Country Names (continued)

The second country name I have is also very much settled on and raises the idea of non-English real-world languages in fictional worlds.

Clover

This is a former Midlesettian colony (not appearing on the map above). The name Clover is directly derived as a result of the colonisation of the country many years ago. I will explain the case of place names in Ireland to demonstrate what I mean.

Ireland was colonised by Britain many years ago. At the time, Gaeilge (or Irish) was the predominant language. Over time, as English became the dominant language, place names became anglicised. For example, I'm from a county named Kildare. Kildare is an anglicised version of Cill Dara which means Church of the Oak. Similarly, the county town is named Naas, an anglicised version of Nás na Ríogh or the Meeting Place of the Kings.

The vast majority of Irish place names have gone through this process.

I've done the same with Clover. It's a group of islands some distance off the coast of Midleset whose name in Irish is interchangeably Clocfuair or Clocfhuiar. It means both Cold Stone and Wild Stone.

Having gone through a change following colonisation it is now Clover. And that name in and of itself resonates with a perception of Ireland. Which is its proxy

That's my thought process for coming up with this name. I mentioned that I have some strong thoughts on place names for Clover and I'll discuss this in my next post. It concerns the use of non-English languages in world building and I'll drag in some of my criticisms/observations on the work of Andrzej Sapkowski, one of my favourite fantasy authors.

Thanks again for reading