When writing a fantasy story, it is not unusual to stumble across the need for a word that doesn’t actually exist within any language. This is how I go about creating words that don’t actually exist.

Throughout this explanation I will use the example that I recently struggled with finding an appropriate word for. In this case I wanted a word that meant something along the same lines as “people” but would also address the fact that it wasn’t just human beings, but all manor of mythical creatures.

Method #1: Re-purposing

The first is re-purposing a word that is already in existence, but simply giving it a different meaning and sense to it within the story. This can very often work, and based on the way you use it can really save you a lot of time. In my case I was simply considering using the word “species” in order to address the general mythical population of my world. The short coming of this method is that if not done correctly then the reader will associate this word with it’s original definition, and will not pick up on the new meaning that you are assigning it. However, working within the language that you are already working in can be very helpful to readers, especially when it comes to being able to pronunciation and already having a basic understanding of the word.

Method #2

The second is one that I really like, in that I search the word that I am looking for and finding it in many different languages. I usually use google translate despite how unreliable it can be but wordreference and linguee are also great translation sites to help you find more accurate translations. In this case I started with species. My second language is French so I usually begin with that. In this case, species in French is éspece. I then went on to other languages finding the translations to be: gnèithean, tane, mau ‘ano. I usually like to include at least one language that doesn’t use the roman alphabet. In this case, tane is Japanese but simply using the roman alphabet. Usually google translate provides this below the actual kanji.

Once I have all of this information I begin trying to combine these words together to create a new word. I came up with things like: tespau, tapean, spane, and spèce. I could have played around with these a little more but I didn’t really like anything I had come up with. I really like this method a lot though, as it uses the same word over and over again from different languages, which to me feels like a concentrated version of the word.

After trying species I went through the same process with a different word. This way I could get some different ideas about what I was writing and a slightly different meaning. This is really fun to play around with and I highly recommend it. Use different letters to begin the word, take different aspects and put them in different orders until you have a word that you think fits what you were going for.

Method #3: Word Jumble

The third and final way that I use to come up with a made up word (and I also use this for location names) is by writing a sentence and then removing words or letters. This can be done in two ways, either by simply smooshing all the words together into a single word, taking things out to keep the word from being too long or by eliminating any repeating letters until you have a much shorter list to work with as you will.

In my case I went with the second option, but I have used the first to name some of my countires. For example Lothose is compressed from logos over pathos.

I began with the phrase: “Folk who live on earth”.

I then got rid of the letters that repeated. This left me with: Fkwivnart

I then rearranged the letters a few times until I came up with a word that I liked. This ended up being: Finawat.

It’s up to you if you want to use all of the letters or only some. I chose to only include some in this one as it created a word that had the sound I was looking for.

The Dreaded Grammar

The final thing that you have to do is decide what grammatical function this will serve. In this case it is a noun. But it can be turned into a verb like any word by simply adding -ing to the end: finawating. I don’t really know what that would mean but by simply adding on common endings to a made up word you can easily create a word that functions within any grammatical sense. You want and adverb? Add -ly. Verb? Add -ing or -ed. Adjective? You can probably just leave it as it is and put it where the adjective would normally go: She is finawat. What does that mean? who knows! But as the author it is your job to ensure that your reader understands what this made up word is supposed to represent.