Name for Group in WIP

Adherents, minions, devotees, sillanites, sillies...

The Fellowship of Sillane.
Or simply The Fellowship and everyone would know what it meant.
"Oh you are in the Fellowship? Oh yes I once considered joining..."

Ekerites and Sillanites.

Can we use Fellowship anymore? I mean, Tolkien took that, didn't he?

How about, The Descendants?

The Heirs?

Actually, the Sillies were a punk rock band. I have a single by them, "Is There Lunch After Death?"

Sometimes fantasy groups and cultures come off as less "real" because they follow neat and tidy formulas for names that make them sound like they were invented at the same time. Example: we have the followers of Noodle and the followers of Bean; the former are the Noodlites and the latter are the Beanites.

In the real world names reflect the long inconsistent histories of cultures. I suggest that for whatever fits your story, you go off in some new direction for each group name and end up with words and phrases that seem different from each other in etymology, length, pronunciation, etc. Let them follow different rules.

In common language, we usually have multiple phrases and names to denote the same group. Followers of LDS got the name Mormons by tradition, although "Mormon" isn't part of the church name. I think it's a form of a name of their angel Moroni (not sure). The Society of Friends are better known as Quakers perhaps for similar reasons, because one name is catchier than the other. Make up a side-story that gives a catchy nickname to the group you want to name. Make up a reason it's easier for them to have certain names depending on who's using them. In a real world you're not stuck with one name for the group. Natural sounding names can have pretty trivial origins -- they have a long tradition of carving wooden staffs, so their jealous neighbors came to call them the Whittlers; or their original tribe fled a volcanic eruption so the name Fireheels followed them ever since; that sort of thing.

mhughes said:

There are two main races in my story - Magi (wizards/witches,etc) and Mortals (normal humans).

The Magi race is known by a more common name which translates into 'child'. This is because they are descendents of the goddess Sillane. They are wildly considered bad guys. There are Mortals who follow the Ekeri. I had initially named them 'The Followers of Sillane'. Unfortunately it's causing me some problems. "The Followers ... followed" for instance.

So I could use a few suggestions on a new name. I tried to do a search but honestly, it's kind of hard to know what to search for.:-/ Thanks much in advance.

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If you're using 'Magi' as the plural, then why not 'Sillani'?

The comment above about names for sects not deriving directly from what they call themselves (or their beliefs) is also a good one. Think about Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Baptist, Methodist, etc. Or Sunni and Shi'ite. Or Greater Vehicle and Lesser Vehicle (or Wisdom of the Elders, as they call themselves) Buddhism. If you've got a potted history of the religion, then a number of names are probably just waiting for you--and they'd have more resonance if tied into the history of your world.

I love when people refer to themselves by a corruption of a word that's been handed down that no one knows the origin of.

My favorite example is Leela from Dr. Who. Her tribe, the "Servateem," were so far removed from their original culture that they had no idea they were descendants of a survey team. It was a wonderful commentary on how easily a society can break down.

rihannsu said:

I love when people refer to themselves by a corruption of a word that's been handed down that no one knows the origin of.

My favorite example is Leela from Dr. Who. Her tribe, the "Servateem," were so far removed from their original culture that they had no idea they were descendants of a survey team. It was a wonderful commentary on how easily a society can break down.

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I so dug Leela.

Like most Catholics, I grew up knowing the name came from the Greek for "universal." That always made the phrase "Roman Catholic," emphasizing leadership stemming from one location, sound oxmoronic. As an American, I've always identified myself with a name derived from some Italian mapmaker of the 1500s, but I don't think most of my countrymen make that connection.

I think my favorite take on losing track of cultural origins was from a novel on the margins of the fantasy library, Watership Down. The rabbits in the story live with a strong religious tradition including creation and flood stories, a messianic rabbit from some distant past, and a rabbit of death one dreads to someday meet. [[[[[[[[[Spoiler alert]]]]]]]]] My favorite development of this theme came at the end. One of the heroes of the story, now elderly, overhears stories being told to the kittens about their messiah rabbit which are actually retellings of his own brave adventures earlier in life -- the story sounds familiar, but his old weak bunny mind can't quite place it. Beautiful concept.