Avoiding a name conflict

[WeepingElf]

If you, like me, entertain a hypothesis about a lost language (family) in the real world *and* build a conlang (family) upon that hypothesis, you'd better use different names for the two entities in order to make clear that you are talking about two different things - because that is what they are, and you always have to be aware which hat you are wearing at the moment.

That said, I have an issue with the names I use on two such entities. On one hand, I am entertaining the hypothesis that the language of the Bell Beaker culture, of which traces may have come upon up in old geographical names, chiefly the "Old European Hydronymy", some loanwords in the languages of historical western Europe (Italic, Celtic, Germanic), and maybe changes in the grammatical structures of those languages, may have been an IE language related to Anatolian; on the other hand, I am building conlangs based on that hypothesis.

The conlang family have so far been named "Hesperic", while for the hypothetical natlang family, I currently use the name "Hesperian". However, these two names are awfully close together, and in German, they fall together as "hesperisch". Ouch.

So I should better rename one (or both). I have the options: 1. Rename the hypothetical natlang family. 2. Rename the conlang family.

Ad 1.): Earlier, I called this hypothetical language family "Aquan", in allusion to the "Old European Hydronymy", but I am not sure about the validity of the latter, which may be the linguistic equivalent of ley lines - a meaningless pattern falling out of the sheer amount of data. Also, some linguists maintain that most of these names are just Celtic, and others ascribe them to Vasconic (a prehistoric language family of western Europe of which Basque is the last survivor), which shows how easy it is to read any language you want into a large enough repository of old names whose original meanings are unknown. Also, I called it "Aquan" at a time when I entertained a different hypothesis about this language, involving the Black Sea Flood (which probably never happened) and the Linearbandkeramik culture (who have nothing to do with either IE or the Bell Beaker culture), which I now have abandoned. This does not really hinder me from recycling the name but may cause misunderstandings as I used the name differently in former times, so I'd better not disturb the name "Aquan" from its eternal rest. (As a side note, some roleplaying handbooks use "Aquan" for the language of water elementals, which is of course not at all what I have in mind here.) Also, "Hesperian", from Greek hespera 'west', is a nice counterpart of "Anatolian", from Greek anatolê 'east', and according to my current hypothesis, Hesperian is a sister branch of Anatolian, the two groups forming the western and eastern branch of an entity I call "Southern Indo-European".

Ad 2.): What speaks for renaming the conlang family is that I am currently rebuilding it anyway, and again, there is some obsolete material in circulation. Also, I want an *intrafictional* name for it. In the variant of the consensus reality where these languages are spoken, most of them were scholarly described for the first time in the 19th century by local intellectuals such as schoolmasters, clergymen or village doctors, who usually were unaware of the existence of similar residual languages in other regions; then a French Celticist, who was researching substratum loanwords in Celtic, compared lists of such alleged loanwords, and found some of them in several such residual languages, and, comparing the grammars and word lists written by those local intellectuals, found that they formed a family "related to Indo-European", and gave it a name. And I feel that "Hesperic" is a not-so-likely choice. I am considering "Vesperian", after the Latin cognate of the Greek word, or something derived from a kind of self-designation found in several of these languages. The Elves, at least, have a tradition of being descendants of a people called the "Blue Horselords"[1], and maybe some other "Hesperic"-speaking groups do do, but that would give a pretty long name, and I don't know yet what shape this takes in Old Albic or any other of the languages. It could also be a name related to the Old Irish name Tuatha Dé Danann, which may relate to the Elves, so perhaps "Dananian"? (I don't want to name the whole thing "Albic"; that name shall be reserved for the branch spoken in the British Isles.)

[1] The "Blue Horselords" would be a memory of the Bell Beaker people. The Old Albic mythology also mentions a related people, the "Red Horselords" living further east, who would be the Corded Ware people. The colour terms in these names may simply refer to the colours in which they traditionally dyed their coats and trousers; extrafictionally, they came from a map of Europe showing the distribution of Y-DNA haplogroups, wherein R1a (which seems to be associated with Corded Ware) was red and R1b (which seems to be associated with Bell Beaker) was blue. Of course, such things are no longer as important to me as they were a few years ago when I grossly overrated them, but the names remained - and now have an intrafictional explanation that doesn't rely on Y-DNA haplogroups.

[WeepingElf]

I have found a reasonable solution, I think. The hypothetical entity is simply "Southwest Indo-European" (SWIE), as it forms the western wing of "Southern IE" ("Southeast IE" would be Anatolian); after all, the western part of "Northern IE" (the clade to which all known non-Anatolian IE languages belong) is usually called "Northwest IE" ("Northeast IE" would then be the group usually called "Greco-Aryan").

And my conlang family based on Southwest IE will continue to be called "Hesperic".

[Ares Land]

Good!

Out of the other options you mentioned, I think I liked the idea of a native name (in a conlang of course) best.

[WeepingElf]

And "Southwest IE" fits its referent IMHO well since it is an abstract name for an entity about which we know close to nothing, not even whether it ever existed!

[xxx]

we have Latin and Latin languages,
Indo-European and Indo-European languages,
Mayan and Mayan languages,
...

why not Hesperic and Hesperic languages...

[hwhatting]

we have Latin and Latin languages,

Ummm,,,, those are usually called Romance languages.

[Emily]

we have Latin and Latin languages,

Ummm,,,, those are usually called Romance languages.

well except for romanian, which is generally classified under the sci-fi/fantasy genre instead

[Darren]

If you wanna talk about a real name conflict in the Romance languages, there's Romania (the country where Romanian is spoken) vs. Romania (the Romance-speaking domain) which are at best distinguished by a single letter.

[Kuchigakatai]

If you wanna talk about a real name conflict in the Romance languages, there's Romania (the country where Romanian is spoken) vs. Romania (the Romance-speaking domain) which are at best distinguished by a single letter.

I notice English-speaking scholars tend to, well, not use the latter in the first place, and when they do they sometimes spell it as Romània, with a grave accent at least. (In Spanish it's less of a problem because there's Rumania the country vs. la Romanía the linguistic domain.)

I recall how, in either the 1999 or the 2002 Astérix live-action movie, in the French original, a warrior of the Gaulish militia at some late point (in the credits or after the credits, I think) mocks invading Roman soldiers by yelling Eh, les Romains, vous êtes des Roumains ! (Hey, you Romans, you're a bunch of Romanians!). The Romans then catapult a large boulder at him in anger.

[Travis B.]

If you wanna talk about a real name conflict in the Romance languages, there's Romania (the country where Romanian is spoken) vs. Romania (the Romance-speaking domain) which are at best distinguished by a single letter.

I notice English-speaking scholars tend to, well, not use the latter in the first place, and when they do they sometimes spell it as Romània, with a grave accent at least. (In Spanish it's less of a problem because there's Rumania the country vs. la Romanía the linguistic domain.)

I recall how, in either the 1999 or the 2002 Astérix live-action movie, in the French original, a warrior of the Gaulish militia at some late point (in the credits or after the credits, I think) mocks invading Roman soldiers by yelling Eh, les Romains, vous êtes des Roumains ! (Hey, you Romans, you're a bunch of Romanians!). The Romans then catapult a large boulder at him in anger.

At one time, the name of the country in English was also Rumania.