Click consonants?

[mèþru]

I would give up on any but the most dedicated nerds bothering to learn proper pronunciation no matter how intuitive the orthography is.

[jal]

"Naming language" means a language that you create just enough of to use to form names in your novel or other creative outlet or the blank part of your maps whose cultures aren't your main focus or etc. etc., as you seem to acknowledge in your second sentence. But ... it doesn't have anything to do with "names" being different from other words, you're just using the phonology and vocabulary and grammar you devise to create names and nothing else, which is different from saying the phonology (and vocabulary and grammar) you devise are uniquely found in names in that culture. So I'm not sure what the first part of your argument is here.

Well, I agree I didn't express myself well enough. What I mean is that names on a map are typically, synchronically, often not recognizable by people using them. They may consist of old elements no longer current, and they likely have been basterdised over the centuries, if not in writing then in pronunciation (Great Britain is a good example of this). Never (to my knowledge) do they contain phonological elements not found in the language(s) spoken by the people using them. So unless a) the people in the story also use clicks and b) the people giving the original names (which may be direct ancestors) used clicks, having clicks in names doesn't make much sense.


JAL

[Zaarin]

What I mean is that names on a map are typically, synchronically, often not recognizable by people using them.

This is true in Europe and the Middle East, but in Pre-Columbian North America it was quite normal for place names to be 100% transparent. Also in North America I can think of plenty of place names that have equally transparent names in English: East Fork, Bald Mountain, Newport, Rockport, Rockland, Portland, Snake River, etc. (No, I'm not in Maine--I have no idea why so many Mainer names occurred to me...) Also folk etymologies have a way of cropping up even for places with opaque names (cf. "gate of the gods" for in all likelihood pre-Babylonian Babīl).

[ProfSaber]

(The second part is a good point to bring up, though, depending on what the OP's intended use of the naming language is.)

Right now, the language is intended for a fringe area that won't be the focus of the story. It's sort of a "getting my feet wet" language project, since I've found the "main" language(s) to be too daunting to do first (though I've tried). I don't expect there'd be many readers who'd even know about them unless there's a detailed atlas or something...

For the record, I've gone with the idea that its clicks emerged from consonant clusters, though I'm still trying to work out the full details. I've also been working on substrates for the region, which has a very long history.

[jal]

Right now, the language is intended for a fringe area that won't be the focus of the story.

Then I stand with my prior argument: if click consonants are only used in that area itself, the common names for these locations as used by people not living there won't contain them.


JAL