named the planet Unnamed. Partly because I was trying to be clever, partly because I was lazy. Taking a similar angle you could find derivatives of the names of the things the planets are based on, or words associated with them. For example, the Fighter planet could be called, I dunno, Combiona, a derivative of the word Combat. That's the kind of stuff I try to do when I name alien or fantasy creatures; it sort of gives a feel of what the planet/creature is subliminally without explicitly saying "THIS IS A FIGHTY PLANET!!!".
Hi, Wetwest, What you're writing sounds a bit like an RPG? However, to the question...taking Steve's idea would give you Mars for the planet where they train fighters...but that's a bit like the solar system...so how about doing something similar with gods from either Greek or Norse mythology? Or Hindu, or Chinese? Small point...planets generally revolve around stars, moons orbit around planets...there's no reason why a moon can't be habitable, although for a moon to have a breathable atmosphere, it would need to be big enough to have the gravity to hold on to it, and that would mean the planet would be something the size of Jupiter, which would have a gravity MUCH greater than Earth...so, you'd probably need man-made atmospheres on the moons.
Thanks for the ideas ) To Shadow, it probably resembles an RPG as it is the game I usually will play I didn't really take physics into account when making my outline so if it ever comes up I'll probably refer to it as a completely different place where Earth doesn't exist, and gravity is what I tell gravity to be To Steve/Shadow, I will probably research into legends of a particular religion and alter it to fit my story, thanks for the idea To Slate, I usually will translate a defining word into a different language and find one that sounds reasonably good, although I might adopt your way of doing it, I'll try it out, thanks Thanks again, TWW
Here you go! Rogue Planet Wizard Planet Fighter Planet Cleric Planet Starter Planet Do you really need a fancy fantasy name like, "Iscandar," for all your planets?
Just some ideas off the top of my head- Rogue Planet: Venturre (Vent-oor) Inspiration from an image of clashing knives, and my own randomness Wizard Planet: Horous (Hoar-us) Inspiration from the sun, though it could also be the egyptian god Cleric Planet: Eenari (Ee-gnar-ee) Inspiration from my playing with sounds to get the first letter Fighter Planet: Gildon (Guild-on) Inspiration from a golden wyvern on a game I play Starter Planet: Evos (Eve-os) Inspiration from the word Eden. I'm all over the place with inspiration.
Fancy formal names, like "Iscandar", will probably (as thewetwest said) give the story a bit more believability, especially if some government people/scientists/etc. talk about the planets. However, giving the planets nicknames, like "Wizard Planet", is also a good idea since such names might be used as colloquialisms. Take Mars as an example. The formal name of the planetis "Mars", but it is also referred to as "The Red Planet".
It all depends on the context of the story being written. The premise of the story, to me, shows a heavy resemblance to high fantasy role-playing game, like others have mentioned, so I just find that keeping to common names like the Wizard Planet when one cannot come up with anything better is highly suitable for this story. I find that believability is moot given the setting, especially since it calls for five planets, each with a specific class role, to orbit a sixth planet. It would take a lot of scientific research or magi-babble to explain how day and night even work.
Quick query... but anything involving other planets screams sci-fi to me. Yet there is a wizard planet. Hence magic. ...How do you plan on melding science with magic?
In Deep Space Nine, the Bajorans had developed space travel (a prehistoric Bajoran spacecraft was found crashed on Cardassia) using solar currents to "sail" through space, although it was never explained how they managed to get into space in the first place...that always struck me as being sufficiently close to magic as to be indistinguishable. Anything is possible with magic!
(I don't know how to reply, sorry!) To Keits, thank you! I'll definetly use some of your names! To Komp, yeah I probably will create nicknames for the planets mentioned a lot, I just want some good names to make it seem 3-dimensional. To Nilf, I want names for my planets for the sole fact that my story isn't very believable Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated
If I were naming planets and had to make the names from scratch, I would use an online naming tool called Namebird. It's very good at making words that sound good and are new and fun. Just thought OP might appreciate hearing about that resource
Or there's the greek(ish) name generator at www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=greeknamer It's not actually greek, just kind of sounds like it and it'll give you 1-100 names every time you hit the button.
Do they speak the same language on these five planets? Do they have the same culture? I think it might help to have some sort of starting point...let's say, just for fun, that you imagine these five planets as having a distinctly 1001 Nights-type feeling. Ok, let's use westernised Arabic as a starting point. A quick google search tells me that the Arabic word for 'warrior' is - on a western keyboard - 'ghazi'. Hey, that's pretty good already! Now, just for fun, we'll combine it with the common Western ending 'ia', which is commonly used for place names. Ghazia. Hmmm, too close. What about Galzia? Heck, let's go crazy: Ghaxia, Grazi, Ganizi, Khazili, Kraz, Xraz, Xrax, Xax, Xx, X
Think of two things: How the people residing on the planet call their planet, and, later, how the neigboring planets call those planets. I mean, we, as a very uncreative race, call our planet Earth, and I'm sure other intelligent spiecies will call their own planet something similar, in their own language, or maybe home, world, ect. Now let's look at how we call other countries. Mostly we take the name the natives give their land, and change it to be able to say it freely. Sometimes, as in the netherlands, we give the country a name that stands for what it is. So mostly look for translations for Earth, and when reffering to how others talk about the planet, use the suggestion above. Even callin a planet Rouge isn't that bad (I mean, we have a superhero named that.)
Google translate gives the Dutch for Netherlands as Nederland...I think that's a case of us Anglicizing a foreign word. I'm led to believe that one of the lakes in the Lake District (Let's say Lake Windermere) is so named because the earliest invaders said "What's it called?" The locals said "Winder", which is their name for lake, or water. The invaders said "We'll call it Winder Mere, because Mere means lake." And now we call it Lake Lakelake...
I want to know about cultural connection between said planets far far away and Earth. Since if those planets are culturally independent. You could just call it anything that sound best to you, or if you want to have it connected to some thing on Earth. You can google everything in your mind and see how it's fit. My first suggestion would be name it after Nordic or Greek gods, call a planet Diana, Hermes, Athena or Sif, Thor, Loki and such would make reader know immediately what name it's came from. You can adjust it a bit just to make it sound little less cliche. Second suggestion is that you might think a word that associate with classes and translate it to random languages like, French, Finnish, Ido, Khmer, Esperanto, Navajo and such. I also think you could think a name of each planets as pejorative name, name that used for discrimination, for insult and that kind of usage
