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Jarl
2006-08-04, 03:38 AM
... what?
I dunno.
Let me clarify. I'm writing up my homebrew world as a setting, and I feel I've done pretty good so far. Right now, I'm writing up the player races (I didn't realize there were so many) , a process complicated by the fact that seemingly anything can breed with anything, and each has a different name.
So far, I've got... Human, elf, orc, dwarf... giants, but they don't count... and then hybrids of each (and an additional hybrid race each for the elves, it's complicated)... and now, I just got to half-orcs, and I realized how frikkin lame the name I have for them is. Orik. Ugh.
Help me out here. What do you get when you cross a human and an orc? I'm trying to keep it to pre-existing mythological and fictional names. For instance, a half orc half giant is an Ogre, and a half elf half dwarf is a Gnome (or a Kobold, but that's the complicated part again).

-tl;dr: What should I name the hybrid of an Orc and Human?

Dhavaer
2006-08-04, 03:44 AM
Uruk?

Jarl
2006-08-04, 03:49 AM
I thought about that, but they're already sorta in use.
Huh.
I suppose I could call a half human half orc an Uruk, and a half uruk half ogre an Uruk Hai, right? I guess it fits.

-I'm not actually naming out to secondary hybrids, but there's already a character I've been designing who is precisely that. I guess Uruk's good. Unless something better comes along, I'll go with that.

Gyrfalcon
2006-08-04, 04:07 AM
I'd suggest avoiding pulling the names from Lord of the Rings though, but maybe that's because I got really annoyed with Uruk and Urukhai when it suddenly showed up EVERYWHERE when the movies started coming out.

Aohada? (green + skin in Japanese, no doubt badly mangled... ;) )

Alternatively, take a run at Latin, Old English if you can find a dictionary for it, or any other language you want to use. :)

Jarl
2006-08-04, 04:30 AM
Actually, Aohada... that's "Blue Skin", ain't it? Aoi=blue, midori=green.
And "midori" is also already in use.
[edit]It just occured to me that one of the kanji for green and blue is the same, and the kun reading (I think) is Ao.
*sigh*
I've been scanning wikipedia for names that fit for a while now... All these races in DnD and everything are depicted as vile spirits in ancient mythology (or at least in christian interpretations of ancient mythology), so I've looked at a lot of those and thought about them... For a while, I considered Djinn or Meh-Jinn, or something like that... but I wanna hold on to that, it might come in handy elsewhere. Bugbear I've already got in service elsewhere... I just don't know, I really just don't know.
Daiesthai is a root for the word "Demon"... I could fiddle with that...
Daiest. A half orc is a Daiest. It fits with their language.

-What? It does. It means... uh... Biggest? (Japanese, dai=big)... uh... hell, I'll invent an etymology later.

UnrealTiger
2006-08-04, 08:59 AM
Well you could just combine the words 'human' and 'orc' into some sort of hybrid name, just like they're hybrid races. Perhaps a good one to start with would be Orman actually scratch that, that sounds too much like Mormon. How's about Hrork or something, that's not too bad I guess, in fact I'd even say it has a certain ring to it . . .

Dan_Hemmens
2006-08-04, 09:03 AM
What's wrong with "Half-orc"?

amanodel
2006-08-04, 09:31 AM
Perhaps ogrillon, if it's not used elsewhere. Or if you'r not bothered with the LoTR-similartiy then Uruk's good too.

My favourite crossbreedings are:
Human+goblin=hobgoblin
Orc+goblin=bugbear
(doing so, you realize what crappy names hobgoblin and bugbear are.)

I'm making a CS with five races, and crossbreeds between. I've got human, elf, dwarf, goblin and orc to start with. I'm so far managed to create eight crossbreeds. I had to redo the trolls and the kobolds to fit in this, altough.

What's your hybrids so far? Any possible takers for an elf-orc child?

Truwar
2006-08-04, 10:42 AM
You could always just call them trolls.

Artisan
2006-08-04, 11:23 AM
"Abominations"?
"Filthy beasts"?
"Damned Piggarts" (for all you Dominic Deegan fans)?
"Tusk-faces"?
"Green-bloods"?

Stop me when I'd getting close ;D

Tallis
2006-08-04, 11:31 AM
Worg.

Protagonist
2006-08-04, 11:49 AM
Orcan
Svartorc
Orc-kin (with or without the hyphen)
Orcling
Demiorc
Hourc
Orcenite
Orc-blooded
Orcen-get (again, with or without the hyphen)
Orc-child
Guorc
Bjork (hehehe)

amanodel
2006-08-04, 11:56 AM
You could always just call them trolls.

You remember dungeon keeper's trolls? In my new CS they are the orc-dwarf children. Hairy little craftsmen like dwarves, ugly fighters like orcs. ;D

edit:

the problem with half-orc and orc-kin is that with these crossbreeding gmaes you have three or four half-orcs, so they have to have a name that identifies them.

kailin
2006-08-04, 12:36 PM
A Humork, obviously.

Fax Celestis
2006-08-04, 12:44 PM
I was going to say "Horc" unti I realized that they shouldn't be named after the heimleich maneouvre.

endoperez
2006-08-04, 04:25 PM
Maybe something old and scandinavian: vættr, vættir, or just vaettir. All of those are plural; singular would be vætt, vætti or vaetti. They had some of the abilities of the dwarves (living under ground, for example) and elves (being strikingly beautiful, leaving changeling children in place of human ones). The word might just have meant 'beings' or 'magical beings', though, as even old Norse gods were sometimes called that.

Collin152
2006-08-04, 07:39 PM
You could call them the Cern, for the Slavic Black God, Crnobog! ... Or not.

Jarl
2006-08-05, 03:32 AM
Maybe something old and scandinavian: vættr, vættir, or just vaettir. All of those are plural; singular would be vætt, vætti or vaetti. They had some of the abilities of the dwarves (living under ground, for example) and elves (being strikingly beautiful, leaving changeling children in place of human ones). The word might just have meant 'beings' or 'magical beings', though, as even old Norse gods were sometimes called that.
I officially love you.

And, because the people demand it...
Tamlin (human/elf)
Seleni (human/elf)
Gnome (elf/dwarf)
Kobold (elf/dwarf)
Titan (elf/giant)
Nephelim (elf/giant)
Giant (human/giant)
Troll (dwarf/giant)
Ogre (orc/giant)
Goblin (orc/dwarf)
Valkyrine (orc/elf)
Vaettir (orc/human)
Halfling (human/dwarf)

-*spends three minutes corss-checking and counting* Yeah, I think that's about it. Yeah, that's it.

Gyrfalcon
2006-08-05, 03:46 AM
Only problem... Giants are both... well... giants AND human-giant crossbreeds.

Granted, if this is historical rather then suggestions, then there's nothing you can do about it. *grins*

Jarl
2006-08-05, 04:14 AM
I know. I realized when designed the whole thing that I had all these giant races that were all "half giant", yet giant was one of them.
The pure race is called "True Giant", but I rarely if ever write that out. I just leave it at "Giant".

-The real question is why a dwarf-giant isn't called "giant" or an orc-giant or somesuch. And the real answer is I don't know.

endoperez
2006-08-05, 08:31 AM
I officially love you.

I took that from Dominions series, in which Vaettir are a race of goblinoids serving the Jotun (giants). Vaettir are stealthy, ride wolves or moose, and their Vaetti Hags are one of the cheapest and weakest mages in the game.

If I had any ability in balancing critters, I'd start the long process of making D&D rules for all the Dominions races and creatures and items. Like Troll Moose Knights, or Amber Clan Tritons, or Cu Sidhe of the Last of the Tuatha. Or just sacred Hydras blessed with burning weapons ::)... The heroes would also make exceptional NPCs.
"Niklatu is the most famous Lizard Lord in C'tis. His rainbow armor and comely appearance is enough to make female lizards lay eggs on the spot. Niklatu has performed a number of heroic deeds, including saving the Arch Hierodule from a corrupted and evil Sauromancer who wanted to mate with the sacred one." and
"Li T'ieh-Kuai lived as a hermit and explored the celestial spheres by astral travels. One day, his travels carried him farther than normal, and when he returned, he found his body cremated. He was forced to enter the body of a freshly dead, crippled old man. He now wanders the land, cursing and pestering good folks." summate two of the more memorable heroes. There are many more...

Of course, the third game (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/Dom3/1.htm) of the series will come out sometime this year (it was supposed to go gold in July... no news yet), bringing many new races with it, and thus, even more stuff to become familiar with. I've been officially addicted for years.

martyboy74
2006-08-05, 08:37 PM
You should name them Urgals or Kull.
(I wonder whether the people getting that reference will number in the hundreds or thousands...)

Collin152
2006-08-06, 12:10 AM
Well, i think I will re-claim the Cern as a name for an up and coming donations to the halls of Fiends.

Closet_Skeleton
2006-08-06, 10:24 AM
Orog?

As far as I can see, those DnD half-orc half-ogres are named after Olog which is one of the Tolkien words for Troll.

Uruk is just orc in Tolkien I think. You get both Uruk Hai and Olog Hai...

Sadly you've chosen all your elf hybrids, because there are tons of Fairy names to use.

Were-Sandwich
2006-08-06, 10:27 AM
Azak?

SilveryCord
2006-08-06, 01:45 PM
Actually, Aohada... that's "Blue Skin", ain't it? Aoi=blue, midori=green.
And "midori" is also already in use.
[edit]It just occured to me that one of the kanji for green and blue is the same, and the kun reading (I think) is Ao.
*sigh*
I've been scanning wikipedia for names that fit for a while now... All these races in DnD and everything are depicted as vile spirits in ancient mythology (or at least in christian interpretations of ancient mythology), so I've looked at a lot of those and thought about them... For a while, I considered Djinn or Meh-Jinn, or something like that... but I wanna hold on to that, it might come in handy elsewhere. Bugbear I've already got in service elsewhere... I just don't know, I really just don't know.
Daiesthai is a root for the word "Demon"... I could fiddle with that...
Daiest. A half orc is a Daiest. It fits with their language.

-What? It does. It means... uh... Biggest? (Japanese, dai=big)... uh... hell, I'll invent an etymology later.


Actually, the kanji for blue and green refers to a well sitting in a grass meadow. The blue is from the water inside the well; green from the grass around it. In this case, if you were using Japanese for some God-awful reason (Hello? What will Oriental Adventures-creations use? Why not just use Dutch, Polish, German, French, or even Old English for that matter? Far more suited to the campaign. Just find out what green in one of the above (preferably not german or french, as those are less obscure and too obvious)) you'd probably use the Hiragana script, as the kanji is used mostly for Blue.
Kanji isn't always clear cut, is it? Ao *can* mean green, but it means blue. So there.
(And Kanji is on drugs. I swear, they combine the smaller kanjis to make bigger ones in VERY strange ways. For example, "Room" is composed of "Hole" and "Work On" (Either that or I'm thinking of house or something. Meh, my kanji is horrible for this very reason.))


Edit: They need to. NEED TO. be called Horcs. As in, sounding similar to someone who 'does the laundry' for money.

Gyrfalcon
2006-08-06, 03:04 PM
Because I have a japanese to english dictionary bookmarked, haven't found one for Old English, and my Latin dictionary site went away. Other languages are great for naming things. *grins*

Jarl
2006-08-07, 12:51 AM
I know, Kanji is horror. I remember there was one we learned in class that had all the same readings as another, but completely different meanings and appearence. God know which one.
And as for which language to chose from... well, this is some whole other world where there's no such place as Europe or Asia, so they wouldn't exactly find it odd to see a guy with a katana fighting a guy with a bastard sword, or if some snarky dude down at the pub was throwing shirukens and tomohawks instead of darts, or...
Ohmigod.
Kappa.
A half-orc half-human is a kappa.

-"What is this Japan you speak of? I have never heard of it before." "Good point."

Closet_Skeleton
2006-08-07, 04:29 AM
"What is this Japan you speak of? I have never heard of it before." "Good point."

Darn roleplayers, don't even know the meaning of reality.

SilveryCord
2006-08-07, 05:08 AM
Um. A kappa is a turtle-like sea critter. How on *earth* does that relate to a human or an orc? Or a horc?

Actually, horc isn't too bad, because A) It sounds like a slang term someone in the gaming world would come up with, kind of a deragotory remark. As in, calling it a human-orc would be respectful... sort of, but horc would be racist-ish.
B) Dragon Quest.

amanodel
2006-08-09, 08:16 AM
Tamlin (human/elf)
Seleni (human/elf)
Gnome (elf/dwarf)
Kobold (elf/dwarf)
Titan (elf/giant)
Nephelim (elf/giant)
Giant (human/giant)
Troll (dwarf/giant)
Ogre (orc/giant)
Goblin (orc/dwarf)
Valkyrine (orc/elf)
Vaettir (orc/human)
Halfling (human/dwarf)

Why the often two names for one pairing? It's like Seleni is the standard issue half-elf and Tamlin is something other?

And it's gnome when the father's the elf and kobold when the mother's the dwarf? If so then what about the elf-orc pairing with only one half-blood?

edit: Also, can you tell me some infos about the half-orc half-elf guy? In my hybrid system I only lack the orc-elf and the goblin-dwarf children. I haven't find anything on the Monster manuals to use for those pairings, and I don't really want to create new races, just modify them a bit.

Jarl
2006-08-09, 11:12 PM
The twice the elves for half the price thing is related to a little quirk the system threw up when I was trying to unwieldy combine Tolkienesque, Pratchettian, and original elements together. Since Orcs are a close relative of elves in my homebrew (Tolkien's Orcs were Elves that had been tortured/remade by Melkor or something, been a long time since I read the Sil) and my version of elves were incompatible with the Discworld kind (Which I had, nevertheless figured fit perfectly, especially in one of the later eras), there came about this ugly little variant elf race that's mostly indistinguishable from elves. Since there are no dark elves in my world (unless you count orcs, or dark skinned elves) they expanded to fit the role of outcast crazy elves.

In other words, there's normal elves, then there's the variant, Lunara (I always promise myself I'll add a little apostrophe accent mark thing to the second a), which are less like Tolkien elves and more like Pratchett elves. Or, more accurately, less like the good elves of lore and more like the evil fey of lore. Since there's two kinds of elves, there's thus two kinds of elf hybrid. So, an Elf and a Human produce a Tamlin (as in the old Scottish ballad hero/villain/anti-hero), but a Lunara and human produce a Seleni.

I didn't even bother with the mother/father thing, as that would potentially double the number of hybrids, and I'm still not certain on a name for half-orcs. Then again, with all the names you guys have given me, I could easily name four, six, or even eleven more orc hybrid races. This is, by far, not the only thing holding up the big expo, but it's kinda major when you can't decide on a name for an Orc/human hybrid.
It's down to Daiest, Uruk, or Hourc, or Aettir, or Kappa, or etc or etc...

-... Oh, Elf/Orc. I was just lying in bed and I had a vision of the species. Valkyrines, matriarchal, big into piercings and tattoos, usually good magicians, excellent warriors, usually wear hoods/scarves/sunglasses/etc to protect their sensitive eyes and ears, and you get one regardless of whether it's Orc/Elf or Orc/Lunara. Long boring genetic reasons for it, that's just the way it is.

amanodel
2006-08-10, 04:54 AM
Sounds neat.

As for half-orcs (half-humans), Uruk would be the best, but I guess the name's like "hobbit", so can't use it officially. Maybe "Orog" from the 2nd ed.

If you're not viewing the races from the human's perspective, most of the names are lame, anyway. Half-orc, half-elf, halfling (why would a kobold call a halfing "halfling"?), bugbear, hobgoblin (sounds like half-goblin)... So good luck with renameing.

In my setting I'm trying to name them after places they were first to born or are rather numerous. Or giving them a mythological name. I'm using the Greek pantheon, so I'd call half-orc - half-elves Aresians (After war-god Ares) or Dithirs (after Lodithae, where they are very common). I just have to come out with some stats for them.

Jack Mann
2006-08-10, 05:58 AM
I like horc. It sounds like a nice, derisive name, which one might expect for a "half-breed." Of course, were it me, I'd be tempted to call 'em Grendels, or some variant thereon (Grendel's race is given as orc-néas [lit. corpses of Orcus]). Sure, they're not undead, but it does have a nice mythic link.