@JasonClyde what's up?

@Green Hey, sup?

Not much at the moment besides taking care of a dog who's making it impossible to sleep

Trying to remember what I was looking to ask about. It's not coming to me.

@JasonClyde let me know when you remember.

@Green well, still can't sleep. I had a lingering question I was wondering about regarding the powers of my story. Every week suddenly a new power exists, but it doesn't come with a name. I'm wondering to myself where the official, recognized names would come from.

Having trouble visualizing what would actually happen besides "the internet"

@Green basically to clarify, when something just appears, nobody discovered it, no one in particular has naming dibs, where in society would the name people eventually agree on wind up coming from?

@JasonClyde I'd guess the names would come from what one person called it which then spreads by internet, newspapers etc. For a while there would probably be a lot of different names and then over time one or two would become mainstream and the rest would be forgotten.

Potentially their nay also be a scientific name given to each power, that would probably come from the people who research it or from some sort of scientific governing body.

@Bellerophon Thanks, that helps a bit.

@JasonClyde it might depend on the country. In the US, where language isn't regulated, the name may just organically happen. In countries like France or Iceland, an official naming body may specify the name.

I had no idea official naming bodies even existed in other countries.

Even with the US, there will be regional and community specific names.

That is going to be a massive pain for the reader.

I may have to have the narrator just use the same name for everything no matter what anyone calls it.

@JasonClyde absolutely they do. In France, for a long time, maybe still, if you used an English vernacular on TV, you got fined.

@Green For what purpose?

@JasonClyde I think you have a chance to enrich your world by showing off the various groups. Young people will have a different name than old people. Nerds will differ from jocks.

@JasonClyde for the purpose of preserving the purity of French.

And in one group a power/rune may be a curse but in other group, it's a super power.

Keep in mind, I was already worried it would be unreasonable to expect the reader to recognize various runes by ONE name.

Having multiple names for each rune I'm worried would just drive the reader up the wall with information overload.

@JasonClyde how many tunes are you going to make the reader worry about? Most weeks the rune won't be consequential to the story. For those unimportant tunes, don't name them; or use a generic name for a rune.

Well basically, imagine if every spell in harry potter had three incantations.

We hear "stupefy", we know, that's the stunning spell.

But what if we also had to remember that two other incantations also mean that spell?

I'd expect Jk Rowling to use the most common name but reference the other names when she wants to expose some other feature of the universe.

If a spell is super old, maybe it has a Latin incantation. If it was (Re) discovered in Germany, maybe it has a German incantation. The names are a way to expose history of this world without being heavy handed about it.

And most runes may only be of marginal or transient value. A rune to stop a teens voice from cracking will only help a teen. It's worthless to everyone else.

Runes o

That give +10 intelligence are going to be very rare and very valuable. Those would get special names. Mundane runes would have mundane names.

I'll take this under consideration

Also thanks. I honestly wasn't confident that question would be askable.

@JasonClyde happy to help! Learning the social structure of language is fun.

On that note though, do you think there's any way I could phrase the question of "where would names for these things come from" that could be asked?

@JasonClyde Sure! "How are the names of new things decided upon when the new things appears at the same time to many people and it must be identified?"

Hmm

You'll need to be very careful with how you write it. By nature, it's a very abstract question, so you'll need to prepare for accusations of "too broad".

I think I'm unusual in that I can still answer questions at high levels of abstraction, but many can't.