Argh, I hate picking titles.

[kaigou]

Was thinking I'd go with titles based on constellations*, which in turn have legends (in the story's world) that relate to a story's themes. So far I've got the following + the constellation's basic theme. Some of these have also already been referenced in drafts, though I was still solidifying what was where and the references/uses.

- the weaving girl's orchard (separation, longing)
- the emperor's ladle (bestow/remove gifts)
- the sailor's spear
- the tiger's fang (regret, loss)
- the saola's crown (unexpected skill)
- the ship's keel
- the mariner's square

* some of these are riff on real-world legends and constellations, so if you know your legends/stars, you might recognize a few

Alternately, there's also navigational themes:

- Alidade
- Ephemeris
- Astrolabe
- Azimuth
- Volvelle
- Binnacle
- Almucantar
- Nonius

It feels like these would only fit the standard SFF titling schema with an adjective, ie: The Forgotten Ephemeris, or The Broken Alidade, or The Crooked Azimuth, or some such.

ETA: or just a pattern. Maybe going by the four parts, it's divided, re-united, lost, found. Hrm. Broken, Restored, Hidden, Raised?

- The Divided Shrine
- The Forgotten Shrine
- The Hidden Shrine
- The Broken Shrine

uhhhhhh.

I used to come up with names so much easier than I do now. I have no idea why it's gotten so hard.

Comments

[nagasvoice]

Very true. In an alien world, it's problematic to reference words that drag along too much of our world's context along with them. A lot of religious organization and structural names are like this--just their architectural terms, for goodness' sake. Also, I was struggling with names for parts of plate and scale armor, as another example. Just trying to be precise without spending a lot of time on it means searching for words that ordinary readers might know. If I used detailed names that more expert people would recognize, that often brings up a clash of languages. When you're getting into details like vambrace and pauldron, it's got lots of associations for those who even know what the words mean.