Confusing Things About Writing Languages That I Want to Rant About

In which I get pretty off-topic but don't want to change the title

To begin, Tolkien was a genius.

If you haven’t already, go read “Notes on Translation” in the appendices in ROTK. It’s incredible and so creative the way that Tolkien designed his series.

Tolkien wrote LotR as if he was translating it from Westron, the language that Rohan, Gondor, and the Hobbits speak. Most of the characters names are not, in fact, what we think they are. (Merry, for instance, is actually Kari or something like that).

However, this springs from the fact that he wanted his main characters to have normal names, names like Baggins and Sam and Merry and Pip. Of course, Aragorn and the like have more unique names, but we don’t follow them all the way from home and then back again. We follow the everyman character, Frodo Baggins, the orphan adopted by the rich uncle, the one who would have been the last one chosen to dispose of the Ring and yet he volunteered, so he was worthy to do it.

In my WIP, I’m currently wrestling with how I can make this possible. I have already given my MCs “normal” English names, although most of our names are seldom in English. However, upon reading the “Notes on Translation,” I decided to write my own in order to make sense of it all.

Here’s what I wrote:

The Altannic people were simple folk to begin with, and named things accordingly. That is why names like Oitheá or Scraglë Neába sound so grand, when really they mean ‘west’ and ‘Healer’s Mount.’

The Elves also use High Iathaic as their primary language, but their dialect is far more formal; and though they are grand folk, they find ordinary things far more grand than we do.¹

Names remained the same, however, and so names like Phoebe (which I have translated into English from High Iathaic, and is really Pheebea) and Thuban are not recognized for their meanings (‘bright warrior’ and ‘beacon’). This can be seen in the names of the Corkish kings (Scothidil, for example, means ‘toe-eater’).

The Oldunger² speak a hallowed language that is still spoken in Calensia. thus Calensian Kings, who are named by Calen himself, do not know how disappointing their Iathaic names actually are (Vixatis, for example, means ‘barely enough’).

Corkish districts or neighborhoods have been named after the four sea captains that came with King Raighen at the founding of Corksver. These names have corroded from Iathaic to more modern spellings; I have translated district names into English, but have left the corresponding noble-family’s last names alone, as they are the same.

As you can see, there are a lot of holes, but there are also a lot of places that got filled in when I wrote it. I would highly encourage you who are writing their own languages to go read Tolkien’s “Notes on Translation” and then go write your own.

One of the best ways to start writing a language, if you don’t know how but would like to begin, is by making up names. Choose a root language (Greek or Irish, maybe) and some things that you would like names to mean, and then find the words in your root language. Practice mixing up the letters in the root language to make up your own names with them.

Have fun and be creatively inspired!

aka I don’t want to write another language but probably will have to.

1.

my system of deities

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