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Thread: Name my metal!

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    Default Name my metal!

    In a setting I'm working on (or actually, several interconnected settings), there's this one metal I cannot come up with a good name for. And it's really crucial to the worldbuilding, so it needs a good name. The metal has the following properties:

    • It's silvery-white in appearance, and does not visibly rust or tarnish.
    • It's extremely light (about 1/3 the weight of iron by volume) and very soft and ductile.
    • It's almost totally magically inert. Items made of this metal cannot be affected by magic (or at least, not without the expenditure of titanic levels of power), and they act as a near-perfect magical insulator. So if you made a bullet out of this metal, it would cut through even the most powerful magical shields like air and pierce an elemental or outsider or ghost like a hot needle through butter, a shield or a suit of armor made of this metal could block fireballs or lightning bolts without even being affected, and a cap lined with foil would render the wearer immune to any magic that touches the mind.
    • It's common in ore form, but the refined metal is incredibly rare. It can't be smelted from ore with current smithing techniques, and its magically inert status means that you can't use magic to refine it. So the only ways to get it are to gather it from the insides of volcanoes (the only place where the kind of temperatures necessary to smelt it occur naturally) or to use some very complicated chemical processes (which are difficult, dangerous, and too expensive to produce this metal in bulk).
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    GnomeWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    Love it!

    Couple questions to help flesh out a name/naming convention more:
    - Any specific origin associated with it, or is just some naturally occurring ore...which happens to be amazingly anti-magic?

    - Does your setting have any predominant cultural influences?

    - Who discovered it?

    - So the only people that have the refined metal are people who have found it already refined (left over from someone else), or people who go in with full on fire immunity to harvest it from volcanoes? (That sounds like a pretty crazy job...).

    Some random names are below:
    1) Antiarium (I'm thinking some word play on how it is negative/opposite/etc. as I imagine the 'intelligent' magic users of the world may have named it when they first discovered it's nature.

    2) Antarium

    3) Cosmerium (though if you love Brandon Sanderson this may sound like ripping off)

    4) Luminarium (silver/white feeling) or Lumite

    5) Cellestite (light color, light in weight, celestial?)

    6) Catamite (thinking how magic users would consider this cataclysmic? Bit of a stretch...though I'm sure they are the ones who try and hoard it?)

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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    You really, really, really don't want to name it catamite.
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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    Quote Originally Posted by ReaderAt2046 View Post
    [*]It's common in ore form, but the refined metal is incredibly rare. It can't be smelted from ore with current smithing techniques, and its magically inert status means that you can't use magic to refine it. So the only ways to get it are to gather it from the insides of volcanoes (the only place where the kind of temperatures necessary to smelt it occur naturally) or to use some very complicated chemical processes (which are difficult, dangerous, and too expensive to produce this metal in bulk).[/LIST]
    How do they survive going into a volcano to get it? If they have the ability to go into a volcano and survive, why don't they just bring a big load of ore with them and use the volcano as a blast furnace to smelt all they want?

    If it's very soft and ductile, I can see it being used for bullets because lead is also soft. However, they would be very light bullets. They wouldn't hit very hard and would be much more susceptible to wind pushing them off target. How can they make armor or shields out of it?
    Last edited by Xuc Xac; 2018-09-25 at 09:13 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    You really, really, really don't want to name it catamite.
    Hahaha, oh man... Google results below. Good call.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=cata...hrome&ie=UTF-8

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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    sounds like aluminum, is that by chance an inspiration?
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    Cuts fantastic down to the mundane? Call it Luddite.

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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    It does sound similar to aluminium. The etymology of aluminium actually goes back to the Greek word for bitter - aludoimus. Maybe this material comes from the greek word for sweet - glykos. So what about glykinium or glyminium.

    The German word for magic is Zauber. So maybe something like anzaubite.

    I googled them just to be sure - these words don't already exist.
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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    Quote Originally Posted by Xuc Xac View Post
    How do they survive going into a volcano to get it? If they have the ability to go into a volcano and survive, why don't they just bring a big load of ore with them and use the volcano as a blast furnace to smelt all they want?

    If it's very soft and ductile, I can see it being used for bullets because lead is also soft. However, they would be very light bullets. They wouldn't hit very hard and would be much more susceptible to wind pushing them off target. How can they make armor or shields out of it?
    I was more imagining that you could harvest small amounts of it from the upper slopes of the calderae, high enough up that it's survivable. I hadn't thought of just using full-on fire-immunity to refine it in bulk, though that might actually work.

    And for armor/shields, I was imagining a shield made primarily of wood or steel, with a thin layer of metal over it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Newtonsolo313 View Post
    sounds like aluminum, is that by chance an inspiration?
    Yeah, it's aluminum. I just don't want to call it that because aluminum's etymology doesn't really fit the role it has in these settings. I was looking for a name that more closely represented its magical inertness.


    @Jonegal: I like "Antarium". Might go with that one.
    Last edited by ReaderAt2046; 2018-09-25 at 11:18 AM.
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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    Volcanium, for where it's found. Or <god of the underworld>ium, or <god of fire>ium or <god of volcanoes>ium.

    "-ite" generally refers to minerals, not metals. The metal smelted from stuffite is usually stuffium.

    Hang on a minute! You confess that it's aluminum, as its mundane material properties (except for smelting method) suggest, and you mention specifically lining a helmet with it to ward off mind affecting magic. So, your setting has "tin foil hats" that work!

    OK, names. Do you use a word like mana for the mystical stuff or energy of magic? A name like anamanium (from an-mana-ium) or ananimum (an-anima-um, in both cases modified for better pronouncability) could work. Or put your own word in the middle.

    Wardium.

    Or, forget -ium and -um, and use some other language conventions than pseudo-latin. How about Wardmetal, translated into some other language. Google renders "warding metal" into Arabic, just for example, as "dire almaeadin"; you could edit that for pronouncability as, let's say, "diralmedin". Or "volcano metal" in Polish becomes "sopka kovu" which could morph into something like "sopkovu".
    Last edited by jqavins; 2018-09-25 at 02:22 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by jqavins View Post
    Volcanium, for where it's found. Or <god of the underworld>ium, or <god of fire>ium or <god of volcanoes>ium.

    "-ite" generally refers to minerals, not metals. The metal smelted from stuffite is usually stuffium.

    Hang on a minute! You confess that it's aluminum, as its mundane material properties (except for smelting method) suggest, and you mention specifically lining a helmet with it to ward off mind affecting magic. So, you setting has "tin foil hats" that work!

    OK, names. Do you use a word like mana for the mystical stuff or energy of magic? A name like anamanium (from an-mana-ium) or ananimum (an-anima-um, in both cases modified for better pronouncability) could work. Or put your own word in the middle.

    Wardium.

    Or, forget -ium and -um, and use some other language conventions than pseudo-latin. How about Wardmetal, translated into some other language. Google renders "warding metal" into Arabic, just for example, as "dire almaeadin"; you could edit that for pronouncability as, let's say, "diralmedin". Or "volcano metal" in Polish becomes "sopka kovu" which could morph into something like "sopkovu".
    the smelting thing is because bauxite is refined with a process involving electricity not heat so native aluminum is the only source of it in a world without electricity
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    Quote Originally Posted by JellyPooga View Post
    Interesting that it wasn't written in Draconic. Are Kobolds keeping their deviant pleasures secret from their dragon masters now? It's the beginning of the revolution and it's starting in the bedroom nest!

    This forum has century gothic as a font. That's pretty cool

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    Quote Originally Posted by Newtonsolo313 View Post
    the smelting thing is because bauxite is refined with a process involving electricity not heat so native aluminum is the only source of it in a world without electricity
    Yeah, I figured. You could, if you wish, say it's smelted by magic, the last magic that ever affects it. Or by lightning to keep the electricity thing, not that bauxite is smelted by lightning strikes IRL.
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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    If you want a "realistic" name for a metal, you have to consider "how this metal was discovered?"

    1) If your metal is "all time known", because it naturally exist of whatever other reason, the name he will have is most likely something weird from a previous language (see copper, iron, silver, gold, ...)

    2) If your metal is "scientifically discovered", then its name is kind of rationnal, build with a radical and a suffixe (see aluminium, ...)

    3) If your metal is more a legend than a reality for most people, its name will be build on existing more common metals (moonsilver, ... or the real life "Damascus' steel")
    Last edited by MoiMagnus; 2018-09-25 at 02:36 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    3) If your metal is more a legend than a reality for most people, its name will be build on existing more common metals (moonsilver, ... or the real life "Damascus' steel")
    Or the real life platinum, which is more or less Spanish for "little silver" due to small nuggets found by the conquistadors being mistaken for silver, or "plata" in Spanish, and thus called "platina".

    Damascus steel, on the other hand, is steel of a particular variety, linguistically more akin to "stainless steel" or "sterling silver" than to "quicksilver."

    EDIT: A Question

    Apart from naming, are you interested in other comments? I ask before sticking my nose in where it isn't wanted.
    Last edited by jqavins; 2018-09-26 at 08:25 AM.
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    Congealed quicksilver amalgam.
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    Cold aluminium?(particularly ironic)

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    Atium.

    Book references aside, luxidium sounds cool.

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    Doesn't tarnish? Almost completely resistant to magic?

    Why not Nullstone(TM)?

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    Or brightnull.
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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    Mithril. Meets all the criteria.

    Platinum is shiny-white and does not rust or corrode but is heavier than iron. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platino, meaning "little silver". Since silver is suppose to be the bane of all evil, platinum could have similar properties.

    Aluminium oxynitride is light weight and transparent.
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    How about inanimite?

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    Default Re: Name my metal!

    Quote Originally Posted by ReaderAt2046 View Post
    I was more imagining that you could harvest small amounts of it from the upper slopes of the calderae, high enough up that it's survivable. I hadn't thought of just using full-on fire-immunity to refine it in bulk, though that might actually work.
    Unless the fire immunity comes from magic, in which case the metal might remove the fire protection whilst you mine... so it's never going to be "risk free"

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    IRL, elements were often named after the substances from which they were originally refined (e.g. beryllium from beryl and potassium from pot ash) or identified in even when not isolated; alumin(i)um is an example of the latter, having been identified in alum and named by Humphry Davy*, but never isolated by him.

    So, if the methods of extraction developed later by various chemists are replaced in your world by volcano mining, you could still call it aluminum or aluminium, stating that alum is a compound of this metal from which the metal can never be refined.

    * who was totally awesome.
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    .
    I once encountered Antinium.
    Seems like a good a name as any.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GaelofDarkness View Post
    The German word for magic is Zauber. So maybe something like anzaubite.
    Yes and no, assuming it's as related to the Dutch "tover" as I think it is, but close enough to use in a congestion like this. (To tover/zauber is the act of doing magic, and a tover/zauber something is a magical something, as in zauberbiest, but it's not so much a term for magic itself.) Maybe try to include the whole word though, like anzauberite. Half a word as a shorthand for the whole thing doesn't work equally well for all words. Anmagium is sort of clear, antovium works less well, so anzaubium is probably close.



    Is there at least one area or a city is the setting that serves as an important industrial area? You can name it after that. Think Ruhrium, Katowium or Detroitium.
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    I feel like a lot of this depends on whether people know that this stone is the ore of this metal. If not, then they should have different names.
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    Your world does not have electricity, but does it have lightnings and are they good enough to accidentally create some aluminum?

    Fulmin(i)um, then, based on Latin word "fulmen" for lightnings. For extra silliness, you can have some characters insist it's "fulminium" while others say it's "fulminum"...

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