[MUD-Dev] \"An essay on d00dism and the MMORPG\"

[Travis Casey]

Wednesday, November 29, 2000, 6:01:46 PM, Lars Duening <lars at bearnip.com> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 00, at 14:45, Travis Casey wrote:

>> For a strong RP
>> mud, names like "Captain Cornholio" are definitely out, but random
>> collections of syllables aren't a whole lot better.

> I must admit that I don't quite see the different between random 
> collections of syllables and appropriate collections of syllables. 
> Example?

The difference is whether the syllables in question fit the pattern of
the character's native language.  To use real-world examples, any
native English speaker will know that "Duening" is not an English
name, and that you therefore have some non-English ancestry.  Other
examples of names that would be immediately recognized as non-English,
even by those who haven't encountered them before, are "Joachim",
"Srinivas", "Ishida", "Guccione", and "Pablo" (using a mix of first
and last names, there).

In a created world, the same thing ought to be true -- different
languages will have different sound patterns, and so names ought to
fit the sound pattern of the language that those who bestowed it
speak.  (I'm speaking of names of persons here -- place names tend to
be "held over" from older times, and thus, are likely to violate this
rule.)  On a medieval fantasy mud, this will be more true than it is
today, because of lower mobility.

Many of the classic fantasy worlds have worked-out languages, with
great enough differences that you can tell if a name "fits" or not.
For example, "Efindel" could be an elvish name in Middle-Earth, but it
could not be a dwarvish name, while the reverse is true of "Durkin".
"Alakar", however, could not be either a dwarvish or an elvish name.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   


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