I've begun working on a fantasy setting that isn't the most Earth-like. I'm researching to come up with species that could exist on the planet, but I'm running into a problem. Do I just call animals their closest equivalent in English or do I make up another word for it/another language for my main race? It might be an interesting situation to then send the main character to another land and have her describe things only for other characters to say, "Oh, you mean a dog?" or something like. Or would that just be annoying? I'm torn on this point.
My two cents worth: if the animal is, essentially, a horse or a dog, then I'd just go with using those words. I can't think of a reason to call them something else if they don't look, act, or function differently than horses or dogs. If they're significantly different in a biological, utilitarian, or aesthetic sense, then I'd call them something else and work references to those differences into the narrative, even if it's seen through the eyes of a character who takes the creatures for granted.
For example:
The Grelk nuzzled her chest, leaving a smear of purplish mucus on her tunic, then dotted its forked tongue to her cheek.
I enjoyed the
Dragonriders of Pern books when I was younger, but I remember how annoyed I was when I learned (several books into the series) that "runnerbeasts" were simply horses. I don't think she ever described them, and some reason, I imagined them as vaguely llamalike animals with horns on their noses.
One of Glenda Larke's fantasy books had creatures called "alpiners," which from their fairly elaborate description were simply horses also. I think she might have used the term because the pov character had never seen a horse before, so the animals were very exotic to her. Still, I think she did a good way of conveying how strange they looked to the protagonist without "
calling a rabbit a smeerp."
I also suspect that if we ever go to another planet and in the extremely unlikely (as per our current understanding of how evolution works) there is a very similar ecosystem with organisms that are analogous (and similar looking) to organisms in our world, we will probably start calling them "rabbits" or "dogs" or "carp" or whatever (in whatever language the astronauts speak), especially if we don't bring any of those Earth animals with us.