>>5691610>NamesVarious techniques with onomastics, hehe
>look up names on wikipedia / wiktionary and de-make their etymologySo for example you can take common names and use variants, in other languages eg here are some I used in the past
Elizabeth - Ilsapesi, Ursabet
Charles - Searlas
>Take a word, translate it into different languagesSo you can take a simple word like dagger, sword etc and look it up in various modern or ancient languages. Good languages I find are Arabic, and Mongolian. If you can look up ancient languages, eg Akkadian or Egyptian or anglo saxon, even better. There are various dictionaries online to do this, just search
>Look up obscure myths, shamelessly steal the names Again, I use wikipedia. Generally avoid the obvious myths though like Hercules etc or Zeus etc as the associations are too strong, unless your quest is literally set in that era of history, or you want to unambiguously evoke the exact mythological archetype.
A variant of this is to use an obscure incarnation of the myth, eg instead of just Aphrodite or Venus, Cytherea (Shakespeare uses this one)
>language of flowers>>5687874>>5688076PERDITA: Out, alas!
(...)
Now, my fair'st friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
>Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bight Phoebus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!
>Sci-fi names / cyberpunk I like to mix and match real world military scientific and corporate acronyms. You can read annual reports 10-k or 8-k reports or earnings transcripts to get a feel of corporate phrasing. I think Kojima also did this in Metal Gear Solid. How many people remember Praying Mantis was actually the US attack on Iran?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis 