Legendary creatures with similar names
General forum
Posted on July 24, 2021, 1:29 p.m. by legendofa
I'm noticing that some unrelated legendary creatures have very similar names, to the point where the only differences are syllable stress and vowel pronunciation.
Carth the Lion into Jared Carthalion into Jarad .
It's almost like they're intended to look exotic, but be easy to pronounce for an English-speaking audience... Is WotC running out of phonemes?
RaidenShogun69 says... #3
i believe what azeworai is "trying" to say is that names in stories will sound similar just like names in real life. plus theres only about 44 phonemes in english.
as for odd names swaying a player from casting the card, i think Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar disagrees.
July 24, 2021 2:26 p.m.
I'll give Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar points for uniqueness, but uniqueness shouldn't be based on complexity. To pull from my first example, as far as I know, Galea isn't an existing character in Forgotten Realms, so any name would work. Switching the G to S, or the L to D, would have created a unique and distinct name while still keeping the same feel and ease of pronunciation.
I know that having every name be completely different is unrealistic, but this game doesn't try especially hard to be realistic, even allowing for magic and planeswalking and all that. It should also be important to prevent confusion between game pieces.
I'll stop this post here, since I'm starting to complain, and this really isn't that serious of an issue. I just thought it was odd.
July 24, 2021 3 p.m.
RaidenShogun69 says... #5
galea is still a unique and distinct name, so changing any of the letters would just be arbitrary
as for being realistic or not, you're technically conflating what is unrealistic in the real world with what is unrealistic in a fictional world, if that makes sense.
July 24, 2021 3:08 p.m.
shadow63 Is he? Where's the information coming from? I don't doubt you, I just looked pretty specifically for that and didn't see anything.
July 24, 2021 4:15 p.m.
And I found a couple of sources confirming it. My Google Fu is weak today...
July 24, 2021 4:17 p.m.
A bunch of "totally unique names" are actually real world names and not just alphabet soup.
For example, Jarad and Jared have the same origin and meaning, but the spelling is different based on which culture used it. Galea, Gallia, and Kaalia are all used as names, words, or both somewhere but they don't appear to be related.
There are probably lots that are mushed up phonemes, but fewer than some might expect.
July 25, 2021 12:19 p.m.
1empyrean That's an interesting point. If all of these are, in fact, real-world names or words, I'm more impressed. I knew going in that a lot of the real-world culture sets like Innistrad and Kamigawa used real words and phrases as proper nouns, and I worked out a good chunk of Theros, but it sounds like there's more than I thought.
Idoneity says... #2
I believe that if one entity has several thousand names of characters, some are doomed to overlap. Each of these cards has a several-year gap between them, implying that some may be forgotten, and/or are bloomed by existing characters, whereat the name is immutable. I do much creative writing in my spare time, names being all too important. If one sounds odd, players may be swayed avaunt from even casting the card. Instilling remembrance from conventional appellations broods simplicity in pronunciation and emphasis on abilities.
July 24, 2021 1:42 p.m.