Scientific Names

This may seem familiar because I originally posted it on the old forum but anyway the main idea is to have a thread where we can come up with and vote for names for objects in minecraft. The goal is to create official scientific name for things that all scientist will use.

Vox Transfero - Redstone
Luminarium Sator - Lightstone
Maximus Incendia - TNT
Abyssus Calx - Hellstone
More shall come later.
These were made with a latin translator, and a descriptive word or two of the block type. Lightstone = Light Creator. Redstone = Power Transfer

Nice!

zombe - victus somes, which means living corpse
creeper - incendia sero, which means fire plant

People seem to be leaning towards latin...

Latin is the laungage of science

Skeleton: Sono Formidilosus

Being a conlanger, I could theoretically develop a constructed language for our scientific community to use when with other members of the scientific community. So far I have a few I have already made, but I could develop a romantic-latin based conlang for us to use. Right now, my conlangs lean to the Germanic and I even have an agglutinative one that is used in my signature.

My developed conlangs so far are

Akhum- simple SVO conlang, strange consonant inventory and orthography
Goðr Tungmaar- Germanic conlang based on Icelandic and Faroese as well as old Norse and Norn
Çirkin Khena- written with georgian script, so cant use in game, but could romanize to be typed
Avaa- Agglutinative conlang designed to look like Finnish but really has no relation, used in my signature. Very difficult to learn.

st3pur308=bigius genitalius

obolisk0430 wrote:

Latin is the laungage of science

But physics is based in Greek...
Hate to rain on your parade...

ThePixie35 wrote:

obolisk0430 wrote:

Latin is the laungage of science

But physics is based in Greek...
Hate to rain on your parade...

That, and most of these translations make me want to scream, online translators are about the worst thing you can use if you want anything remotely grammatically correct.

Well, I don't actually mind... We do need to choose a language... Just to make the science sound pretty and cool...

Latin or Greek... Or another dead language?

Latin translation is pretty easy for me. My friend is a Latin freak :L They'll give me a hand with Latin if thats what you guys decide...

When using automatic translation, always make sure to check what the reverse translation actually says. NEVER BELIEVE THE FIRST RESULT. You'll often end up with inaccurate synonyms. You hear that Spehss Mahreen from 6 months ago?

I have studied Latin, Japanese, Spanish, and took a Linguistics class where we decoded Swahili. Using my linguistic knowledge, I was able to use an online translation service to have a brief (3 sentences) conversation with somebody in near perfect Finnish. Online translators do work but you have to know how to use them.

One big problem in translating Minecraft terminology is that there's no need for it. Latin is the language of science because it was a shared universal language of the educated in rennaisance Europe. It's not French or German or English or Italian or Spanish. Nowadays due to having been the language of the two most economicly powerful nations in the world for the past 100+ years(British Empire, and USA), English serves the purpose of being a "Shared Language". Minecraft was made in Sweden by a Swedish-speaking Swede, yet the game (to the extent that language even matters in minecraft) is in English.

However, translating stuff into Latin is inherently cool, so that brings us to a second problem:
What meaning are you trying to convey?
The most obvious difficulty is in translating "Redstone". Lapis Ruberis would be a direct translation, but is it meaningful? Spehss Mahreen's intention of "Power Transfer" describes what it does, sort of (ignore the fact that his translation failed), but Redstone isn't used to power things like electricity is. What it does is send signals. However, trying to translate it as "Signal Dust" gives us the somewhat uninspiring name of "Pulvis Signis" However, in browsing through various translations of "dust" or "powder", I encountered an interesting word: "balux". Balux is a word for gold-dust, or fine-grained gold. It's one of those interesting words which refers to a very specific thing, and doesn't seem obviously related to anything else. Nonetheless, I was a bit inspired. While researching translations of Red I found that "Rutilis" meant a red or reddish-gold color, so there's already some degree of conflation of warm colors, so something relating to "ballux" might work for describing Redstone. Then I had a flash of inspiration for what would totally be an awesome name for Redstone: "Rubalux"

Rubalux is admittedly a made-up word, and not true Latin, and although its compound form places the adjectival portion before the noun in a way which Latin grammar frowns upon, it has the intruiging property of looking like a combination of "Ruba" and "Lux". So Rubalux contains within it two simultaneous meanings "Red Gold Dust" and "Red Light", both of which hearken to its properties and behaviors. A Redstone Torch could be "Fax Rubalux". There's more than one translation of "torch", but "Fax" sounded the best in combination. The accent should be on the second 2nd syllable, "roo-BAH-lux".

What about zombies? Zombie isn't a word from english, and so doesn't mean anything that could be translated. So we have to translate a description of them. Obolisk's "Victus Somes" was an attempt at that, trying to translate "Living Corpse" but actually means something closer to "Nutritious Body" (which is what the zombies view US as). "Walking Dead" gives us "Mortus Ambulus", "Moaning Dead" gives us "Mortus Fremitus" or "Mortus Gemitus", "Risen Dead" gives "Mortuus Obortus" which rhymes in an entertaining manner. "Cadaver Necator" means "Murderer Corpse". I haven't hit one which particularly strikes my fancy. Good translation is hard.

To be completely honest, I wasn't really trying hard with the names.
But I understand where you are coming from, Hans.
Someday, as pointless as it is, I'm sure we could probably get a large list going.

Does this mean Val's title will be changed to Downsius Maximos? Also, I would suggest things, but it seems Hans has everything under control. (Even though this is an old thread)

*Looks at Hans' post.*

*Thinks to self* Oh god... another one that knows I used a Latin translator to come up with the clan name...

How deep into Japanese did you get Hans?

Before I started ONA, I spent a lot of time studying it from books... but now I've forgotten a lot XD.

Everyone's in on your secret, Val. You can't hide in your shell anymore.

Valerius Maximus wrote:

*Looks at Hans' post.*

*Thinks to self* Oh god... another one that knows I used a Latin translator to come up with the clan name...

How deep into Japanese did you get Hans?

Before I started ONA, I spent a lot of time studying it from books... but now I've forgotten a lot XD.

Heh, I just realized that although each of the words of the Clan-Name translates properly into Latin, I think the grammar might be suspect. I've forgotten much of the grammar though. I took 3 years of Latin in highschool some 7 years ago, and 2 quarters of Japanese 4 years ago.

Yeah, individually the words are correct, there's just a bit of casing problems with Novus and Aevum. Aevum should be genitive and Novus should be changed to match it's genitive ending.

Aevitatis Novi Ortus

I think that would be a decently correct translation of "Dawn of a New Age". This could have serious implications.

ANO! ANO!


...

Don't worry, VMax. I still love you.

I think i should take control of this latin stuff, i have been playing some Assassins Creed Brotherhood lately... oh how educational killing borgia guards is!

st3pur308 wrote:

I think i should take control of this latin stuff, i have been playing some Assassins Creed Brotherhood lately... oh how educational killing borgia guards is!

PLEASE tell me you're joking and don't actually think that playing a video game set in rennaisance Italy gives you an adequate understanding of classical Latin grammar. It's kinda hard to tell sometimes.

st3pur308 wrote:

I think i should take control of this latin stuff, i have been playing some Assassins Creed Brotherhood lately... oh how educational killing borgia guards is!

Actually, its very educational. Taught me all about the poem, My Last Duchess By Robert Browning...

Or how about we translate the whole language into something completely different?

We could always just say the clan name is ONA
like KFC isn't legally Kentucky Fried Chicken
and I've heard that NPR is no longer National Public Radio (or at least the thought came up)