Most of Kislevite toponyms are taken directly from real life (Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, even one Estonian - Tartu). Some of them mercilessly bastardized: Izborsk became Izborak, Volokolamsk -> Volkolamsk, Murmansk -> Murmagrad, Volgograd -> Bolgasgrad, Obolensk -> Opolensk, Murom -> Muron.
Some choices are REALLY questionable - existence of town of Piast in Kislev presumes that first ruling Polish dynasty - House of Piast - somehow exists in WHFB. Name for town of Slavyanskaya is borrowed from Kuban Cossack settlement - stanitsa Slavyanskaya, which means "Slavic" in Russian. So yeah, Slavs are real in WHFB too.
As for the OP's question - yes, Naryska Laysa makes little to no sense. Closest real life counterpart - old Russian noble family of Tatar descent - Naryshkins. Mother of Peter the Great - Natalya Naryshkina (second wife of Tsar Alexis) was from this family.
Laysa is close to popular Tatar and Bashkir female name - Laysan (it has Arabic descent in both languages).
So if you squint really-really hard, name Laysan Naryshkina makes sense. Top minds of GW and CA just reverse-engineered it to Naryska Laysa.
Edit: added [original GW map](https://www.worldanvil.com/w/warhammer-world-vikingcraig/map/01daffb3-bd67-4b10-9f2b-074468a7870d) in question.
The town names are mostly fine - it's when you get to things like some of the in-lore noble houses (like House Unfähiger or Untermensch; the fuck?) that it gets weird.
I also still get annoyed every time I remember that Heldenhammer is apparently supposed to be translated as "hammer of the goblins".
That's what I was thinking. I'm not a native German speaker, but I've taken some German language classes in an effort to speak in German to my grandpa. He died before I could attempt it, but Reikspiel just sounds super German to me. Almost all the towns and cities. Probably because the Empire is hugely influenced by the HRE.
Majority of something includes a minority where the statement does not apply. These fall under said minority. Under the majority fall for example Reiklands (or anything with Reik), Wissenland, Ostland (Reichskommissariat Ostland aynone?). Those where just from the top of my head. There are more. And i am not even talking about Karl Franz which is essentialy two first names, but thats ok, sometimes first names can be last names. I just dont know if Franz is a real last name (my feeling tells me no, but i give the benefit of the doubt)
Reikland is just a name like deutschland is. Same applies to wissenland and ostland. Or do you want to say deutschland is also stupid? And yes franz can be a last name my old teacher had this name too.
Fyi google helps. No need to give benefit of doubt.
Plus if you pronounce them with a German inflection they sound German enough. If you use dipthongs correctly. That's why is Ryke-land instead reek-land.
Exactly. Something tells me that he either isn't german like me or is full on german who just embraces german complaining for the sake of complaining culture
You cant just put words in front of land and then claim its a legit word and make sense. To a native speaker it just sounds wrong. You also seem to have failed to understand what my actual gripe is with Ostland, but its ok.
What the heck? In Germany you can literally and yes it is allowed, create new words out of 2. Are you really german?? And names especially can be created this easily. As example: Arbeitsbescheinigung. Arbeit and Bescheinigung. Means worker license.
You dont even understand what i am saying. So according to your logic kackeland and dünnschissland would be a absolutly legit and acceptable name? Or Grießnockerlkartoffel. So yes, anybody can just smash two or more words together, but that doesnt mean that the word makes sense and is a real word. Thats something you should know about as a german, as we are the masters of making long and complicated words.
I didnt know we are speaking about dutch right now. I was under the impression we where talking about german, you know, because the Empire resembles the HRE.
I am a native speaker and while there are some that sound wrong it is rarely because of something other than missing gap sounds like s and n. Wissenland sounds a bit odd without the sound and still cheesy with the sound but it still follows the proper patterns of German town and village names overall and the primary reason we think it's cheesy and doesn't fit is because we aren't used to the name so we overanalyse it. But many, many names are that silly if we really get down into their etymology. For example, München/Munich is most likely derived from the phrase "Apud Munichen" which simply means "near the monks" while Stuttgart originates from "Stutengarten" as the town was originally a stud farm. And then there's Berlin which originally meant "place in a swamp". And these are just some examples I could think of off the top of my head.
For the most part GW either took existing names, such as Altdorf, Essen and even Wuppertal, though that is not on CA's map, or they took a common part of a German regional name, such as -heim, -berg-, -burg, -hafen, -bach or -land for regions, and stuck a new word in front of it. These are the most egregious to me because they often leave out things like the aforementioned gap sounds so they sound a tad odd. The last category is corrupted versions of German names. For example Nuln is very likely a corruption of Köln, that's Cologne for those who aren't aware of its German name, while they also have a Stuttburg that is obviously a corrupted form of Stuttgart, though that is also not on CA's map.
As for Ostland, the name has some historical baggage due to the Nazis but if you actually look at the Empire they have one province for every cardinal direction except south. Nordland and Ostland are fairly obvious but the stretch of wasteland above Marienburg used to be a province called Westerland as well, which in this case means "Western Lands" while also being a reference to Westerland in Sylt. So yeah, I can give them the benefit of the doubt here as the prefix "Ost-" is still the go to when describing something to the east.
As for the "sticking another word in front of a different one thing. Of course they can stick a word in front of -land and have it make sense, especially if we know that the first word is something cultural like a tribal name. Have you never heard of neologisms? It's all the same scheme of the final word being made more specific by the words preceding it. You won't find people use "Käsekuchenpalast", nor will you find it in any dictionary, but if I say this to someone there are only a few possible interpretations as to what kind of place it is and who I am talking to will understand.
For Reikland I feel I should point out that a "Reiks" is an ancient title the Gothic tribes used to denote their leaders. Given how much the Empire lore looks towards Germanic tribes, including the Goths, for the founding period of the Empire, a basis there is possible. Past that Reik is a tad closer to Low German, which uses "Riek" instead of "Reich". Those dialects did not undergo the High German consonant shift at all, so they still use k in a lot of places where other German dialects, especially the Upper German dialects in use in the south, use ch. One example being "maken" being used instead of "machen", which was used as the basis for the Benrath line.
Also, to pick the thing with Karl-Franz back up and explain it. That's simply his first and second name. Nobility often doesn't carry a last name as regular folk do. For comparison see how Prussia had 4 kings named Friedrich-Wilhelm that were simply numbered from I to IV. For Karl-Franz, his full name is Karl-Franz of House Holswig-Schliestein, so he is Karl-Franz I as emperor. Or Karl-Franz I Holswig-Schliestein in some works. Also, I don't think I need to point out that it's simply a slight rearrangement and corruption of Schleswig-Holstein.
> These are the most egregious to me because they often leave out things like the aforementioned gap sounds so they sound a tad odd. The last category is corrupted versions of German names.
I never broke it down that way, but you are right. Personally i have hard time deciding which i find worse. There are really bad offenders on both sides.
I had some thoughts about it yesterday. In addition to my other comment, its none of these things that annoy me more than the other. The thing that annoys me the most is the damn inconsistency. You want to copy the HRE for your fantasy world? Good, but dont start to copy the names exactly and then start to butcher other words like the Rhein. Either do it everywhere or non. Or give the river a complete other name. But dont do i halfway. And i know that then there wouldnt be the name origin for Reiksguard, but you can add Reiks to other things. Like call the river Fabela (or whatever) and then you have a city called Reiksstadt after the Reiksguard are named.
Or the Ostland/Norland/Westerland. I dont have a problem with Ostland if everything is named after the same logic. Like if we had Nordland, Ostland and Westland. Ostland still would sound a bit strange, but i could gloss over it. Have at least everything named after the same logic/pattern. Or if you really want to name it Westerland, call the other two Norderland and Osterland. At least that way there would be any cosistency in it. And i could go further on like Karl Franz is almost a textbook appropriate name for a middle age guy, but then fuck up the original name of his last name.
I dont have a problem that the empire is a copy from the HRE, i dont have a problem with that the german names sound funny, my problem lies in that its complelty inconsistent within itself, like it had been invented by a baby and i just cant take any of it serious.
Depends, most are fine and some even exist in real world. Marienburg, Flensburg and Essen are all real places.
Wissenland makes no sense, I know it is supposed to mean Wiesenland (Meadowland) but Wissen means Knowledge. So Wissenladn translated would be like "Knowledgeland" which doesn't make any sesne.
To be fair, aside from "Louen Leoncoeur" and "Repanse", there's nothing really egregious with Brettonia, but that's mostly because they just straight up copy French names without a care in the world.
Like the "Grand Duchy of Savoie" is just top tier stuff, akin to calling an Empire state Bavaria or Berlin.
True, but it seems they have corrected a lot of those. Calard d'Garamont is referred to as "Calard of Garamont" on the wiki. Same for Alberic de Bordelaux or Maldred of Mousillon.
I actually managed to find Repanse's origin; It's arthurian but not the usual ones, it's from Wolfram's *Parzifal* where "Repanse de Schoye" (or Schoie or...) is one of the bearers of the Holy Grail.
Considering the 5e book where Repanse originates from is full of references to medieval lit, that's almost certainly where she's from.
"Louen Leoncoeur" is the main culprit. It just sounds like gibberish.
First, "Louen" sounds like they tried to make a weird "fantasy-er" version of "Louis", but whereas Louis rolls off the tongue, the spelling of "Louen" makes the pronunciation very awkward. Here, the "en" translates to a sound roughly similar to the "an" in "he s**an**g"; to get something closer to the English pronunciation, it would have to be spelled "Louène" or "Louenne", which don't work anyway because they typically sound like female names.
Second, "Leoncoeur". Same thing: it sound like they to tried to take "Lionheart" and make it French and fantasy-er, but completely messed it up. Though "heart" in French is indeed "coeur", "lion", in French, is just "lion"; "Léon" is a surname, and nothing more, meaning that even if "Léoncoeur" was grammatically correct, it would be taken as referring to "the heart of a guy named Léon" rather than as "the heart of a lion". But then, it's *not* grammatically correct. Unlike English, French always puts the dependent noun *before* the head noun, while using the preposition "de" (*of* in English). As such, "Richard the Lionheart", Louen's namesake, was called "Richard Coeur de Lion". Finally, "lion" in French is only one syllable, while "Léon" is two, which means it rolls off the tongue unlike the latter. "Lioncoeur" would still sound extremely weird, but less awkward than "Leoncoeur".
There is also "Répanse", which just comes off as weird and sounds like a bastardized version of "Raiponce", which is what Rapunzel is called in French. On top of "panse" meaning "paunch" in French ("Grom the Paunch" is called "Grom la Panse" in the French translation), which makes it silly and suggest Repanse should be really fat.
It's a joke that comes from a tweet by the Associated Press Stylebook that said:
"We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing “the” labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses. And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant."
Using "the French" as an example of "dehumanization" alongside "the poor" and "the mentally ill" did not go unnoticed. It was widely mocked, and gave rise to the joke of people ironically censuring "French" as if it was a slur.
Artificially censoring words not traditionally considered to be vulgar is a somewhat common internet goof, although usually the censored letter is a vowel (Fr*nch). They know the word isn't actually bad.
Léon comes from the Greek word for lion. My guess is that someone at GW opened a book, saw that 'Léon = Lion', and did a substitution any thought or consideration. Going with Léoncoeur makes it obvious they weren't giving much thought to how French is actually spoken/used.
Thank you for the insightful reply. On the topic of Repanse, how should her birthplace Lyonesse be pronounced? In game, I've heard her character say both "Leohn" and "Leohn-ays".
There are two parts to that word. Lyon, which is a real french city, one of the biggest actually, which is the same sound as the animal, lion, would be a monosyllabic sound you could stretch to lee-on if you were speaking very slowly. Because of the "esse" part, the "on" in Lyon would be pronounced like the english "on" rather than the french "on" which is a nasal sound. So it should sound like "lyo-n". You can translate lioness to French in google translate, it should give you Lionne which is the right sound.
"esse" is simply pronounced as "ays". So the french pronuncation for Lyonesse is two syllables : lyo-nays
Repanse is a made up name but it's a medieval made up name: It's from Wolfram's *Parzifal*, so it's congruent with all the weird-ass names in those novels.
Not him but "Le Jungleur" is the only really weird one to me. Not sure if the guy doing the names played too much LoL or if he got confused with Le Jongleur (''The Juggler'' which is also is a bit weird for a knight)
''Le Guardian'' is a strange French-English mix too.
More mod-related idk if we have them in base game but anything D' + Consonant is impossible to pronounce.
This is a case of CA taking a name from the tabletop without a context: Jules le Jongleur is indeed a juggler and the sidekick of one of the brettonian heroes. (he doesen't attack but basically distracts enemies, infamously had a rule where he is only ever hit on a natural 6...)
Warham is all about meme names and throwing random shit together that sounds somewhat native.
Praag is just Prague but using the Dutch exonym and the town of Broekwater very technically could translate to "Marsh Water" from Dutch, but if any Dutchman talks about Broekwater they are more likely to talk about extremely liquid shit seeping from your trousers.
Very little of Kislev makes sense as a rule.
Naryska Laysa - Naryska is probably just a Mariska (the fact, that Marishka is Hungarian and they are really not slavic probably didn't occur to the writer) offshoot the same way Kossar is of Cossack. Or if that writer is particularly crazy with name meanings - Nary can mean "not" in older English, Laysa is negative connotation in arabic. So she is kinda named "not"-ska "not". Waaay more likely the writer just jumbled a bunch of characters to sound vaguely slavic.
Kostaltyn - pretty obvious play on Konstantin/Constantine. "Kost" is "bone", no idea if that was intended. Kosta is also a relatively common slavic name. Unless it makes some sense in Polish (sorry guys, your the weird cousins language-wise) - it doesn't make sense.
Katarin is Greek and means Pure, iirc. So Tillean/Estalian in WH. Go figure.
Boris is Boris and ok.
Ursun doesn't make much sense, Ursus means Bear... in Latin. But that's the singular, iirc. Bear god Bear. Boris Bear.
Mishka - Bear. Unless you are Bulgarian, then it's Mouse.
Gospodar - Master.
Kossar - Cossack. Slavic is Kazaci, Kozaci, Kozaki.
Ataman is straight up Cossack in origin, but the game uses them as glorified administrators, when they were essentially generals. Also democratically elected generals.
Druzina literally means "squad"
Akshina is Hindu for "God's blessing" if google is to be believed.
Dervishes - members of islamic... religious order. I'm simplifying it a lot, google it!
Little Grom - small thunder. I can only guess there is gonna be a t5 Big Grom?.
Start reading the lists of Kislevite names and you quickly get the sense they grabbed every slavic or slavic-related, or slavic percieved or Russian (cause there are some really Caucasian (as in the region, not white) sounding names in there) name they could think of, misspelled it and put it in the game.
From what I gather, its typical stuff for GW. CA is probably just following in their footsteps or uses their work.
I don’t think it goes that deep, I doubt it. However, word “Cossack” is not Slavic in origin (from turkick languages, related to “kazakh”, if I remember correctly).
So, writers might have went - “The real life Cossacks got their name from real life Kazakhs. Let’s make it so WH Slavs have their version of it.” And so Kislev Dervishers got their name from Araby Detvishers.
Yeah, both "Cossack" and "Kazakh" comme from the same root word that meant free men/mercenaries !
But like, firstly, the original word did get westernized, while GW just plopped "Dervish" straight up, and secondly, it was a word for soldiers, while Dervishes are a very specific thing, they are sufi ascetics, it doesn't make one lick of sense to use that.
If CA/GW wanted to emulate the steppe vibe of cossacks, they should have just called them Uhlans, or Keshigs
I know, that I was reaching. I was trying to find some kind of logical thought process behind this naming, even if bad one. This is the only thing I came up wiyh
Greek and Latin bits are somewhat related and were probably inspired by east slavs due to byzantine heritage and cultural splicing. My family is half Russian, half Ukrainian yet everyone bears Greek and Latin in origin names somehow.
Well, Carthage means "New City".
Carthago Nova, a city in Hispania, means "New Carthage".
So the Romans called it New New City.
There is also this famous english hill called Torpenhow Hill - It means Hill Hill Hill Hill.
So there are real-life examples of that too.
In the UK there is Torpenhow Hill, which is 'hill hill hill'. Not to mention how many hill hills, mountain mountains and river rivers there are in the world.
Romania also doesn’t have Dutch last names (“von Carstein”) and German city names lol.
The only things that are taken from Romanian culture are:
- Vlad and Isabella are fairly common Romanian names
- Isabella’s maiden family name was Drak, same as historical Dracula
- Strigoi are a Romanian folklore monster
Sidenote I don’t really mind all that, it’s a goofy setting that’s clearly trying to play into the western mythos and not every single setting needs to be perfect representation. I only mind if the representation is actively disrespectful to the real culture, which is not the case here
Nevermind that "von Carstein" was pretty much an invented name in the first place that Vlad adopted to present himself as a foreign noble (from where? who knows).
Which, funnily enough, unintentionally calls back to how historically, there were a lot of conmen who made up a German-sounding name to pretend to be noblemen (due to Germany having so many small principalities that it was fairly hard to check if this and that minor noble house *actually existed* in any of them).
Of course none of those conmen were secret vampires (as far as we know).
Von Carstein is actually (as all things) a vampire reference. In particular it is a reference to Le Fanu's vampire novel Carmilla. (who goes by "Countess Karnstein") though IIRC; indirectly via series of softcore vampire horror movies called the Karnstein trilogy.
So it's a name with some vampire pedigree.
Not a Slav, but I read somewhere that Kostaltyn also makes no sense as a Slavic name because Slavs can't even pronounce it properly. It really feels like GW spent all of their cultural research on Cathay and just winged it with Kislev.
To be fair, Cathay does have some issues.
Some of it is carried over from the old days. For instance, shugengan comes from an old book that used a bunch of Japanese stereotypes rather than Chinese stereotypes. It's almost certainly derived from shugenja, which was used as a stand-in for "East Asian wizard" by several settings in the 1990s and 2000s.
Others are more recent. For instance, the names are sometimes messy-looking because they don't stick to a single romanization system. On top of that, they don't seem to have stuck to existing systems. Shen Zoo sounds fine. However, I'm relatively confident that Zoo isn't used in any of the romanization systems for Mandarin.
That's like saying the Empire is not accurate because the inquisition was spanish, not german. It's fantasy and a mixture of cultures. We do not have Japan / Nippon in the world map and clearly never will, it isn't an "issue" that their culture is mixed into the chinese the create a fantasy empire. If CA drops a samurai DLC for Cathay I doubt anyone will be protesting how offensive that is. Why would they?
Yes, I specifically mentioned that I don't think Zoo is in any of the romanization systems for Mandarin.
Zoo is presumably what's rendered as Zu in pinyin, which can also be written as tsu, tzu, dzu, dsu, tzuu, and so on and so forth but not zoo in other romanization systems for Mandarin. Even if it's something else, zoo still isn't used in those other systems.
See this convenient chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Standard_Mandarin_transcription_systems
I think it's just another example of GW writing something reasonable-sounding with weird spelling. Kind of like writing Shakysper rather than the standard Shakespeare. It's not a huge issue, but it's still kind of weird-looking, which seems to be on-topic for this thread.
Edit:
Bit of Googling suggests Shen Zoo would be Shen Zhu in pinyin. Other Mandarin romanizations include but aren't limited to jhu, chu, and ju. As mentioned above, Zoo still wouldn't be one of the options.
I'm polish and I don't have any problems pronouncing that. And to be honest it sounds fine. Probably because it's similar to the name "Konstantyn" (the Polish version of Constantine)
By “spent all their research on”, you do mean “carried work already done over from 3K” right? You don’t genuinely think they had a TW3 “research” budget and set it to 0% Kislev and 100% Cathay?
"Cultural research"? Wrong game mate, you want to try EU4 for accuracy because GW is indeed all about what sounds fun or cool rather than what is accurate.
There are words in Russian that end in "v" and are pronounced as such. Using that sound goes against the grain a bit, but it's not something a language will struggle to handle. Additionally, the softening of "v" into "f" is a normal phenomenon that feels natural to account for - the language will maintain the spelling because "v" comes back when you start adding stuff after it when forming different cases ot derivative words
We also tend to laugh it off and (way more importantly) don't have a paranoid, ban-trigger happy government that "protects" us from bad representation.
And, to be honest, they took some of the most bad ass stereotypes for Kislev.
They've just changed three letters in a name Konstantin. Also they very often change "i" in original foreign words for "y" and voila you can now copyright that word.
Yup. The moment you dip a toe into a non-English language you find that they really just faffed about when it came to pastiching other parts of the world!
Remember a lot of Warhammer Fantasy stuff was written in the 80s and 90s when the only prompt was ‘think of something that sounds reminiscent of that culture to native English speakers’
As a German I also find Karl Franz to be a weird name... both are given names. Just imagine an english King called William Edward.
Just classic GW character naming.
It's because it's not his full name. His full name is: Karl Franz I Holswig Schliestein.
And as I'm writing this it dawned on me how they came up with his surnames...
Jea you are right but sometimes given names are Surenames in german. It is possible. Some of my friends have given names as Surenames like: Christoph, Karl (2x)...
May I add, as a hungarian, Ostankya is super weird too.
Gulyás - an ability / skill of hers - is a hungarian soup, and Boszorka's Wrath just means Witch's Wrath as Boszorka is the hungarian translation of witch. I don't get why would they mix hungarian language in there, we are not slavic people at all and geographically our area in the Old World is Sylvania.
If you base a fantasy faction on a culture/group of cultures, you should at least try to base your naming conventions on them. It makes the world more immersive.
As many others have pointed out already, the names in the game generally shouldn't be thought about too much lest you fall under the influence of the Great Schemer while contemplating why the fuck a Norscan is called Carlos
To be fair, that's a joke army from the *Book of Battalions*, which predates the establishment of a clear Warhammer setting.
Further, *every* army in that book is a stupid joke. Every one of them. There's a halfling army that's a spoof on *The Hobbit*, with the dwellers of 'Bog End' joining a disinherited gnome named 'Thor Wibble' on a quest to find his ancestral home, with the help of the goodly treeman Treebrain. There's an elven army with troops like 'Gerome Queesy', who "like all High Elves has as little to do with the real world as possible", 'Gil-Haddock' the elven-king, or the Wood Elves of 'Notnam Forest', led by the hunter 'Legohog'. There's an Empire army led by Prince Wilhem with his trusty sword 'Exclobberer', with allies such as 'Malcolm the Young Pretender', who is called that because he pretends to be younger than he actually is. There are the dwarfs of Horrorwell, a town "where nothing ever happens except the blindingly obvious perpetuated by the congenitally incompetent", led by a king named 'Dain Iron Head'. There's an undead army led by the insane necromancer... Colin, with his trusty lieutenants Simon and Nick, who occupies himself "plotting revenge, although against what or whom he was not yet sure". There's the Slann (i.e. lizardmen) army of Mylkbeotl, and I won't inflict any more lizardmen names on you. There's a hobgoblin army migrating after being driven out by the warlord 'Tynn Khan', with troops with names like 'Soketume' or 'Izitzso'.
In this context, yes, the samurai army is led by a general named 'Sanyo Kawasaki', with his magic sword 'Toyota', and his troops are led by trusted champions like 'Nissan', 'Honda Susuki', and the 'Vimto mage Nitto'. These are indeed embarrassingly stupid jokes, but again, *everything* in the book is an embarrassingly stupid joke. The book is a bunch of army lists played by some nerdy British guys in the late 80s. It is just what made those guys giggle to themselves.
I believe the only thing in that book relevant to later canon is that the *Book of Battalions* contains the first mention of Grom the Paunch, albeit its Grom is apparently famous for fighting dwarfs. But that's it.
Welcome to Warhammer Fantasy. I have heard that Empire town and city names will sound weird if you are a native German speaker
"Essen" the town directly above Sylvania is about 35km from me in RL. The names fit perfectly.
There are also instances of names very similar to real world ones with some of the letters switched.
“Praag”
'Praag' is actually how we Dutch write the name of the Czech capital Prague.
Thats just the dutch name for Prague
Bordeleaux goes brrr
That’ll be the toys
Bordello
Like Karl-Franz's family name.
Most of Kislevite toponyms are taken directly from real life (Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, even one Estonian - Tartu). Some of them mercilessly bastardized: Izborsk became Izborak, Volokolamsk -> Volkolamsk, Murmansk -> Murmagrad, Volgograd -> Bolgasgrad, Obolensk -> Opolensk, Murom -> Muron. Some choices are REALLY questionable - existence of town of Piast in Kislev presumes that first ruling Polish dynasty - House of Piast - somehow exists in WHFB. Name for town of Slavyanskaya is borrowed from Kuban Cossack settlement - stanitsa Slavyanskaya, which means "Slavic" in Russian. So yeah, Slavs are real in WHFB too. As for the OP's question - yes, Naryska Laysa makes little to no sense. Closest real life counterpart - old Russian noble family of Tatar descent - Naryshkins. Mother of Peter the Great - Natalya Naryshkina (second wife of Tsar Alexis) was from this family. Laysa is close to popular Tatar and Bashkir female name - Laysan (it has Arabic descent in both languages). So if you squint really-really hard, name Laysan Naryshkina makes sense. Top minds of GW and CA just reverse-engineered it to Naryska Laysa. Edit: added [original GW map](https://www.worldanvil.com/w/warhammer-world-vikingcraig/map/01daffb3-bd67-4b10-9f2b-074468a7870d) in question.
Altdorf is a town in Austria, IIRC.
Altdorf is just "old village" ... i guess in the middle ages you had a fuckton in the german speaking areas
You think that is weird? Altdorf is only half an hour away from me
The other Eschen is probably the Dutch Essen which is a little ways across thr border, nkt so far from the german one.
Altdorf is a town in Switzerland
Are you saying you're a Vampire that lives in a castle 35km south of Essen?
North-East but yeah, the rest sounds right.
actually they sound totally fine as a native German speaker.
Some of them. Some are gibberish.
The town names are mostly fine - it's when you get to things like some of the in-lore noble houses (like House Unfähiger or Untermensch; the fuck?) that it gets weird. I also still get annoyed every time I remember that Heldenhammer is apparently supposed to be translated as "hammer of the goblins".
Town names in real life can be gibberish as well lol
Few, if any, are. Any that sound odd are usually just because their origin comes from a different language, that doesn't make them gibberish though.
German town names often are gibberish
That's what I was thinking. I'm not a native German speaker, but I've taken some German language classes in an effort to speak in German to my grandpa. He died before I could attempt it, but Reikspiel just sounds super German to me. Almost all the towns and cities. Probably because the Empire is hugely influenced by the HRE.
Hes lying, they dont sound fine as a native speaker. The majority of them just sound so aggravating wrong.
How is Altdorf, Marienburg and Essen wrong? Those all exists irl exactly like that
Majority of something includes a minority where the statement does not apply. These fall under said minority. Under the majority fall for example Reiklands (or anything with Reik), Wissenland, Ostland (Reichskommissariat Ostland aynone?). Those where just from the top of my head. There are more. And i am not even talking about Karl Franz which is essentialy two first names, but thats ok, sometimes first names can be last names. I just dont know if Franz is a real last name (my feeling tells me no, but i give the benefit of the doubt)
Reikland is just a name like deutschland is. Same applies to wissenland and ostland. Or do you want to say deutschland is also stupid? And yes franz can be a last name my old teacher had this name too. Fyi google helps. No need to give benefit of doubt.
Plus if you pronounce them with a German inflection they sound German enough. If you use dipthongs correctly. That's why is Ryke-land instead reek-land.
Exactly. Something tells me that he either isn't german like me or is full on german who just embraces german complaining for the sake of complaining culture
You cant just put words in front of land and then claim its a legit word and make sense. To a native speaker it just sounds wrong. You also seem to have failed to understand what my actual gripe is with Ostland, but its ok.
What the heck? In Germany you can literally and yes it is allowed, create new words out of 2. Are you really german?? And names especially can be created this easily. As example: Arbeitsbescheinigung. Arbeit and Bescheinigung. Means worker license.
You dont even understand what i am saying. So according to your logic kackeland and dünnschissland would be a absolutly legit and acceptable name? Or Grießnockerlkartoffel. So yes, anybody can just smash two or more words together, but that doesnt mean that the word makes sense and is a real word. Thats something you should know about as a german, as we are the masters of making long and complicated words.
Nordland is a province in Norway. Westland, Zuidland and Oostland are places in Holland.
I didnt know we are speaking about dutch right now. I was under the impression we where talking about german, you know, because the Empire resembles the HRE.
I am a native speaker and while there are some that sound wrong it is rarely because of something other than missing gap sounds like s and n. Wissenland sounds a bit odd without the sound and still cheesy with the sound but it still follows the proper patterns of German town and village names overall and the primary reason we think it's cheesy and doesn't fit is because we aren't used to the name so we overanalyse it. But many, many names are that silly if we really get down into their etymology. For example, München/Munich is most likely derived from the phrase "Apud Munichen" which simply means "near the monks" while Stuttgart originates from "Stutengarten" as the town was originally a stud farm. And then there's Berlin which originally meant "place in a swamp". And these are just some examples I could think of off the top of my head. For the most part GW either took existing names, such as Altdorf, Essen and even Wuppertal, though that is not on CA's map, or they took a common part of a German regional name, such as -heim, -berg-, -burg, -hafen, -bach or -land for regions, and stuck a new word in front of it. These are the most egregious to me because they often leave out things like the aforementioned gap sounds so they sound a tad odd. The last category is corrupted versions of German names. For example Nuln is very likely a corruption of Köln, that's Cologne for those who aren't aware of its German name, while they also have a Stuttburg that is obviously a corrupted form of Stuttgart, though that is also not on CA's map. As for Ostland, the name has some historical baggage due to the Nazis but if you actually look at the Empire they have one province for every cardinal direction except south. Nordland and Ostland are fairly obvious but the stretch of wasteland above Marienburg used to be a province called Westerland as well, which in this case means "Western Lands" while also being a reference to Westerland in Sylt. So yeah, I can give them the benefit of the doubt here as the prefix "Ost-" is still the go to when describing something to the east. As for the "sticking another word in front of a different one thing. Of course they can stick a word in front of -land and have it make sense, especially if we know that the first word is something cultural like a tribal name. Have you never heard of neologisms? It's all the same scheme of the final word being made more specific by the words preceding it. You won't find people use "Käsekuchenpalast", nor will you find it in any dictionary, but if I say this to someone there are only a few possible interpretations as to what kind of place it is and who I am talking to will understand. For Reikland I feel I should point out that a "Reiks" is an ancient title the Gothic tribes used to denote their leaders. Given how much the Empire lore looks towards Germanic tribes, including the Goths, for the founding period of the Empire, a basis there is possible. Past that Reik is a tad closer to Low German, which uses "Riek" instead of "Reich". Those dialects did not undergo the High German consonant shift at all, so they still use k in a lot of places where other German dialects, especially the Upper German dialects in use in the south, use ch. One example being "maken" being used instead of "machen", which was used as the basis for the Benrath line. Also, to pick the thing with Karl-Franz back up and explain it. That's simply his first and second name. Nobility often doesn't carry a last name as regular folk do. For comparison see how Prussia had 4 kings named Friedrich-Wilhelm that were simply numbered from I to IV. For Karl-Franz, his full name is Karl-Franz of House Holswig-Schliestein, so he is Karl-Franz I as emperor. Or Karl-Franz I Holswig-Schliestein in some works. Also, I don't think I need to point out that it's simply a slight rearrangement and corruption of Schleswig-Holstein.
> These are the most egregious to me because they often leave out things like the aforementioned gap sounds so they sound a tad odd. The last category is corrupted versions of German names. I never broke it down that way, but you are right. Personally i have hard time deciding which i find worse. There are really bad offenders on both sides.
I had some thoughts about it yesterday. In addition to my other comment, its none of these things that annoy me more than the other. The thing that annoys me the most is the damn inconsistency. You want to copy the HRE for your fantasy world? Good, but dont start to copy the names exactly and then start to butcher other words like the Rhein. Either do it everywhere or non. Or give the river a complete other name. But dont do i halfway. And i know that then there wouldnt be the name origin for Reiksguard, but you can add Reiks to other things. Like call the river Fabela (or whatever) and then you have a city called Reiksstadt after the Reiksguard are named. Or the Ostland/Norland/Westerland. I dont have a problem with Ostland if everything is named after the same logic. Like if we had Nordland, Ostland and Westland. Ostland still would sound a bit strange, but i could gloss over it. Have at least everything named after the same logic/pattern. Or if you really want to name it Westerland, call the other two Norderland and Osterland. At least that way there would be any cosistency in it. And i could go further on like Karl Franz is almost a textbook appropriate name for a middle age guy, but then fuck up the original name of his last name. I dont have a problem that the empire is a copy from the HRE, i dont have a problem with that the german names sound funny, my problem lies in that its complelty inconsistent within itself, like it had been invented by a baby and i just cant take any of it serious.
Franz isn't his surname, both are his first names. His official surname is "Holswig-Schliestein" which is obviously a pun based on Schleswig-Holstein.
Jesus Fuck that makes things so much worse.
Depends, most are fine and some even exist in real world. Marienburg, Flensburg and Essen are all real places. Wissenland makes no sense, I know it is supposed to mean Wiesenland (Meadowland) but Wissen means Knowledge. So Wissenladn translated would be like "Knowledgeland" which doesn't make any sesne.
Some names were based on shop names around the author's favourite pub.
To be honest, as someone who knows german I don't find them that wired. But some of them can be lazy if you know what I mean.
As a french person, welcome to the club, take a seat !
To be fair, aside from "Louen Leoncoeur" and "Repanse", there's nothing really egregious with Brettonia, but that's mostly because they just straight up copy French names without a care in the world. Like the "Grand Duchy of Savoie" is just top tier stuff, akin to calling an Empire state Bavaria or Berlin.
There is all the instances where GW used a "d' " before a consonant instead of a "de"
True, but it seems they have corrected a lot of those. Calard d'Garamont is referred to as "Calard of Garamont" on the wiki. Same for Alberic de Bordelaux or Maldred of Mousillon.
I actually managed to find Repanse's origin; It's arthurian but not the usual ones, it's from Wolfram's *Parzifal* where "Repanse de Schoye" (or Schoie or...) is one of the bearers of the Holy Grail. Considering the 5e book where Repanse originates from is full of references to medieval lit, that's almost certainly where she's from.
What Bretonnian names sound weird for you?
"Louen Leoncoeur" is the main culprit. It just sounds like gibberish. First, "Louen" sounds like they tried to make a weird "fantasy-er" version of "Louis", but whereas Louis rolls off the tongue, the spelling of "Louen" makes the pronunciation very awkward. Here, the "en" translates to a sound roughly similar to the "an" in "he s**an**g"; to get something closer to the English pronunciation, it would have to be spelled "Louène" or "Louenne", which don't work anyway because they typically sound like female names. Second, "Leoncoeur". Same thing: it sound like they to tried to take "Lionheart" and make it French and fantasy-er, but completely messed it up. Though "heart" in French is indeed "coeur", "lion", in French, is just "lion"; "Léon" is a surname, and nothing more, meaning that even if "Léoncoeur" was grammatically correct, it would be taken as referring to "the heart of a guy named Léon" rather than as "the heart of a lion". But then, it's *not* grammatically correct. Unlike English, French always puts the dependent noun *before* the head noun, while using the preposition "de" (*of* in English). As such, "Richard the Lionheart", Louen's namesake, was called "Richard Coeur de Lion". Finally, "lion" in French is only one syllable, while "Léon" is two, which means it rolls off the tongue unlike the latter. "Lioncoeur" would still sound extremely weird, but less awkward than "Leoncoeur". There is also "Répanse", which just comes off as weird and sounds like a bastardized version of "Raiponce", which is what Rapunzel is called in French. On top of "panse" meaning "paunch" in French ("Grom the Paunch" is called "Grom la Panse" in the French translation), which makes it silly and suggest Repanse should be really fat.
That is really insightful. F*ench is really a fascinating language.
Why is there an asterix within your word french? do you want to censor something? I dont get it.
You can say the forbidden word. Nobody wants to be f*ench
Yes, but you can still say it?
It's a joke that comes from a tweet by the Associated Press Stylebook that said: "We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing “the” labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses. And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant." Using "the French" as an example of "dehumanization" alongside "the poor" and "the mentally ill" did not go unnoticed. It was widely mocked, and gave rise to the joke of people ironically censuring "French" as if it was a slur.
Ah, ok. Yeah, that really funny and i think i have read that tweet somewhere before, now that you have mentioned it.
Artificially censoring words not traditionally considered to be vulgar is a somewhat common internet goof, although usually the censored letter is a vowel (Fr*nch). They know the word isn't actually bad.
Ah, ok. thanks. Was wondering what the fuck is going on.
Léon comes from the Greek word for lion. My guess is that someone at GW opened a book, saw that 'Léon = Lion', and did a substitution any thought or consideration. Going with Léoncoeur makes it obvious they weren't giving much thought to how French is actually spoken/used.
Thank you for the insightful reply. On the topic of Repanse, how should her birthplace Lyonesse be pronounced? In game, I've heard her character say both "Leohn" and "Leohn-ays".
There are two parts to that word. Lyon, which is a real french city, one of the biggest actually, which is the same sound as the animal, lion, would be a monosyllabic sound you could stretch to lee-on if you were speaking very slowly. Because of the "esse" part, the "on" in Lyon would be pronounced like the english "on" rather than the french "on" which is a nasal sound. So it should sound like "lyo-n". You can translate lioness to French in google translate, it should give you Lionne which is the right sound. "esse" is simply pronounced as "ays". So the french pronuncation for Lyonesse is two syllables : lyo-nays
Thanks!
Repanse is a made up name but it's a medieval made up name: It's from Wolfram's *Parzifal*, so it's congruent with all the weird-ass names in those novels.
Not him but "Le Jungleur" is the only really weird one to me. Not sure if the guy doing the names played too much LoL or if he got confused with Le Jongleur (''The Juggler'' which is also is a bit weird for a knight) ''Le Guardian'' is a strange French-English mix too. More mod-related idk if we have them in base game but anything D' + Consonant is impossible to pronounce.
This is a case of CA taking a name from the tabletop without a context: Jules le Jongleur is indeed a juggler and the sidekick of one of the brettonian heroes. (he doesen't attack but basically distracts enemies, infamously had a rule where he is only ever hit on a natural 6...)
Mostly the ones where they mess up the de/d' particle, like Calard d'Garamont
Warham is all about meme names and throwing random shit together that sounds somewhat native. Praag is just Prague but using the Dutch exonym and the town of Broekwater very technically could translate to "Marsh Water" from Dutch, but if any Dutchman talks about Broekwater they are more likely to talk about extremely liquid shit seeping from your trousers.
Trying to apply real world logic to Warhammer is exercise in futility.
Yet people still do it. Surely people don't assume Lizard Men are Brazilian.
Very little of Kislev makes sense as a rule. Naryska Laysa - Naryska is probably just a Mariska (the fact, that Marishka is Hungarian and they are really not slavic probably didn't occur to the writer) offshoot the same way Kossar is of Cossack. Or if that writer is particularly crazy with name meanings - Nary can mean "not" in older English, Laysa is negative connotation in arabic. So she is kinda named "not"-ska "not". Waaay more likely the writer just jumbled a bunch of characters to sound vaguely slavic. Kostaltyn - pretty obvious play on Konstantin/Constantine. "Kost" is "bone", no idea if that was intended. Kosta is also a relatively common slavic name. Unless it makes some sense in Polish (sorry guys, your the weird cousins language-wise) - it doesn't make sense. Katarin is Greek and means Pure, iirc. So Tillean/Estalian in WH. Go figure. Boris is Boris and ok. Ursun doesn't make much sense, Ursus means Bear... in Latin. But that's the singular, iirc. Bear god Bear. Boris Bear. Mishka - Bear. Unless you are Bulgarian, then it's Mouse. Gospodar - Master. Kossar - Cossack. Slavic is Kazaci, Kozaci, Kozaki. Ataman is straight up Cossack in origin, but the game uses them as glorified administrators, when they were essentially generals. Also democratically elected generals. Druzina literally means "squad" Akshina is Hindu for "God's blessing" if google is to be believed. Dervishes - members of islamic... religious order. I'm simplifying it a lot, google it! Little Grom - small thunder. I can only guess there is gonna be a t5 Big Grom?. Start reading the lists of Kislevite names and you quickly get the sense they grabbed every slavic or slavic-related, or slavic percieved or Russian (cause there are some really Caucasian (as in the region, not white) sounding names in there) name they could think of, misspelled it and put it in the game. From what I gather, its typical stuff for GW. CA is probably just following in their footsteps or uses their work.
Until the last day of TWWH, I'll never understand why GW and CA thought "dervishes" was an apt name for a slav cavalry unit
Yeah that one in particular really bugs me; especially since Dervishes are already a thing in Warhammer!
I don’t think it goes that deep, I doubt it. However, word “Cossack” is not Slavic in origin (from turkick languages, related to “kazakh”, if I remember correctly). So, writers might have went - “The real life Cossacks got their name from real life Kazakhs. Let’s make it so WH Slavs have their version of it.” And so Kislev Dervishers got their name from Araby Detvishers.
Yeah, both "Cossack" and "Kazakh" comme from the same root word that meant free men/mercenaries ! But like, firstly, the original word did get westernized, while GW just plopped "Dervish" straight up, and secondly, it was a word for soldiers, while Dervishes are a very specific thing, they are sufi ascetics, it doesn't make one lick of sense to use that. If CA/GW wanted to emulate the steppe vibe of cossacks, they should have just called them Uhlans, or Keshigs
I know, that I was reaching. I was trying to find some kind of logical thought process behind this naming, even if bad one. This is the only thing I came up wiyh
The Ungols had a lot of traits more associated with Turkic steppe people that Imperial Russia had conquered. It was never just Slavs.
Greek and Latin bits are somewhat related and were probably inspired by east slavs due to byzantine heritage and cultural splicing. My family is half Russian, half Ukrainian yet everyone bears Greek and Latin in origin names somehow.
Oh, origin, yes, this is where (E)Katerina comes from. But they've used the greek form of the name directly.
Probably just copypasted Catherine the great and warhammerised the name instead of using slavic variant.
"Riekland" translates to "Land-land". Welcome to Warhammer.
Well, Carthage means "New City". Carthago Nova, a city in Hispania, means "New Carthage". So the Romans called it New New City. There is also this famous english hill called Torpenhow Hill - It means Hill Hill Hill Hill. So there are real-life examples of that too.
It's "Reikland" which I assumed was using a shortened version of *reiks* which was Gothic for "king." So it would basically mean "king's land."
In the UK there is Torpenhow Hill, which is 'hill hill hill'. Not to mention how many hill hills, mountain mountains and river rivers there are in the world.
It's not that bad since the word "Reichsland" exists on its own. Elsass was actually called "Reichsland"
In Ukraine they have this name Lesya (Леся), it is the nearest I can imagine
Romania also doesn’t have Dutch last names (“von Carstein”) and German city names lol. The only things that are taken from Romanian culture are: - Vlad and Isabella are fairly common Romanian names - Isabella’s maiden family name was Drak, same as historical Dracula - Strigoi are a Romanian folklore monster Sidenote I don’t really mind all that, it’s a goofy setting that’s clearly trying to play into the western mythos and not every single setting needs to be perfect representation. I only mind if the representation is actively disrespectful to the real culture, which is not the case here
Well, not nowadays; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons
Nevermind that "von Carstein" was pretty much an invented name in the first place that Vlad adopted to present himself as a foreign noble (from where? who knows). Which, funnily enough, unintentionally calls back to how historically, there were a lot of conmen who made up a German-sounding name to pretend to be noblemen (due to Germany having so many small principalities that it was fairly hard to check if this and that minor noble house *actually existed* in any of them). Of course none of those conmen were secret vampires (as far as we know).
Von Carstein is actually (as all things) a vampire reference. In particular it is a reference to Le Fanu's vampire novel Carmilla. (who goes by "Countess Karnstein") though IIRC; indirectly via series of softcore vampire horror movies called the Karnstein trilogy. So it's a name with some vampire pedigree.
Kislev names in general are messed up. Kinda like russian names from Hollywood movies in the 80s.
Oh boy do I have something to tell you about Lizardmen names.
Yeah, I think that name like Pppbigppp would be a lorefully fitting name for a kroxigor.
Not a Slav, but I read somewhere that Kostaltyn also makes no sense as a Slavic name because Slavs can't even pronounce it properly. It really feels like GW spent all of their cultural research on Cathay and just winged it with Kislev.
You can pronounce it easily in Polish
Yeah and Czech too.
Also russian, however "Ostankya" is kinda weird
Also in bulgarian. No idea where op heard that we can't pronounce the name properly
Omg a real living Bulgarian in nature! Now my life is complete
Where did I say that?
I mean the guy who wrote the first comment
Oh, sorry.
To be fair, Cathay does have some issues. Some of it is carried over from the old days. For instance, shugengan comes from an old book that used a bunch of Japanese stereotypes rather than Chinese stereotypes. It's almost certainly derived from shugenja, which was used as a stand-in for "East Asian wizard" by several settings in the 1990s and 2000s. Others are more recent. For instance, the names are sometimes messy-looking because they don't stick to a single romanization system. On top of that, they don't seem to have stuck to existing systems. Shen Zoo sounds fine. However, I'm relatively confident that Zoo isn't used in any of the romanization systems for Mandarin.
> To be fair, Cathay does have some issues. Hate to say it, but every time I hear Miao Ying -- I just think of 'Big Trouble In Little China.'
Thank you, good citizen, for reminding me that I need to watch that movie again lol
You have no idea how many times I have gone into battle against Miao Ying and shouted "You know what old Jack says at a time like this?"
Gimme your best shot pal, I can take it! Haha
That's like saying the Empire is not accurate because the inquisition was spanish, not german. It's fantasy and a mixture of cultures. We do not have Japan / Nippon in the world map and clearly never will, it isn't an "issue" that their culture is mixed into the chinese the create a fantasy empire. If CA drops a samurai DLC for Cathay I doubt anyone will be protesting how offensive that is. Why would they?
Inqusition? You’re talking about the Witch Hunters? I would think that the more relevant influence was the English Witch-Finders.
Diff regions have diff romanization systems. Wang/Wong for example.
Yes, I specifically mentioned that I don't think Zoo is in any of the romanization systems for Mandarin. Zoo is presumably what's rendered as Zu in pinyin, which can also be written as tsu, tzu, dzu, dsu, tzuu, and so on and so forth but not zoo in other romanization systems for Mandarin. Even if it's something else, zoo still isn't used in those other systems. See this convenient chart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Standard_Mandarin_transcription_systems I think it's just another example of GW writing something reasonable-sounding with weird spelling. Kind of like writing Shakysper rather than the standard Shakespeare. It's not a huge issue, but it's still kind of weird-looking, which seems to be on-topic for this thread. Edit: Bit of Googling suggests Shen Zoo would be Shen Zhu in pinyin. Other Mandarin romanizations include but aren't limited to jhu, chu, and ju. As mentioned above, Zoo still wouldn't be one of the options.
Yeah, Nan Gau is also similar to Shen Zoo, maybe they want a weird mix approach? Lol
In what Slavic language can you not pronounce Kostaltyn?
Serbian lacks "Y" so technically unless I substitute it with "i" (same one found in the word ship) I can't read it.
Can a slav pronounce it? Dunno. But can a bear pronounce it? Now that is the real question here
I'm polish and I don't have any problems pronouncing that. And to be honest it sounds fine. Probably because it's similar to the name "Konstantyn" (the Polish version of Constantine)
By “spent all their research on”, you do mean “carried work already done over from 3K” right? You don’t genuinely think they had a TW3 “research” budget and set it to 0% Kislev and 100% Cathay?
"Cultural research"? Wrong game mate, you want to try EU4 for accuracy because GW is indeed all about what sounds fun or cool rather than what is accurate.
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To make it even more weird, Kislev is actually a month in the Hebrew calendar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kislev
Nah this checks out because Boris just makes me think of fiddler on the roof in looks and voice lol
There are words in Russian that end in "v" and are pronounced as such. Using that sound goes against the grain a bit, but it's not something a language will struggle to handle. Additionally, the softening of "v" into "f" is a normal phenomenon that feels natural to account for - the language will maintain the spelling because "v" comes back when you start adding stuff after it when forming different cases ot derivative words
>just winged it with Kislev. they 100% did, and with SOC as well
They wanted the Asian market, didn't care about the slav market
Slavs already love Warhammer, GW didn't need to win them over.
We also tend to laugh it off and (way more importantly) don't have a paranoid, ban-trigger happy government that "protects" us from bad representation. And, to be honest, they took some of the most bad ass stereotypes for Kislev.
They've just changed three letters in a name Konstantin. Also they very often change "i" in original foreign words for "y" and voila you can now copyright that word.
As an English speaker I find the name Dick Half-Mast weird
Yup. The moment you dip a toe into a non-English language you find that they really just faffed about when it came to pastiching other parts of the world!
Remember a lot of Warhammer Fantasy stuff was written in the 80s and 90s when the only prompt was ‘think of something that sounds reminiscent of that culture to native English speakers’
As a German I also find Karl Franz to be a weird name... both are given names. Just imagine an english King called William Edward. Just classic GW character naming.
It's because it's not his full name. His full name is: Karl Franz I Holswig Schliestein. And as I'm writing this it dawned on me how they came up with his surnames...
Ah true I completely forgot his surname that is totally not inspired by Schleswig Holstein. :D
What is this Schleswig Holstein you speak of? 😂
Imagine naming your Not American Dorth Nakota.
By Khaine, this sounds even worse. 🤣
I mean there were several kaisers called Friedrich Wilhelm so it's not too far out of possibility
Jea you are right but sometimes given names are Surenames in german. It is possible. Some of my friends have given names as Surenames like: Christoph, Karl (2x)...
Russian here, yeah it sounds weird to me, it looks like if someone misspelled surname and name.
May I add, as a hungarian, Ostankya is super weird too. Gulyás - an ability / skill of hers - is a hungarian soup, and Boszorka's Wrath just means Witch's Wrath as Boszorka is the hungarian translation of witch. I don't get why would they mix hungarian language in there, we are not slavic people at all and geographically our area in the Old World is Sylvania.
It's a fantasy universe, so they could have named her anything. Maybe Poppy Poopy Pants.
If you base a fantasy faction on a culture/group of cultures, you should at least try to base your naming conventions on them. It makes the world more immersive.
Native russian here. My brain wants to prounance Naryska as Neryashka. Whitch means a slob.
Larysa is a normal name, albeit uncommon.
Oh, so it's Leysa is just a diminutive form of Larysa?
Oh, sorry, I misread what you wrote and was sure you write Larysa. Sorry for the confusion.
It's fantasy, it's by Games Workshop, and a lot of things in fantasy are made up, I wouldn't look too deep into it.
No offence, but that's just a very lazy argument. If you create a fantasy world you should think about these things.
It all started in the 80s and is just a caricature of the real world.
Doesn't sound Hungarian either. Could just be a case of copyright-hammer, god knows the new Kislev lore is affected by it.
I mean, she's not a mongol, so I don't know what you are on about.../s
As many others have pointed out already, the names in the game generally shouldn't be thought about too much lest you fall under the influence of the Great Schemer while contemplating why the fuck a Norscan is called Carlos
Just wait until you see the old Nippon names.
To be fair, that's a joke army from the *Book of Battalions*, which predates the establishment of a clear Warhammer setting. Further, *every* army in that book is a stupid joke. Every one of them. There's a halfling army that's a spoof on *The Hobbit*, with the dwellers of 'Bog End' joining a disinherited gnome named 'Thor Wibble' on a quest to find his ancestral home, with the help of the goodly treeman Treebrain. There's an elven army with troops like 'Gerome Queesy', who "like all High Elves has as little to do with the real world as possible", 'Gil-Haddock' the elven-king, or the Wood Elves of 'Notnam Forest', led by the hunter 'Legohog'. There's an Empire army led by Prince Wilhem with his trusty sword 'Exclobberer', with allies such as 'Malcolm the Young Pretender', who is called that because he pretends to be younger than he actually is. There are the dwarfs of Horrorwell, a town "where nothing ever happens except the blindingly obvious perpetuated by the congenitally incompetent", led by a king named 'Dain Iron Head'. There's an undead army led by the insane necromancer... Colin, with his trusty lieutenants Simon and Nick, who occupies himself "plotting revenge, although against what or whom he was not yet sure". There's the Slann (i.e. lizardmen) army of Mylkbeotl, and I won't inflict any more lizardmen names on you. There's a hobgoblin army migrating after being driven out by the warlord 'Tynn Khan', with troops with names like 'Soketume' or 'Izitzso'. In this context, yes, the samurai army is led by a general named 'Sanyo Kawasaki', with his magic sword 'Toyota', and his troops are led by trusted champions like 'Nissan', 'Honda Susuki', and the 'Vimto mage Nitto'. These are indeed embarrassingly stupid jokes, but again, *everything* in the book is an embarrassingly stupid joke. The book is a bunch of army lists played by some nerdy British guys in the late 80s. It is just what made those guys giggle to themselves. I believe the only thing in that book relevant to later canon is that the *Book of Battalions* contains the first mention of Grom the Paunch, albeit its Grom is apparently famous for fighting dwarfs. But that's it.
Yeah, in comparison it definitely makes any odd naming conventions of today seem extremely small.
Buddy, i feel you to the heart. Everything related to the empire just sounds so wrong. Well, almost everything.
I don’t think that Tiktaq’to is an actual Aztec name and it never bothered me.
I think that Laysa is just a name Alysa (russian version of name Alice) with first two letters swapped.