I am looking for help to name a fictional species in a low-fantasy setting. There is a sudden outbreak of a demonlike species. The species is capable of possessing people and grant them power. As the possessing doesn't happen via contract and has no visual indication at first, there is no way to tell if someone is possessed or not, leaving the hosts to stumble upon the power by themselves. When the hosts did stumble upon the power, however, the species will gradually take over them. They will start gaining some of the species's physical traits (which vary wildly, some look like humans, some look like monsters that crawl out of the closet, etc), then, they'll start gaining the species's personality (which also vary wildly). In the end, the host will "die", in the way of being erased inside out. They are sentient, and some can be reasoned with, resulting in a partnership. But the "deletion" still applies to them even though the power is given willingly. Ideas?
I think the name depends one whose calling them it. People being possessed would probably call them demons. As to what they'd call themselves, that could be anything but Without more background on who they are/ where they're from etc. It'd be pretty hard to come up with a good name. Maybe something like the Rigidum or some variant of that(Latin for 'erase' according to google, as that's what they do to people)
Wow, that sounds interesting! I agree that just demons might work well - it seems the most likely name the general public would go for. Simple, real words have worked well in plenty of novels, such as the name "the Others" given to the aliens in The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. Did the people in that world know that this species existed? If they didn't, then it's unlikely they would have given them a made-up, complicated name after such a sudden event. If they did know that they existed, however, then giving them a fantasy name seems more plausible. Try playing around with existing words, looking through fantasy name generators to inspire you, or typing linking words into google translate and seeing what they are in other languages. You could even take two foreign words, like the translations of "erase" and "demon" and experiment with chopping them in various places and putting them together.
This right here is good advice. In my fantasy setting there is an umbrella term for any magical creatures or spirits that appeared (usually as a result of magical taint) after the creation of the original spirits. These creatures/spirits are a corrupted caricature of pure magic and often include things like witches, ghosts of drowned men who now try to drown trespassers in swamps, and mutated bears. Not things you want crawling out from under your bed. So, the people of my fantasy universe have a term to describe them: rak. Rak sounds very close to the Russian word for cancer/tumor. It both describes more or less what these creatures are and has a kind of raspy noise to it when spoken out loud. It doesn't sound pleasant. That's just one example. Most of the words I have that come from languages within that universe draw inspiration from Latin, English, Spanish, and Russian. Do try to avoid using entire words though when possible, otherwise readers with a background in that language will not see an antique word from a bygone era, they will see a random Spanish word stuck in an English text. To that end, you can combine words from very different languages. Ship of Darkness (English) -> Barco Oscuro (in Spanish) = Meh. May sound mystical to English speakers but a Spanish reader will see an out of place Spanish word. Ship of Darkness (English) -> Barcatem (Combination of Spanish root for ship with Russian word for darkness) = A Little Better. May sound mystical to English speakers AND Spanish + Russian speakers, who will also see a root and associate the word with the concept without perceiving it as an out of place word. Here's a couple of English words that come to my mind for your creatures: Soulworms Mind-Benders Here's a couple of foreign concoctions of those words Almaverm Almacherv Aniverm Mentvincules Mentigib
