I'm writing a story whose setting is losely based on the Opium Wars. It takes place in an entirely fictional universe and so far, I haven't managed to find a name for my universe's equivalent to opium. I'd be grateful if someone could help me out. Latin or oriental sounding names are preferred.
Morphine was originally called morphium (from Morpheus - Greek god of dreams). From the Greek there are also the Oneiroi who were the spirits of dreams. This might give you Oneirium. If you like Celtic there is "Caer Ibormeith" goddess of sleep and dreams. Could give Ibormium.
If it's a street name you're after, the process of word formation will be very different than if it's a pharmaceutical name, though sometimes it's a mix of both. Marijuana is of uncertain origin, though the spelling in English using an aspirated J is an overcorrection to Spanish, whence English takes the word. It's spelled marihuana in Spanish, with a silent H. But it goes by a bevy of other names: weed, grass, dank, crippy, crip, etc. Cocaine comes from coca (originally cuca in Quechua), the local name for the plant and the chemical suffix -ine. It also gets called snow, blow, whitney, etc. What is the plant like? Where in the plant does the drug come from? Where does the plant itself come from? What does the drug look like? Does it only have an illegal source, or is it a controlled pharmaceutical subject to abuse? I remember an episode of Oz where two prisoners were in the midst of taking an invented-for-the-show ecstasy stand-in drug that they kept referring to as D-tabs. D being the first letter of the chemical name for the drug that gets mentioned at some other point in the episode (Dibullshitdrugnameofloxin) and tabs being a truncation of tablets. The whole time I'm watching, I'm thinking, "No. No drug would ever get such a poindexter street name. Ever. Period. Who wrote this??" Keep it simple. Science Fiction is rife with overwrought drug names. Electric Blue... Plutonium Nyborg... ugh! Shoot me. Even Melange was pretty bad, but its real street name, spice, was pretty good. Best fake drug name ever: soma.
To help me better make an assessment, what is the normal means of delivery? Shooting? Smoking? Dropping? Snorting?
@ Wreybies there is a real drug named Soma. http://www.drugs.com/soma.html It's basically a muscle relaxer downer.
Thank you all for your input, guys! It is herbaceous and produces colourful flowers. The seeds. It is at home in the tropical and subtropical zones of my fictional world. I haven't really thought about this yet. In the country where my story takes place it has been in use for medical and ritual purposes for centuries but its use as a drug is a fairly recent occurence. I most definitely will. I absolutely despise long and complicated names, however poetic or humorous they may sound. It is usually smoked in a grotesque looking pipe.
Ok, this so far is the most important bit of data. This means it's not going to have a name that's scientific sounding. The name will be a natural sounding word, not a constructed piece of jargon. So, no -ium, -one, -pam, -lam, -ine, etc. sounding suffixes that are so common in real pharmaceuticals (they indicate classes of drugs, generally). One of the ways to say opium in Chinese is yan. There are other ways but they all sound very much like opium. Yan. Yan flower. Yan seed.
What about making up a weird technical name (or pick one that already exists) and give it a similar first name? Like Molly is.. ecstasy, I think. Mary is marijuana. I think those are the catchiest, easiest to remember, and good for code such as "Hey, @Wreybies, care you meet Molly?"which would be innuendo for care to get some ecstasy.
When I was at university, weed was "Larry" because Mary was too obvious. In gay culture crystal meth is often called Tina. Chris-tina = Tina. X was rolls or beans.
Plants sometimes get their informal names via their characteristics. I think that you will be able to think of a name much faster if you imagine the plant, or give it a unique feature. Here's a few made-up plants, followed by possible street names and descriptions. Rook's Nail --nails-- Wet Vine --vinny-- (forms so much dew overnight that it floods small fields?) Yellow Poppy --mellow yellow-- Ripe Dotty --pox-- (maybe the leaves are covered in red spots?) Thorny May --barby-- (looks like barbed wire) Edit: Or, if street names too closely related to the source sound tacky, you can just use something that sounds like someone's name: Johnny Marty ChuChu Danny