Naming a mythical creature

Writers' Corner
1

Hey y’all!!
I’m currently revamping my novel and I’m having trouble naming a mythical creature/cryptid. It’s a shapeshifter that alternates between the forms of a vulture and a humanoid fish, and it steals people’s dreams from their mouths while they sleep. Ideally, I’d like the name to have something to do with stealing or mouths – something creepy and evocative of what the creature can do. I’m really struggling lol, so I figured I’d ask for help here!
Please let me know if you have any ideas, thanks so much!!

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Choose 2 big features you want to highlight!
Usually i like each feature to be 2-3 words long!
Now for an example:
→ Capitalize the first word
→ Capitalizethefirstword
→ Captlizthfirstword
→ Captlizfirstwrd
→ Captlifrs

[name_u]Or[/name_u], alternately, use Latin. Latin makes everything better

3

Ok that creature sounds incredible! Vulture AND humanoid fish? Amazing.

For names for things like that, I have this method I usually use…

  1. Pick three or four languages, usually something that has some sort of relation to the story (if there are none, just use random languages) and Latin. @Lei_Leo is right, Latin is your friend.
  2. Pick a couple of words that have something to do with the thing you’re trying to name. Maybe in this case, use things like “mouth” and “sleep” and “dreams”, etc.
  3. Plug the words into google translate with the languages you picked and make lists.
  4. Once you have all the words in all the languages, take parts of a few words and combine them. For example, the Latin word for mouth is “oris” (according to Google Translate…not exactly reliable, I know, but for this I think it works). “Mouth” in Greek is “stóma”, while in Spanish it’s “boca”. Combining just those three, you could make…
    Ormaca
    Boristo
    Omaris
    Stoca
    Storis
    Caoris
    I just chose three random languages, but use whatever works best for your story. And it works better with more words so you have more options and more sounds.

Anyway, I hope this helps, and have fun writing that amazing creature!!

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[name_f]Awesome[/name_f], thank you so much!! This is a great starting point!

5

Thank you!! I really like Omaris and Boristo:)

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