Skyrim Naming

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 11:40 am

I just want to tell something about Skyrim, and the many names on places and people.

In bloodmoon, nords and places on Solstheim got Scandinavian names, and some of them are just stupid. I thought that when we are going to place names to Skyrim caves and places, we must not do the funny thing that BS did with bloodmoon. Take a look at this Thread in the ES forums:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=38860

This is a list over all the names that sounds strange in norwegian, and they are actualy taken from the norwegian/swedish/danish/ language.

So if we are going to add a new creature, DON'T name it Elgdrake or something! (it means MooseDragon)

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 12:30 pm

so youre trying to say we should not use scandinavian words?

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 12:42 pm

No, we can just use scandinavian words, but what I tries to say is: not find words that not fits with eachother, or sounds silly. (UDYRFRYKTE)

It's just my opinion.

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 12:45 pm

I'm norwegian... You can ask me for words...

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 12:48 pm

I'm norwegian too dude!:P

But don't you think udyrfrykte is a kinda strange word? if the ES team called it Beastfear, it would have sounded stupid.

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 12:57 pm

Yes, I know. But after all those that made the name "Udyrfrykte" is english... TR got scandinavian members, so we can make better words...

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n · Thu Dec 23, 2004 11:52 pm

Hate to break it to ya, but erm... Incase you guys didn't know, the Nords aren't Norse, or swedish, or Danish, or Icelandic, or Faeroese, or Shetland/Orkney/Caithness-Norn, or any other scandinavian nationality, infact much of their culture is taken from the celts (especially all the blue face paint - woad anyone? - and running around naked)

I rather doubt the developers intended for the Nords to be a carbon copy of the Norse and in any case foreign names always sound good in English, take Italian car names, the Ferrari Testarossa wouldn't have sounded so cool if they'd called it the Ferrari Redhead would it? the F360 Modena is another example (Modena is a large northern Italian industrial town - not exactly that glamorous).

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:02 am

Don't be so negative Marauth! We never said nords were norse! We just offer to transelate some words, if TR needed it. Since it seems like bethesta used scandinavian words, I thought mayby TR also would use some. It's a suggestion to help with new words...

Sadi · Post by **Sadi** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:19 am

Cool. (Jeg er norsk ogsÃƒÂ¥!!! Hurra for Norge!)
I agree Udyrfrykte sounds abit weird, but scandinavian names is fully usable in my oppinion, and all who dissagree is stupid

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:25 am

(Hurra for Sadi som er enig med oss

)
It's good to know that someone agree with us!

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n · Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:26 am

Oh right, there's nothing wrong with being 'authentic' to the real life inspiration for the Nords but I just don't think it'll feel right if everything Nordic ingame is exactly Norse or Swedish. Certainly there is a large scandinavian influence but it should be altered somehow, so it's not quite real world, like how the Bretons are 'inspired' by the Holy Roman Empire and the northern Italian city states, but also with some strong Scotts and French influence (ironically the only thing they're not related to are the real world Bretons).

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 12:43 am

I did never mean to transelate nord dialoge, or books, and I agree that not to many words should be scandinavian, but for an example;

You want to make a name on creature in skyrim and wanted the name to fit with the names in bloodmoon names. If you did't know the word you needed you could ask for example me, or some other scandinavian member of TR.

You ask "Wolf"
I answer "Ulv"

And this is nothing anybody must, and the TR don't need to use scandinavian words, This was only a suggestion

.

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n · Fri Dec 24, 2004 1:05 am

That's great but wouldn't it be a little one sided - there are more scandinavian languages than Norse (I listed a few of the more obscure ones in my first post) and I think a mixture should be used, a halfway between all the different languages which makes everything sound scandinavian but not identifiably any real world language because it'll be a mish-mash of them all.

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 1:23 am

Not to be rude but Scandinavia are only Norway, Sweden, and finland...

Using those contries you mentionted wouldent harm anybody... I think...

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n · Fri Dec 24, 2004 2:06 am

Geographically Scandinavia encompasses Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and the Faeroe Islands, and by some people's reckoning Karelia and Saamiland (both now in Russia) But Finnish is a completely unrelated language, it's not even indo-european (meaning it's further removed from English and Norse than Persian or Indian). It wouldn't really work to incorporate Finnish words into Nord stuff in TR.

Faeroese is very similar to Norse as the islands were settled by Norse vikings, so is Norn (a now almost extinct language that used to be spoken widely on the Orkney and Shetland islands and the Caithness region of northern Scotland) when I said scandinavian I meant the language group, not the geographic area but irrespective the Faeroe islands, Iceland and Danmark are all in scandinavia anyway.

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 4:12 am

Pffft!

Finland is not a part of Scandinavia. It's a part of the Nordic countries or something, but geographically it has nothing to do with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Its landscape is very different from Sweden and Norway; there are no real mountains in Finland, or fjords for that matter. There are a lot of lakes and swamps though.

Also, while Finnish is linguistically very different from other nordic languages, you must remember the fact that Finland and Sweden especially have been neighbors for so long that it has gradually changed the Finnish language a bit as well; there words originating from Swedish whose pronounciation has changed but the written form hasn't, at least by much.

Also, http://www.sci.fi/~alboin/finn_que.htm

You're right though, Finnish shouldn't be used as a source of pouring dungeon or city names for Skyrim. Some examples how Soltheim places would sound like; I've just added the Finnish equivalent to the end of each row.

Benkongerike = Bonekingdom - (Benkongerike) - Luukuningaskunta
Bjorn = Bear - (Bjorn) - Karhu
Brodir (allmost norwegian) = Brother - (Brodir Grove) - Veli
Domme = Stupid/judgement - (Domme) - HÃƒÂ¶lmÃƒÂ¶/Tuomio
Dolk = Dagger - (Kelsedolk barrow) - Tikari
Flenge = Gash - (Connorflenge barrow) - Viilto
Fjell = Mountain - (Fjell) - Vuori
Frykte = (to) Fear - (Frykte) - Pelko (PelÃƒÂ¤tÃƒÂ¤)
Gronn = Green - (Gronn) - VihreÃƒÂ¤
Gylden-hul = Golden-cave/hollow - (Gyldenhul Barrow) - Kultainen luola/kolo
Himmel-host = Sky-cough - (Himmelhost Barrow) - Ilma-yskÃƒÂ¤
Hvit-kald = White-cold - (Hvitkald Peak) - Valkoinen kylmyys
Legge = Lay/leg - (Legge) - Jalka/SÃƒÂ¤ÃƒÂ¤ri
Luke = Hatch/trapdoor - (Lukesturm Barrow) - Luukku
Udyr-frykte = Monster/beast-fear - (Lair of the Udyrfrykte) - HirviÃƒÂ¶npelko
Rim-hull- Frost-hole - (Rimhull) - JÃƒÂ¤ÃƒÂ¤kolo
Skogs-drake= Forest-dragon - (Skogsdrake Barrow) - MetsÃƒÂ¤n lohikÃƒÂ¤ÃƒÂ¤rme
Skygge = Shadow - (Skygge) - Varjo
Solv-jord = Silver-earth - (Solvjord) - Hopeinen maa

At least less people understand it than Scandinavian languages, which is probably why LucasArts made this game: http://www.lucasarts.com/products/masters/
TerÃƒÂ¤s KÃƒÂ¤si translates to Steel Hand. It sound strange and exotic, so it has to sell more. Right?

Sniper4 · Post by **Sniper4** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 4:20 am

errr.... Why don't we just make up words that sound kind of Nordic?

That would save alot of trouble.

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 4:54 am

Sniper: I think that's the point of this thread - to give such names to Skyrim places that would not be direct references to real-world languages, or twist the real-world language words so that the translations wouldn't be direct and sound completely stupid. I think having some grammar for naming would be a good idea though, so we could have a fantasy language from which we can derive names from, and not just randomly generated stuff. A real-life language serves well as a foundation in such work.

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n · Fri Dec 24, 2004 8:11 pm

Sorry Zephyr but Finland is geographically in scandinavia, wether you like it or not, just because it has a different landscape doesn't separate it from it's immediate neighbours Sweden and Norway. The reason I suggested to not include finnish in any Nordic words was as you illustrated very well - it's a completely unrelated language with a very different sound. Sure some of the vocab may be taken from Swedish - the Swedish kingdom ruled Finland and Karelia for centuries and up till a few years ago they still had the old Swedish county system so that's to be expected; but the basis of the language, it's structure and the majority of it's vocab is uralic in origin and so it doesn't sound anything like the scandinavian languages which are all tuetonic, and hence indo-european in origin.

I really don't see a problem with what I suggested earlier - creating words by melding together the Norse, Swedish, Danish, etc. words for that thing so the final word is scandinavian but you couldn't look it up on the altavista babel fish (dunno if they have those languages anyway).

Agannazar · Post by **Agannazar** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 8:43 pm

As a Finn I can say that Finland is politically not part of Scandinavia, but geographically is stuck in northern Europe. People often mistake Scandinavia and the Nordic countries as being the same thing, but as Zephyr pointed out Finland has a culture and language quite different from the scandinavian coutries. Besides, Finns don't want much to do with the rest of Northern Europe anyway.

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n · Sat Dec 25, 2004 3:58 pm

Doesn't Finland still have Swedish as an official language legally recognised alongside Finnish? Infact IIRC all the provinces are (legally) bilingual except the Aland Islands which are monolingually Swedish, given that there are no Finns there.

Finns don't want much to do with the rest of Northern Europe anyway.

Really? I though Finland had abandoned it's policies on nuetrality at the end of the cold war, regarding the Scandinavian countries I read this on Wikipedia:

'Cooperation with the other Scandinavian countries also is important to Finland, and it has been a member of the Nordic Council since 1955. Under the council's auspices, the Nordic countries have created a common labor market and have abolished immigration controls among themselves. The council also serves to coordinate social and cultural policies of the participating countries and has promoted increased cooperation in many fields.'

Not to mention the fact that Finland joined the EU and the Euro bringing even closer ties with northern and western Europe.

In any case this has gone way, way, way off-topic so erm; Nordic made up language, erm, yes.

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 5:43 pm

Marauth AlaÃƒÂ-RaÃƒÂ¡n wrote:In any case this has gone way, way, way off-topic so erm; Nordic made up language, erm, yes.

That's why I posted this topic. We don't need to have scandinavian names, but at least take words that dosen't sound silly, (Elgdrage).

And another thing: I am Zaran on the ES forums, I posted the list, and for you guys who don't agree, or don't know anything about with what is mentioned in this this post, please read the this topic on the ES FORUM: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...=ST&f=6&t=34134

CAUTION: IT'S ON 10 PAGES!!!!

Agannazar · Post by **Agannazar** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 6:35 pm

Finland does have Swedish as a second language, to the great lament of people my age who have to study it (arrggghh!).

Agannazar · Post by **Agannazar** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 6:36 pm

Finland does have Swedish as a second language, to the great lament of people my age who have to study it (arrggghh!).

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 6:44 pm

Lets try to keep to the topic from now on

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 6:53 pm

But how should we organize this? We can't just post a topic (When we start on Skyrim) in the tavern, since that is just confusing, and maybe spam.

viKING · Post by **viKING** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 7:00 pm

We could make a new topic (When we start on skyrim of course) where every one that want to help with new words could "registrer", and the modders that needed the words could send a PM with the word they needed to one of the "regstrered" members.

just an idea...

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Sat Dec 25, 2004 8:58 pm

Maybe? or we could just create a free proboards.com forum, (to spare TR for space) and post them there. maybe?

We should talk to the core. But first, we got to complete morrowind.

Post by **Haplo** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 4:10 am

Or maybe we could just create a new thread in the NPCs Claiming Forum called Skyrim Naming Help and give the poster all of our names, and we just update that....that's what we have for Morrowind anyway. Skyrim shouldn't be any different.

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:43 pm

another important thing:
Don't use ÃƒÂ¦ ÃƒÂ¸ ÃƒÂ¥ in the names. I don't think the game supports it.
use instead:
ae oe aa

Asylum · Post by **Asylum** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 12:17 am

i pulled out something from underneath the dust
http://www.angelfire.com/goth/oratio/nord/
don't get on my nerves about stuff which is wrong, just use the stuff which is good.

Dragon · Post by **Dragon** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 9:12 am

That's pretty good Asylum!

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:48 pm

I found a couple of FEMALE names when I pressed the MALE button:

Hildigunn
Matilda
Inga
Solveig
Holmlaug
Halldis
Unn
Thjodhild

Or to say it clear, allmost all of the male names is female names. Are you sure Asylum, that you created that name generator right?

And a funny one:

Melkkorka (milk-top)

EDIT:

The list was better!

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 4:38 pm

When I first got my hands on Bloodmoon, i played trough it fast (with cheats) on two days. But when I explored all the caves, one funny thing appeared allmost on every cave-name. They where taken from the norwegian or swedish language! I saw it first in morrowind that many of the nord's name had viking names, but this was really funny. Here is a list:

NORWEGIAN = ENGLISH - THE FULL INGAME NAME
__________________________________________________________________
Benkongerike = Bonekingdom - (Benkongerike)

Bjorn = Bear - (Bjorn)

Brodir (allmost norwegian) = Brother - (Brodir Grove)

Domme = Stupid/judgement - (Domme)

Dolk = Dagger - (Kelsedolk barrow)

Flenge = Gash - (Connorflenge barrow)

Fjell = Mountain - (Fjell)

Frykte = (to) Fear - (Frykte)

Gronn = Green - (Gronn)

Gylden-hul = Golden-cave/hollow - (Gyldenhul Barrow)

Himmel-host = Sky-cough - (Himmelhost Barrow)

Hvit-kald = White-cold - (Hvitkald Peak)

Legge = Lay/leg - (Legge)

Luke = Hatch/trapdoor - (Lukesturm Barrow)

Udyr-frykte = Monster/beast-fear - (Lair of the Udyrfrykte)

Rim-hull- Frost-hole - (Rimhull)

Skogs-drake= Forest-dragon - (Skogsdrake Barrow)

Skygge = Shadow - (Skygge)

Solv-jord = Silver-earth - (Solvjord)

The funniest thing of them, are Udyrfrykte! =D It sounds so amusing, that the creature itself isn't scary. I think that the ES team sat with an English-Norwegian word-list when they wrote the names on the different caves and places.

I don't really know if every word in this list is taken from the norwegian or swedish language, but it sounds too similar to not have anything with it do do.
^
|
|
|
L------ There is the list! ^^ In case the ES forums delete the old posts...

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 4:23 pm

*bump*
Sorry about this, but first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia

Sorry, NO FINLAND. That's Because finland and finnish has nothing to do with the nordic languages. I can't understand a dude from finland, but I can understand a dannish or swedish person.

Actually, when we start the naming, some people should really take care when they invent names. Me for example can help with inventing cool names that dosen't sound stupid. And no, we can't make names without taking it partly from a language. Because, everything in morrowind is based on reality. Most of the armors, many of the names (the language is releated to other real languages) etc.

- Wishmaster

Odowacar · Post by **Odowacar** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 6:15 am

wishmaster wrote: Sorry, NO FINLAND. That's Because finland and finnish has nothing to do with the nordic languages. I can't understand a dude from finland, but I can understand a dannish or swedish person.

Finnish is related to languages they speak in for example in Estonia and Hungary - though we have many words that are almost like Swedish words.

And I'm just glad that we're not going to use Finnish names. No real names in Tamrielic world, please - it wouldn't be real. Of course the names have to be based in real names but I wouldn't like to find people called Sven, Ãƒâ€¦ke or Knud in Skyrim.

wishmaster · Post by **wishmaster** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:22 am

Yeah, that's true. But Bethsoft DID use a dictionary. A sucky dictinary too. Blah.