If there are lizardfolk in the setting...

>>that's besides the fact they literally call themselves "Dwarfs" which means "short persons, midgets", instead of calling others "tall persons"
No, they don't. They call themselves Dawi. And humans call them Dwarves.

1) I'm not talking about Warhammer only; it's true for some other settings
2) seeing as dwarf language is extremely similar to english (ax = az, elf = elgi, etc.), which probably implies that Reikspiel or whatever the Empire speaks evolved from Khazalid, and dawi sounds very much like dwarf in that context. which means at the very least word "dwarf" evolved from "dawi" and Dwarfs are okay with it

>dwarves are okay with dwarf deriving from the Dwarven term for the dwarves
Gasp.

>dwarfs are okay with using their race name as a term for deformed people

in a setting with dwarves, dwarf wouldnt be an insult or the name of a disability. it would be the name of a race that after the fact may ne taken up as an insult for short people. its a chicken or the egg situation that changes from real life if dwarves are a real thing

why do you people like to talk about fantasy by ignoring the fact youre talking about a fantasy world?

>dwarves are okay with their race name as a term for Humans shed off their human weakness to look more like dwarves

because many of settings are painfully obvious made out of our world with fantasy tropes slapped on and explanation like the one you've given added or implied, instead of looking as if they organically developed

touche

it doesnt matter of its set in our world. the one thing that matters in this situation is that DWARVES ARE A REAL RACE AND ALSO HAVE BEEN. in such a situation humans would have a name for them before they ever got around ti systematically naming diseases. in such a situation a disease would have been named after the alreadt existing and named dwarves, not the other way around like in real life

Well, humans do still use a lot of human-conscious terms. For example:

GuardsMAN, MANservant, horseMAN, pikeMAN, the word "knight" comes from an old English word meaning "boy", etc.

Plus, naming things like "The Holy Order of the Opposable Thumbs" or "Justinian the Biped" just sound dumb.

PERSONSERVANT(otherkin) YOU SHITLORD!

Names with "hands" or "fist" work though.

>"The Holy Order of the Opposable Thumbs" or "Justinian the Biped" just sound dumb
that sounds AWESOME, you oaf

that's just the fact self-name of race is used as generic word for a person, at least in translation. that's a bit different.

although I agree that such a development is less likely in a world with multiple races. I should keep that in mind when designing a culture

Let's try making some species-conscious names that a human society in a fantasy world could use

>[First Name] Twolegs
>[First Name] the Smoothflesh
>[First Name] Middleheight (to indicate they're not a dwarf or a giant)
>[First Name] the Upright
>[First Name] Shoefoot
>[First Name] Haircrown
>[First Name] Flatnail
>Name for a royal guard: Stonetoes
>Calvary unit: Thumbchargers
>Mercenary band: The Hairless Battle-Bringers
>Religious Sect: The Order of the Clothed
>Name of a Town: Fingervale

>what, in-universe, causes other races to assume such human-centric naming conventions

Most DMs and players are idiots, that's all. They throw a sissy fit whenever you bring this egocentrism up to them. Story of my life.

Come to think of it, elves seems to be on the same page as humans in not really having race-conscious names for everything.

You don't see a lot of Elven names for things that include references to their ears of words like: lithe, long-lived, graceful, etc.

that's another thing, elves being just better humans, instead of their own race and culture

I'd ride an ape if it was big enough and not likely to pull my arms off.

What do you mean? In a lot of fiction, elves are portrayed as having cultures that are very distinct from humans and even from other Elvin cultures. Almost universally, the long lifespan of elves is portrayed as being influential in the way their society thinks about time and their interactions with races of lesser longevity.

Wood elves live in harmony with nature, build their houses into trees, use nature- and tree-centric naming for things, etc. High elves incorporate magic into their daily lives, value education and aristocratic-style etiquette, etc.

>Almost universally, the long lifespan of elves is portrayed as being influential in the way their society thinks about time and their interactions with races of lesser longevity.
and in 90% cases it's an Informed Attribute, plus some arrogance and slurs towards mortals, nothing else.

>Wood elves live in harmony with nature, build their houses into trees, use nature- and tree-centric naming for things, etc. High elves incorporate magic into their daily lives, value education and aristocratic-style etiquette, etc.
I'll agree on point of Wood and Dark elves, even though treehouses and spiky houses are such cliches that it's a diffferent problem altogether, but High elves are just humans from like a hundered years later, in manner of etiquitte and education, and their style is mostly mix of greek, arab and new age, all them flowing arches, wide ceilings, etc.
Inclusion of magic in daily life normally happens as often as the author needs and is completely forgotten half of the time.

The traits have to be something distinct about humans among other humanoids.
Unless they're in a world of quadrupeds, the leg thing is a common trait across species.

So, what traits are common to fantasy humans?

Prolific breeding compared to other humanoids and being a source of all the 'half' races in the world.

> [firstname] broodsire
> [firstname] bastardblood
> [firstname] xenophilicus
> [firstname] the elf fucker.

All said, I really love the idea of a human species that are oddly proud of their thumbs and fingers.

Agreed, especially if they ride giant living hands into battle.

>ride giant living hands into battle
holy fuck, that can be so awesome

>human paladin don't summon measly horses
>instead huge arms of their god's servants protrude from earth carrying them forward, leaving deep trails in the ground

>Tenfingers (ninefingers, eightfingers, etc)
>Skinape
>Hardsweat

Humans in basically every standard-fantasy-setting are just 'the generic ones' and it's fucking tiresome how the only way our species stands out in our fiction is from how much we like fucking other species.

Names like "strongarm" or "hawkeye" or "swiftfoot" are pretty standard fantasy names. Even when just used as titles for a particular adventurer (and maybe their descendents).

I'm writing a sci-fi setting for my next campaign, and it's set on three inhabitable planets orbiting a binary star system.

I fucked around for ages worrying about the best way to work out orbital periods and such. Then, I asked my players "hey, do any of you really care if all these planets had 24 hour days?"

Nobody gave a fuck. Most players (and DMs) are willing to accept some gamey abstractions for the sake of fun. Is "Urist McBloodaxe" an original Dorf name? Fuck no, but it's a damn sight easier than constructing an entire dwarf language from scratch, especially when it's a language used by a different SPECIES that almost certainly has different biology.

Sometimes "this elf is named Treehug Greenshrub" is just easy and gets the point across, and lets you focus on the actually fun elements of tabletop like the players attempting to make him eat his own familiar, or have him elected archmage despite having no spellcasting

>instead huge arms of their god's servants protrude from earth carrying them forward, leaving deep trails in the ground

Fear is the mind-killer

What's Hardsweat supposed to signify? That we don't pant to cool down like dogs?

I don't know man, you didn't specify IN WHICH SETTING all of those "facts" occur, so I'm going to assume it's a setting of your own invention and it's your job to explain them.
>hurr durr it's the vast majority of fantasy settings
Then you should have no trouble naming some examples. I'm waiting.

May aswell embrace it.

"Tremble in fear villains! You draw the ire of humanity's greatest heroes! Phallicus Manslut and his mighty companion lotharios the turgid!"

Oleander Omnimater and his squire Jack Alltrades, at your service!

Because humans are fucking weird perverts, man.

Look at this shit. All these civilized races approaching their societies properly, lizardfolk ride lesser lizards, hyenafolk ('gnolls') ride lesser hyenas, lycans tame wolves, boarfolk ride board, etc.

And what are the fucking apefolk doing? Riding horses and fucking sheep.

Perverts the lot of them, I tell you.

They were all human, once.

Hah!
I like those.

>Nobody gave a fuck
This, honestly. Planets and settings with their own time measurement systems, races with fleshed-out languages, all that stuff... it's DM masturbation. Which doesn't make it bad, wanking it feels good and is pretty harmless after all. But sometimes you need to ignore those urges if they would interfere with your ability to interact with other people.

Forcing your players to learn new names for months, seasons or week days will work out about as well as pushing your magical realm: some players will be into it, the majority will find it awkward at best and repulsive at worst. And a lot of DMs overestimate the amount of effort that should go into that sort of thing.

Depending on your group, you can save yourself a LOT of work by refusing to come up with fantasy slang, alternate measurement units, and similar autism fuel. Few people notice, and fewer care, even fellow DMs generally don't give a shit as long as they feel a basic amount of immersion.

TL;DR yeah, don't worry about this sort of thing, do it only if it's fun to you and not inconvenient for your players.

Ludwig the Omnivorous
Lackgill the Sailor

Lackgill is a fucking lit name.

Is that good?

This guys right
Even before the feather deal, they knew they were related to birds, decades ago they knew they were more closely related to birds, but they have never been birds or reptiles. Dinosaur is its own type

In fact lizardmen riding dinos is really not that different from humans riding horses

Humans probably encountered dwarves before they ever came up with the word. Deriving the word from dwarf, when a person is born small they probably say "youre short like a dwarf, haha dwarf"

Casual racism at the most, but im sure the dwarves don't really care

Yeah, a lizard's farther from a dino than a human from a horse. Of course a lizardman has a _much_ more apelike body plan than lizardlike, so OP may as well ask why lizardmen don't ride apes.

Solution: Make rats Incan-themed and slightly guinea pig-like. Use llamas and possibly capybaras or dinomyids to haul things around.

Main melee weapons are curved scimitars made from carved and scrimshawed rodent tooth. Capybaras/dinomyids donesticated in part because rodent enamel had been used for centuries to make tools and it's one of the hardest things they can think of, so they went for the biggest rodents to domesticate for their teeth and kill two birds with one stone.

>humans normally don't ride or tame or hang out with apes or monkeys

Other apes are not apt or not big enough to be mounts but we sure do (try to) tame some. Still, we ride huge mammals. I guess a humand-sized lizard on a horse-sized lizard is comparable to a human-sized mammal on a horse-sized mammal.

>human surnames don't end with "skin", or "toes", or any other features that differentiate humans from other races.
>likewise, human soldiers normally are not called "Skinguard" or "Legrager" or something. Footman and Armsman come from tad different meanings, mind you.

Yeah that's dumb.

>don't call themselves "dwarfs" or "midgets" even if particular setting has a large population of ogres, giants, or setting's elves are taller than humans

Usually, that's the human-tongue name for them. They'll have other names in their native tongues, Dwarves would call themselves something like "old people of the stones" and vocalize it as something like "Kradirinzon" or something.

But would they taste like chicken? This is an important question, user.

The naming convention is in common, a Human language, so it's human centric.
When your players are speaking in another language, you can try and make a point of elves calling their mixed races Half-Humans or dwarfs calling Humans Bigfolk and stuff like that.

Gregor the Sexually Dimorphic

Johan of Fleetlife
Antoni Vagrantkinned
Ronald Elfbedder

Because apes aren't big enough?

>>if there are lizardfolk in the setting, rest assured they'll ride and tame dinosaurs or some other lizards; their soldiers might be called something like "Scaleguard"

Reptiles/Dinosaurs are their own Class of Animal.

The difference between a Tyranasuarus or a Triceratops and a Lizardman would be comparable to a Human and a Leopard or a Cow.

Everything else is on point, but you lead in with a complaint that is based on ignorance of how non-mammalian animals work.

>lizardfolk ride lesser lizards, hyenafolk ('gnolls') ride lesser hyenas, lycans tame wolves, boarfolk ride board, etc.
This is terrible from an aesthethic perspective, you should never have animalpeople hanging out with normal animals of the same kind.

First the SJWs came for cartoons and I said nothing, because I did not watch cartoons
Then the SJWs came after comic books and I said nothing, because they were already trash for years anyway
Now the SJWs come for ttrpgs, and there is no one left to say anything

Justinian the Biped would be a perfectly acceptable name if most people and rulers of the empire were not bipedal. Or if "the Biped" is an epithet mostly used outside his own realm which is something that happened all the time historically.

>Edward Longshanks

>The names are actually a human invention: a slang term that stuck and has become the standard (mis)translation for the terms in the native languages of the other species.
This.

In my setting, "Common" is a human derived language.
Dwarves, elves, and such speak Common but refer to themselves by specific clans and regional identifiers more often than racial names. And when they do refer to race, they use their own terms that "dwarves" and "elves" developed from.

Fun fact: It works both ways. Most common symbols in human civilizations are basic dwarven runes and most humans have no idea. They just know that the symbol on a blacksmith sign means "Blacksmith".

>"Dwarfs" which means "short persons, midgets"
Not in my setting. Dwarf means dwarf.

I have both lizardfolk AND ratfolk in my setting.

Lizardfolk to not tame dinosaurs, mostly big ass birds. Their first names are based on Basque and Moorish names primarily, and they have a patriarchal society that has them doing the whole "son of____" thing
>inb4 someone mentions the evolutionary link
yeah, don't be a nit picker.
Ratfolk are treated like dirt , mostly because they are a slave race to the human empire. They arent common outside of the empire, and mostly are met with curiosity or dismissal as being useless outside of their family. Their names are mostly Anglican/ Celtic with their last names being based on what sort of work they do. Blacktail is one my player gave his character, but that is because his clan primarily worked on tarring sails and ship decks. As tech advanced they now drag their tails through the lubricating oil of the machining shops.

Other common clan names are "Stubpaw" as they work with munitions, "Rotlung" that work in the mines, or "White-eye" that are an up and coming clan that is skilled with rudimentary magic welding.

Has anybody made a wiki with these overused ideas yet? And called it /TG Tropes?

>if there are lizardfolk in the setting, rest assured they'll ride and tame dinosaurs or some other lizards
you act like this is a bad thing

Yeah no shit. I mean if the DM is okay with it, that's a good reason to have lizardfolk PCs right there. I wanna ride a fukkin' dinosaur too.

what's wrong with TVTropes tho? it has most of cliches already, and you can always add the missing ones if you want