# Help with name for fertility spirit



## sunandshadow (May 19, 2011)

I am in the process of creating a character which is a female or hermaphroditic spirit of fertility.  Specifically a spirit of pregnancy, and possibly a spirit of evolution; not so much a spirit of crops, rain, the earth, and that sort of fertility.  Anyone have any suggestions for a name for this spirit character?  I was trying to decide whether to use the name of a historical goddess, or whether that would be tacky.


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## Volkodav (May 19, 2011)

thundercrotch

thunder because it touches on the naturey spirit part and crotch because crotch


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## Saracide (May 19, 2011)

_phallusandra_

I'm sorry, I can't not be silly about it.


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## M. LeRenard (May 19, 2011)

Just call her Mom.

No, seriously.  Depending on the context, it could work really well.


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## sunandshadow (May 20, 2011)

WTF.  Nothing wrong with a little humor, but seriously, 16 replies and no actual responses?  Do you all giggle like mad when you read wikipedia entries about things like the Egyptian god Hapi (hermaphrodite fertility deity)?


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## buni (May 20, 2011)

"Tell me of your homeworld, Usul."

No, seriously. Names are a part of language. Language doesn't exist in a vacuum. Tell me of the cultural inspirations of your character. What are the other deities in the pantheon named? What phonemes dominate the language you're using? How do the gods get named in this world?


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## Poetigress (May 20, 2011)

sunandshadow said:


> WTF.  Nothing wrong with a little humor, but seriously, 16 replies and no actual responses?  Do you all giggle like mad when you read wikipedia entries about things like the Egyptian god Hapi (hermaphrodite fertility deity)?


 
Trying to have a serious conversation on FAF is often like trying to have a philosophical debate in daycare, sitting there in those little plastic chairs with your knees scrunched up, while three-year-olds run around flinging fingerpaint and clonking each other on the head with juice boxes. Not impossible, but difficult. 

I would agree with Buni. What are some of the names of your other characters? Specifically, if you're going for a hermaphrodite, you could consider what name constructions are viewed as male or female, and combine them somehow. Sometimes I'll know what kind of sound I'm going for, and can then start combining sounds and playing with spellings until I get something that feels right. 

I probably wouldn't use an actual goddess name unless you're drawing more of the story's setting, mythology, etc., from that particular culture, but if you find something you like, you could go for a similar sound, alter a few letters, something like that.


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## M. LeRenard (May 20, 2011)

Christ, people.
Anyway, my reply was actually halfway serious.  I guess maybe it got buried.


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## sunandshadow (May 20, 2011)

Wow that was a dramatic housecleaning.  I could see how the comment about calling the character mom was halfway serious - I did put "find a dignified or exotic word for mother" on my list of possibilities.

Ok, what is the setting like.  Well it's a new setting, I haven't previously written anything which has any gods or other spirits wandering around in the world, I'm not usually interested in supernatural stuff, but it just seemed appropriate for this particular story idea.  I was reading a science article that was talking about how much faster selective breeding and experimental crossing (i.e. consciously-directed evolution) is than regular evolution.  So I thought, this is something there isn't any mythology about, because the concept didn't exist back when most mythology was being created.  But it would make a great myth to have a fertility goddess or spirit similar to a dryad or faerie who wandered about looking for interesting mutants and causing unlikely hybridizations to happen (and 'blessing' them to make sure the offspring weren't sterile).  It sort of fits right in there between myths of Pookas wandering around pranking humans, and myths of faeries responsible for keeping plants healthy, and myths of goddesses who manage wild herds of deer and select which deer is to present itself to the huntsmen to be killed.

So, I wanted to try out this setting and concept with a short story, just to see if it works for me.  No spirit characters besides this fertility spirit, so there are no other names to make it fit in with.  The rough plot is, she finds two races or species at war, and each has an admirable leader who is likely to get himself killed before he can sire any children to pass on his good traits.  And due to the prejudice between the two species one might extinguish the other completely, destroying all its good traits.  Naturally as a spirit dedicated to creating biological diversity she doesn't like the idea of genocide or extinction at all.  So she decides to combine her goals - she takes a sample from both of the two leaders and combines them into a hybrid child, carrying it in her own womb (that's what she normally does whenever she wants to help out some population of creatures, she's sort of a walking biological factory - could produce a whole flock of birds or school of fish in a month).

This being a myth, the halfblood child would presumably grow up to be a culture hero, but that's a separate story, this one is an origin story.  The climax would probably be the two leaders finding out that this child uniting them had been created without their consent, or the story might end with the fertility spirit placing the child with an adoptive couple to be raised.

Back to the name idea, I was reading about Cernunnos - I was hoping there would be a female deity equivalent to him but there wasn't any name given in anything I read.  What I did find out was that the name Cernunnos is made from the root word cern/carn/corn meaning horn, the same one in the words unicorn and rhinoceros.  The S on the end is just a masculine ending, so I could switch it for an A to get a feminine version of the word.  So I could use a name like Corna, Korna, Cornona, or Kornona if I wanted something.  Or, Cervus is the latin root word for deer, so I could use a name like Cerva, Kerva, Cerwa, or Kerwa.  Using root words gets confusing though - would "acorna" be "without a horn" or would it be an acorn?  Is "carna" horn with a feminine ending, or the root word for meat?  Is "cerva" a deer, or something to do with a cervix, which is in turn both the neck and a part of the female reproductive system? @_@

At least this all gave me a pretty good idea for what the character might look like: a female or mostly-female deertaur with dark gold fur dappled with pale dun, and the dapple color would be the color of the human skin; maybe some white markings too: belly, horns, hooves.


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## Kranesh (May 22, 2011)

You should go with Korna, sounds very good and epic, FOR THE SPIRIT OF KORNA I SHALL AVENGE MY PEOPLE!!


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## Rsyk (May 22, 2011)

Depending on the context, you could try going with some names that allude to the concept of fertility without really bashing someone over the head with it. What Renard said would work, but probably as more of a title than an actually name. (ie. The Great Mother, Mother Goddess, etc.)
Try going with some names that mean things like bringing joy, or bringing life or whatnot. Felicia is one that has a similar meaning. Depending on the culture of your world, this would work quite well. 
You could also try looking through some historical or folk stories for names associated with those that bring life or whatnot.


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