StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hi,
Need some help for my own scifiverse. I am trying to come up with names for missiles from various species in my story. A real life analogue would be names given by NATO to Russian weapons (e.g. Adder/Archer/Sunburn/Switchblade/etc.). For now, I am looking for two themes.

One species prefers to associate its missiles with hand held weapons (e.g. spear/lance/etc.).

The other species prefers predatory animals (jaguar/tiger/etc).

Now obviously, to maintain suspension of disbelief, I would like to use made-up-names that sound like they could be from one of the above categories.

Any suggestions/ideas are most welcome

Thanks.

With the hand held weapons species... well.... There's Katana, Rapier, Mace, Baton, Dagger, Kodachi, Scimitar, Impaler, Razor, Excalibur.... that's all I can think of now. Very late at night over here... getting drowsy.

As for the predator race: Viper, Cobra, Panther, Jackal, Lynx, Puma, Cougar, Bullshark, Raptor, Falcon, Wolf, Coyote, Crocodile, Stalker, Predator, Grizzly, Black Widow, Fox, ah crap...

Maybe you can try using names of famous stuff, famous swords, famous animals, stuff like that. Legendary swords and beasts.....

Supreme_Warlord wrote:
Now obviously, to maintain suspension of disbelief, I would like to use made-up-names that sound like they could be from one of the above categories.

In the case of weapons, I think its safe to use quite a few weapons names form real life, you just might want to steer away from really specific ones. So Sword would be okay while it would questionable if you also used such names as cutlass, saber, rapier, Since it is unlikely those would be called the same thing.

For predatory animal names, you might want to look up some mythological animials. Hydra don't exist outside my labs in real life but whose to say they don't prowl the oceans of the species home world?

Yeah, no specific ones like "Minuteman" or "Peacemaker".

And don't use general names, you could use fancy (non technobabble) names so you can please the readers.

What about some fantasy-sounding names for the "weapon-named" missiles?

Eg....

Flamespear
Shadowsword
Impaler
Frostblade
Doomglaive
Stormscythe

Didn't he specify made-up names?

I have a couple.

C'thun sounds like a vicious animal...
And how about Qefu?

Dalton wrote: And how about Qefu?

Qefu sounds like the name of an Egyptian pharao to me...

As for made-up names, they depend on each species' language.

For example:

In my sci-fi universe (Wormhole War), there are two primary species - the Jardra and the Xril.

The language dominant among Jardra is based upon simple words largely using "dark" and deep vowels such as A and O.

The the Xril, however, have a much more complex language which phonetically consists of more hard consonants, (particularly Xs and Zs) a more wide selection of vocals and quite a lot of lisps. (the Jardra language is all but devoid of lisps)

Here's the results the languages have upon names of the species' starships:

Example Jardra spaceship names:
Borava, Quorron, Kalshaksa, Sikoushra, Voudr, Takadra, Kaunarga, Joukra, Taudarr.

Example Xril spaceship names:
Xlithru, Xzyth, Kraxxark, Jxur, Aulx, Zxolrr, Klaxr, Kxal, Xlorash, Xuln, Kvarx, Jxirth, Vzarh, Xrethlok, Nzilx, Xvarln, Xyrroth, Kxarr, Droxnalr, Kxrim, Xvolor,Thxozh.

(I must admit to have designed the Xril language to be deliberately unintelligible - hence the abundance of Xs and Zs in their language)