Wednesday, July 23, 2014

compounds - Correct names for lycanthrope species with abnormally named base creatures



It's normally easy to name a lycanthrope species: just place "were" in front of the name of the base creature, i.e. "werewolf", "werebear", or "weredragon".



Sometimes, though, the base creature's name is an open compound word, i.e. the komodo dragon. The "komodo" part of the name is crucial to the identity of the creature; komodo dragons are not remotely regular dragons. Is the lycanthrope form a "werekomodo dragon"? The sounds like a dragon species with "werekomodo" as a qualifier. Someone once suggested "komodo weredragon", but that doesn't sound right to me, either. That sounds more like a dragon-based lycanthrope (which it is not), with "komodo" as some sort of qualifier. The final option I suppose would be "werekomododragon", which I favor most, but I still don't feel right about it.




How about the Mongolian death worm? This one not only has spaces in its name, but "Mongolian" is capitalized. Does the lycanthrope form end up being a "wereMongoliandeathworm"?


Answer



The "were" always prefixes a noun and does not prefix an adjective. Also, I don't think taking a group of words and gluing them together would be proper nomenclature.



So I would definitely go with




  • Komodo weredragon

  • Mongolian death wereworm




and my personal favourite:




  • Three-toed weresloth


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