Need help thinking of a name... but not for a person.

[QuilavaKing]

Well, I suppose this is my debut in the writing section... I just have this amazing story that I have to get out of my head one way or another... so here I am. (Hopefully my writing skills are up to the task... I've literally never written anything aside from required papers in school, although I was always pretty good at it.)

Anyway, the actual question:
I'm having trouble thinking of a name for a sword. It's made out of a magical metal, that is completely indestructible, and looks somewhat like ice, or crystal. (Mostly Ice, as the guy wielding it uses ice magic.) I was thinking maybe the word immortal in another language or something?

Any ideas? (I also need to name the metal itself, and a set of armor to go with it, although that's not as important.)

[Astinus]

First, welcome to FF&W!

Second, for your question, I know that some fantasy writers take words in foreign languages, change a few letters here and there, and then work through the rest of the language to come up with words that make sense. They also get inspiration from elsewhere. My favorite fantasy writers actually got inspiration for the name of a country from a set of skis.

So maybe you can look up the word either "ice" or "immortal" or whatever in various languages and find one that works. For example, look up "ice" and "sword" in different languages, and combine them somehow for the name of the sword. Then you can do this again for the name of the metal itself ("ice" and "metal") and the armor ("ice" and "armor").

Hope that helps.

[QuilavaKing]

Yeah, that's what I was gonna do if no one here had any better ideas... I just figured it was kind of unoriginal.

[TheSmartOne]

Well, it is but isn't. You're taking something that people know and turning it on its head to create something people don't know. If you do it right, then people think it's something totally unique. Which it is, by then. If you do it wrong and everybody notices, they're going to complain. It's a bit difficult to find the right balance, but once you have it then it becomes something awesome.

Also... how original is it of you to ask us to name something for you? ;) Besides, we'd likely do something similar to what Astinus said and you'd end up at the same place anyway, except you wouldn't know exactly where it came from.

My only advice to doing it that way is to keep consistent. You don't want to be using Germanic-sounding names for some things and Chinese-sounding names for something extremely similar, unless you want to explain the origins of both and that they were a part of some kind of incidental parallel evolution. Which seems odd.

/rambling a bit now sorry ^^;

Key points: Do what Astinus said, and try to keep with similar languages.

[QuilavaKing]

Originally Posted by TheSmartOne

Also... how original is it of you to ask us to name something for you?

Haha, well you have a point there... I've just always been horrible at thinking up names in general... I think I've got them figured out though.