So im replacing all the fish with Plankton....

[Blackhawk748]

I've been watching The Future is Wild and one of their alternate futures have replaced all fish with, effectively, large Zooplankton that they called Silver Swimmers.

Spoiler: Pic

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Now, Silver Swimmers are an extremely broad group that encompasses many species and thats all well and good, but the name is stupid. I mean instead of going, "Thats a fish" you would go "Thats a Silver Swimmer" and that feels, to specific, i guess? Its not like going Cat, Dog or Horse, and if i go the other way you would just say Crustacean and that also sounds odd to me.

Really what im asking for here is help in renaming these things and making up names for a few of the specific genus of these plankton.

Spoiler: Heres a few more, that dont have names

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[Balyano]

Lots of options for something like this

Well there is the classic Ghoti, since english spelling is the way it is there are words where
gh makes f, like in tough
o makes i, like in women
ti makes sh, like in caution
So ghoti should be pronounced fish, right?

Or you could try to coin it in indoeuropean then apply some sound laws to change it some more

Proto-Indo-European *swem(bʰ)- ‎(“to be unsteady, move, swim”)
Proto-Indo-European *silubʰr-, *silebʰr- ‎(“silver”)
ós - creates agent noun
silubhraswembhós - silver swimmer in a very mangled and probably poorly formed manner
lets simplify that and make som changes
silubrasumbas
and lets say that syllables get chopped off in different ways, with each applying to different animals
silu
lubras
brasu
rasumba
ect,

or maybe some vowels get deleted and some other simplifications
silbrasmbas > silbrazbas > silbrazzas > silbrazza


or maybe work with some types of amphipod crustaceans
Caprellida > caprella
Cyamida > chamid
Ingolfiellidae > ingo (plural ingol because why not)
Kurioidea > kurio or kuryo

or name one Cope after copepods

or take syllables from words and chop them up and jam them together then slur your speach

silver swimmer > swimmer silver > swim sil > swimsil > swimzle or wimzle

[Blackhawk748]

*Language Stuff*

Well, that is far more than i was expecting, thank you. I like Silu, its nice and simple, yet different.

[Mechalich]

One thing of note about replacing vertebrates with arthropods is that you're going to hit some size limits unless you either seriously alter their physiology by giving them a more efficient circulatory system or dramatically increase the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water. Otherwise the silver swimmer analogs are going to be size limited to about 2 meters max - which is the size of the largest sea scorpions. While that actually covers the size range of most teleosts (bony fish) you won't have anything equivalent to large sharks. If you're eliminating marine mammals as well your ocean is going to be a little low on large animals, though there's still cephalopods to work with. Evidence suggests that cephalopods were present in dominant predatory niches the last time we didn't have large sharks, back in the Ordovician period.

[Blackhawk748]

One thing of note about replacing vertebrates with arthropods is that you're going to hit some size limits unless you either seriously alter their physiology by giving them a more efficient circulatory system or dramatically increase the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water. Otherwise the silver swimmer analogs are going to be size limited to about 2 meters max - which is the size of the largest sea scorpions. While that actually covers the size range of most teleosts (bony fish) you won't have anything equivalent to large sharks. If you're eliminating marine mammals as well your ocean is going to be a little low on large animals, though there's still cephalopods to work with. Evidence suggests that cephalopods were present in dominant predatory niches the last time we didn't have large sharks, back in the Ordovician period.

Since im pretty much just ripping this Ocean whole hog from The Future is Wild (its the 200 Million year world if you've seen it) there will still be sharks, though sharks will probably be the only fish. Maybe Barracudas...

Anyway the way that ocean went was Arthropods made up the bulk of the oceans population, so they filled the niche of bony fish, Sharks kept being Sharks, except they started hunting in packs because, large marine mammals where replaced by Giant Squid who ate that worlds bird analogues and various arthropods.

Thats how im gonna do it. The Giant Squid will be the equivalent of Whales, the gentle giants of the sea, if you will. Sharks will still be terrifying, arguably even more so, and i might just add a few other predatory fish just because i can.

[Yora]

When it comes to fantasy, I strongly prefer highly generic terms for everything.

If it looks like a fish, swims like a fish, and... does whatever else fish do like a fish, you could simply call it a fish. Even though it's not a non-tetrapod vertebrate.

[Knaight]

I'd just have everyone use the term fish, and then the first time they come up make a point of describing them in detail, with terms like "exoskeleton" heavily emphasized.

[enderlord99]

I'm agree with Yora and Knaight that, in this particular case, you should call a "Smeerphighly biodiverse group of macroscopic zooplankton in the future" a "RabbitFish."