Usually with the naming there is some obvious idea where they come from:
"Mechanoids"? Mechanic + oids. Not a bad description for killer robots.
"Boomaloopes"? You milk them for chemfuel and they explode on death. "Boom" is a very apt word. And "loopes" makes me think of Herbivor for some reason.
But for "Gauranlen Trees", I can not think of anything. I looked around for "Gaura" the propable root/core of the word:
On Wikipedia I found one genus of flowering plant and no shortage of Hindu/Indian terms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaura_(disambiguation)
Google Translate is guessing for Rumanian:
https://translate.google.de/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=Gaura&op=translate
The meanings of "hollow" or "den" (has the Queen inside) and "earth" would make some sense. And there is a chance some other languages use it similary.
So, does anybody have a idea?
What could it be based on?
How would be it pronounced?
Quote"loopes" makes me think of Herbivor for some reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope
you should not seek "deep meaning" everywhere it's silly.
Sanskrit: गौर gaurá a. (ĩ) whitish, yellowish, reddish. (https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/macdonell_query.py?qs=%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8C%E0%A4%B0&searchhws=yes) The trees are sort of reddish, that fits.
Gaur is also the Sindarin word for werewolf. (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Gaur) Uh, that doesn't fit, let's just discard that.
You can dig and always find something quasi-plausible from the thousands of years of human mythology and fiction in multitude of languages. Then you ask the developer and get "We just thought it sounded cool.".
Xergium got renamed to Healroot, maybe Gauranlen trees get renamed to Dryad-trees.
Quote from: Ark on July 29, 2021, 08:53:56 AM
Sanskrit: गौर gaurá a. (ĩ) whitish, yellowish, reddish. (https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/macdonell_query.py?qs=%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8C%E0%A4%B0&searchhws=yes) The trees are sort of reddish, that fits.
Gaur is also the Sindarin word for werewolf. (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Gaur) Uh, that doesn't fit, let's just discard that.
You can dig and always find something quasi-plausible from the thousands of years of human mythology and fiction in multitude of languages. Then you ask the developer and get "We just thought it sounded cool.".
Xergium got renamed to Healroot, maybe Gauranlen trees get renamed to Dryad-trees.
The idea that "Gauranlen" is might be a product or scientific name but everyone just calls them "Dryad Trees" did cross my mind.
It being once called "Xergium" but now healroot would certainly fit that pattern.
I just realized my asumed root word was wrong.
It is the Gauranlen tree.
But the Dryads that make more are called Gaumakers.
So "Gau" seems to be the root word after all. Gau got a lot of meanings, most of them relating to palces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gau
In Cantonese it is also a vulgar word meaning "male genetilia" - so it would mean "dick!"
Still nothing I could easily associate with a tree.
Quote from: zgrssd on August 04, 2021, 09:15:00 AM
In Cantonese it is also a vulgar word meaning "male genetilia" - so it would mean "dick!"
Something something "wood."
But in all actuality, I'm not sure. They might've gone with something that just sounds cool.