#naming things

[artofkhaos404]

New goths are baby bats.

New punks are puppy punks.

So what do we call the newbies in the other subcultures? Grunge, emo, scene, metalhead... I always use "baby bat" as an umbrella term but we can get more creative than that. Put your ideas in the comments!

[uncleasad]

A friend recently asked, among others, “how does one get good at naming a fic?”

I don’t have any good answers, because naming is hard. Really. (There’s a famous maxim in computer science that naming is one of the two hardest problems in that field.) Hopefully, maybe, like all other things writing-related, one gets better at it through practice, though I still struggle with it sometimes (there are some real head-scratchers among my fic titles).

That, unfortunately, is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem when you’re starting out. (I have no-so-fond memories of this. Not that I have a huge number of great names or fics to my name now, but you get the picture.) So maybe throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks? 😂

Seriously, though, naming is hard. It is often the last thing I do with a fic. It’s very rare that I have a good name for a fic before I start writing or even soon after. (There’s a reason I tag most fics here with a semi-descriptive phrase, like Roman Republic Hosie.)

Exceptions include my first fic, Have At Least One Totally Epic Love, which gets its name from a famous Hayley Marshall quote from The Originals S5 which in part inspired the fic, and, among others, my most recent, The One with Hope’s Wedding, which is a twist on the name of the Friends episode that inspired it? See a pattern here?

(There’s also a kinda anti-example, Two Scoops of Hosie Delight, where I had the title to start and tried to write a fic around it; it’s not a great fic.)

Sometimes an idea will come to me when I’m writing. In that case, it’s usually because I’ve made someone say something I really like. This is also my go-to option when I get to the end of writing and/or editing and still have no title: I look for a fun line or sentence. Even better if it captures something unique or descriptive about the fic. (As an aside, all of the Legacies episode titles are lines someone spoke in that episode.)

The other major area I try to mine for name ideas are things related to the fic’s content in a broader sense: the theme or subject, the mood, or something related to the description. I don’t have a good example off-hand from my own work, but let me dissect (from a reader’s POV) a title I really like from a fellow author, pins, needles & hexes by vitrisimbre.

This fic is a Hosie Hogwarts AU, and one of the things I really like about it is the dual meaning of “pins [and] needles.” On the one hand, “pins” and “needles” go well with “hexes” in a magical sense, e.g. poking dolls with pins as representational magic, while on the other hand, the phrase “on pins and needles” is a way of describing excitement, anticipation, and even sometimes trepidation. In this fic, the Saltzman twins are yanked from the Muggle world and thrown into the world of magic at Hogwarts, so Josie is experiencing a bunch of those emotions from that, and then again from a burgeoning attraction. There’s also a third meaning of “pins and needles” in English, which is that tingling of numbness in a limb when it goes to sleep—but I have no idea if that is relevant to this fic yet. (It’s a great fic, so you should read it!)

If you have a series, you can have a pattern or theme that carries through all of those titles. My Tales from the Salvatore Kitchen series features titles that are either—and often both—bad puns and food/dessert related, for example. The “model Josie/painter Hope” trilogy started with Hope painting a landscape, and that theme carried through with the titles: Landscape of Your Skin, Landscape of Your Heart, and the unfinished Landscape of Your Secrets. (The actual series name there, however, is the very uninspired, though descriptive, The Model and the Painter.)

tl;dr

Some good sources of ideas for fic titles, in my experience:

Quotes from the real world or other media, and riffs on them

Titles from the real world or other media (including song titles!), and riffs on them

Favorite and/or fun lines from the fic itself

Riffs on descriptions/subjects/themes/moods of the fic

Fellow writers, any other advice on naming fics, and how to “get better” at it so that you feel like you like your fic titles?

[sirswooshnoodles]

My Mom let me name her car! Her name is Marina! She is a pretty sea foam/aquamarine/aqua blue.

Marina (the car) reminds mom of sea foam, and green sea turtles, so I discovered the turtle by the tame of Testudo Marina Vulgaris. Vulgaris mean common, like how Marina is a cutie on the regular, and Testudo refers to the Roman shield formation with the shield on top, also called the tortoise formation.

Lemme know if you want a pic of the car

Edit: here’s some pics

[dailyreine]

not an ask per se, just really looking forward to hearing Rie's story! I do tend to read her name in French, like "queen" :D

THANKS SO MUCH!!

her story is both very detailed and very lacking in detail ahaha we'll see how it goes, but I'm glad you're excited!! I'm also here to chat about any OCs, I'd like to get to get to know how they are in this fandom :)

And yes! It was hard to pick a real name, I almost went with "Roux" I think, but Reinette Rose seemed to fit the most after my research. And I like how Reine (even though Reinette is technically the diminutive, Reine is shorter, so I tend to use it as a nickname - Rie is pretty much the only channel through which I'm researching French if you couldn't tell 😭) fits too. Plus, a Reine Rose, or Queen Victoria rose, looks like this:

And I think that's very Rie-ish.

I talked a lot AAH SORRY! that's probably going to happen lots on this blog

[levforfakes]

[duck-in-a-thrift-store]

I would just like to make an announcement that the duck in my pfp now has a name

His name is Theodore

Credit to @euryvices for this christening

[confusedhazel]

guys

i have a phobia that doesnt have a name (fear of arteries and veins) so i get to name it. you know how the ppl who named the fear of long words were really mean about it? im gonna do the same thing. its called youwillbleedoutphobia

[jottscoplin]

There are two wolves inside me when naming things. One is a name from some ancient mythology with a long and intense origin and deep philosophical meaning that I have done extensive research on, or it’s Bob, and there’s no inbetween

[legitimatesatanspawn]

Apparently I should not be given the ability to name celestial bodies.

[pookapufferfish]

[cellar-whales]

So I'm thinking that both Teddiursa and the unnamed stage have interrupted circles (Teddiursa has a crescent while the penultimate stage has a crescent and clouds obscuring a ring), so I'm thinking something to do with cycles? And then I was looking at Ursaring, which might suggest planetary rings, and another moon-adjacent subject might be the tides? Name suggestions: Ursatide/Ursatidal, Ursaquinox (for equinox)? Or maybe Ursarusk (sounds like dusk) or Ursamajor (counter to Ursaminor, though I worry it sounds like a final evolution).

#216.5 - Born with a tremendous sweet tooth, Teddiursa are constantly in search of honey, and have even been observed to concoct their own by blending fruits and pollen collected by Beedrill. Their desire to fill up on honey stems from their instinctual need to stock up on calories before hibernating in the winter. Teddiursa grow considerably while hibernating, and though they’re generally good-natured, they are known to be grumpy if their deep sleep is interrupted. Maturing Teddiursa diversify their diet, and spend most of their waking time in search of berries and other food, though honey remains their favorite.  [Old Version]

#217.5 - Ursaring live in mountainous forests, sleeping in treetops and gathering food throughout the day. Though they are skilled tree climbers, they prefer to gather food by snapping trees with their powerful arms, collecting whatever berries or fruits fall down. By using their discerning sense of smell, they are able to track down honey, their favorite food, with great accuracy. In the times of ancient Sinnoh, the exposure to the swampy territory of the Hisui region during a full moon was believed to trigger Ursaring’s evolution into Ursaluna. As they grow, these Pokemon become very heavy, causing them to walk on all fours. Fully evolved Ursaluna are able to manipulate peat and traverse swamps with ease, using their keen nose to track down everything from scraps of food to missing persons.

Named: Teddiursa - Ursaminor - Ursaring - ? - Ursaluna

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[eriochromatic]

lazy mornings at the Last Drop ☕☀️

[stealingpotatoes]

i love my cat but he is very fond of trickery

[community-gardenss]

he was hardly monstrous then

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

It's always so weird to come down from the biology heavens to see what the average person believes about animals, plants, ecosystems, just the world around them. I don't even mean things that one simply doesn't know because they've never been told or things that are confusing, I'm talking about people who genuinely do not see insects as animals. What are you saying. Every time I see a crawling or fluttering little guy I know that little guy has motivations and drive to fulfill those motivations. There are gears turning in their head! They are perceiving this world and they are drawing conclusions, they are conscious. And yet it's still a whole thing if various bugs of the world feel pain or if they are simply Instinct Machines that are Not Truly Aware of Anything At All????? Help!!!!!! How can you look at a little guy and think he is just the macroscopic animal version of a virus