@El'endiaStarman Surely you mean Latin?

Theo is the Greek. As in theist.

@TRiG Ah! So my assumption was wrong. I wasn't sure if dios was Latin or Greek because both have some meanings that have multiple prefixes in English words.

@El'endiaStarman Once you've had a few debates about ho theos and the translation of John 1:1, the word tends to stick.

nomen is the Latin word for name. Pretty close.

(Also, I have a general interest in etymology.)

@TRiG Ha, I'll bet.

@El'endiaStarman Yup. You have to get your nomenclature correct. You wouldn't want to nominate the wrong word.

@TRiG Haha, nice.

@El'endiaStarman Not that I've ever really had such debates personally. I live in the Republic of Ireland, not the North. I rarely get to meet anyone who could have an opinion on Biblical translation. I just read about it.

@TRiG The seven main characters in my in-progress novel are: Phaeo, Akuar, Arbor, Argen, Arien "Rotor", Pyria, and Lumien. Take a guess as to which element each character corresponds to... :P

@El'endiaStarman Ariel is the spirit of the air in The Tempest, so I could make a guess about your Arien. (Is "Rotor" a nickname?)

Pyria is clearly fire.

And Lumien is light.

@TRiG "Rotor" is indeed a nickname. I actually came up with his real name last week.

I'm less clear on the others.

Oh. Akuar is water.

Arbor. Wood?

That's not an element.

What's left? Phaeo. Spirit? No. I'm getting mixed up with pneuma, which isn't actually that similar. And Argen, which might possibly be related to argon.

@TRiG (Wood isn't, no. But it IS related to one...)

@El'endiaStarman Earth, so.

Well, it grows out of the earth, is actually composed mainly of elements pulled from the air, requires water, and burns well. So it could be any of them.

@TRiG Phaeo is Darkness and Argen refers to a color (which will then point to the element).

@El'endiaStarman Argent? Silver?

@TRiG "Earth" in my story includes not only the soil, but also all kinds of rocks and all vegetation.

@TRiG Correct. The element is Metal.

@El'endiaStarman The associations are all there if you want to use them. But Earth was my instinctive guess too; I just later realised that any of the others might apply. (Though the association with air is a bit tenuous for a mythological story.)

@El'endiaStarman Both Irish and French use one word to mean both silver and money.

And the Irish arigid and the French argent both show a Latin influence.

Basically, every name in my story is a Meaningful Name.

@El'endiaStarman Capital letters. Have you been reading TV Tropes?

Two names are Ambian and Equivo, which is Ambian's ship.

@TRiG Like, at least four years by now, I think. At least three.

Atmosphere? Ambiance? And is the ship a horse of the sea?

@TRiG Ambian comes from English actually - ambiguous. Equivo comes from "equivocal". Punny, neh?

Eärendil was a mariner, that tarried in Avernien.

@El'endiaStarman Not bad. Not bad.

Where's this novel set?

I also have Auron, whose name I changed to Auren or Aurren just to avoid the association with Sauron, but then I had a group of nine people (including Auron!) like a paragraph later, so I changed it back. :P

@TRiG It's set in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, although the similarities go about as far as character species and seven differently-colored objects of great power.

@El'endiaStarman I wouldn't actually connect the two names, and for some reason would pronounce the initial dipthong completely differently.

The first syllable of Sauron, to me, is sow, while Auron was awe.

@TRiG Interesting. My tendency to read words and note similarities based on spelling is likely due at least in part to my deafness.

But from previous conversations with Americans about vowel quality, I'm guessing that the vowel distinctions we draw might be completely different.

@TRiG Yeah, probably. I pronounce Sauron the same way you pronounce Auron, just with an S in the front.

The cot/caught merger, and the marry/Mary/merry merger are in effect in various parts of the States, so it's quite difficult to be sure, even when we're speaking about normal vocabulary words, not names from fantasy novels.

@El'endiaStarman And yes, I imagine deafness would cause you to pay more attention to eye rhyme.

@TRiG Yep.

@El'endiaStarman And I am not even remotely familiar with the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. Interesting.

@TRiG Lol, yes. I pronounce cot/caught rather differently, marry/Mary are the same whereas merry is slightly different.

Sonic: this guy

@El'endiaStarman That much I know, and it's as much as I know. I have seen a game played, but it was a racing game: no elaborate worldbuilding.

Tails is the yellow fox, and his real name is Miles Prower. Rotor is also a fox and nicknamed as such for a similar reason...

@El'endiaStarman And Merry Brandibuck's name was really Kalimac, as you'll discover if you read Appendix F.

And Banazîr seems like a high and remote name, not at all fitting to our favourite gardener.

@El'endiaStarman How far has the novel got?

This is actually the main concern I have when it comes to hopefully getting it published when I finish: the possibility that I might have enough of a similarity to violate copyright infringement. As in, there's Sonic/Lumien the Hedgehog, Tails/Rotor the Fox, Knuckles/Arbor the Echinda, Rogue/Phaeo the Bat, and Amy/Pyria the Hedgehog. Akuar the Beaver is fairly unique though. Also, there's the seven Chaos Emeralds/Elemental Relics. Beyond that though, my story is pretty original.

@TRiG I'm about 80,000 words in, which is almost exactly 3/7ths of the way.

@El'endiaStarman Good going.

It'll be between 150,000 and 200,000 words when I finish. It's a big story.

I have ideas for plots, and for characters, and for interesting worlds, but I find it difficult to marry the three. Maybe if I pulled my finger out and tried actually writing I might get somewhere.

@TRiG It's a pity you missed NaNoWriMo this year then...

I've left your story open in a tab, and shall try for it.

@El'endiaStarman Yeah. And I was aware of it. Have been for a good few years now. Still never got around to trying it.

@TRiG Attempted it last year and got 12k words. This year, I won with 50,075 words by my count, 50,546 by theirs.

@El'endiaStarman Hyphenation differences?

@TRiG That should't account for more than a hundred or so, and titles and such would count for maybe 100-200. MAYBE. I don't really know where the disparity comes from. Well, not one that large.

@waxeagle If you think of an "evangalism tool" as something it's good to have rather than as something it's bad to be ....