Naming religions and all the stuff that goes with them

[Velka]

I'm interested to hear how other scribers come up with names for their religions and all the muckety-muck that goes with them.

I can name gods no problem, but when it comes to naming the religion itself, what the followers are called, what to call the places of worship, what to call the religion's "holy people" I stutter and stammer and use very common words (temple, priest, monk, etc)

Are there any resources or thought processes you use to come up with the nuts and bolts names of your religious structures? Please share!

 

[Banten]

For naming the religion you could look at multiple things. You can name it after the important people in this religion. For example, Christianity is ofcourse named after its prophet and so are bahai, jainism, zoroastrianism, buddhism and Rastafarianism (The birthname of Emperor Haile Selassie was Tafari). You can name the religion after its principle values. Example for this is Islam (meaning submission). You can also name it after the birthplace of the religion (Judaism from the place Judea), or after its gods (asatru), or even after an important practise of its adherents (Totemism, Shamanism, Druidism).

All other things you ask for can be derived from the same things.

 

[trentonian7]

Most ancient religions didn't have names- especially in polytheistic societies, where different religions could exist without contradicting one another.

Many religions and religious peoples are named after founders. Judaism and Jews are named after the tribe of Judah, a man. Buddhism is named after Buddha, a prophet. Christianity stems from the word Christ, the founder. Confucianism is named after Confucious, Janism after Jane.

In other words, many new religions begin as cults led by charismatic leaders and the names of these leaders are often used to give a name to their ideaologies.

Other religious terms, though sounding new, are simply words from other languages.

"Islam" is Arabic for "submission" as in submission to God. A follower of Islam, a Muslim, is "one who submits."

This gives you several options in naming faiths and followers: draw names from founding charismatics, use fake words from other languages in your world, or use the English translation of such words; i.e., call your religion "Submission" rather than Islam.

 

[Nimue]

Oh god, I have this problem too. It depends massively on the culture and setting, right? Do you have a specific case you're trying to brainstorm for?

The one time I've tried to come up with religious names, I ended up with chantry/chanter/chantress for a religion that passed history and doctrine through song. Realized six months or so into writing the story that the Chantry was what the church was called in the Dragon Age games. Still kept it, because I literally couldn't think of anything else.

 

[TheKillerBs]

I went with the polytheistic unnamed route. Coming up with the deities names was still a nightmare though.

 

[ThinkerX]

I went with a pseudo-Christian religion. One God, an entity of spirit, who interacts with the world via lesser entities - angels, spirits, prophets. A bit like Gnosticism.

The 'True Church' has a multitude of saintly orders. Same rough pattern each time: prophet or holy preacher inspires a bunch of people - including competent disciples - gathers a following that persists after his (or her) demise, Church authorities step in, review dogma teachings, make it official or not. In a few cases, said 'saints' are relabeled pagan deities. (something that arguably occurred in Christianity on occasion.)

 

[WooHooMan]

I'll just explain the etymology of my fictional religions and maybe that will give you some ideas...

Duotheism: They have two gods. Duo means two and -theism means belief in gods.
Rule of Three: Religion with three founders built around three virtues (rules).
Temple of Sun Moon Stars: Animist religion that believe that the Sun, Moon and Star spirits are the most powerful/relevant spirits. "Sun moon stars" is also a phrase that I think sounds nice. It rolls off the tongue.
Old Faith: It's the oldest religion that still practiced.
Midland Paganism: A form of paganism practiced in the midlands.

So, the take-away from this is that you don't need to stretch to come-up with a name. Just call it what it is.

 

[Velka]

These are great ideas and examples, thank you! To go further with this topic, how do you tend to come up with names for the hierarchy of people involved in the religious organization (e.g., Inam, priest, rabbi, nun, etc). I find when it comes to this I don't have an original thought in my head.

There's no specific story I'm asking this about at the moment, but in the course of editing my first draft I've been slightly disappointed by the mediocrity of my imagination when it comes to this, but at this point I am invested. Generally I'm just inquiring for future reference and ideas so I'm not so underwhelmed by religions I create.

 

[Gurkhal]

I usually have a real culture in mind as inspiration for my fictional cultures and then I take a word with a good meaning from that culture's language and corrupt it until it sounds like a name.

 

[Devouring Wolf]

The way I named my religions was considering how they differed from each other. If there is only one religion, it can just be "the faith". There's no real need to name it if everyone knows what it is. When I have competing religions, I name them focused on their differences. For example in one of my stories I have two different branches of the same religion. One branch believes there were five angels while the other believes there are eight so I ended up calling one of them The Pentagonal Church or the Wheel Church because the symbol of their faith looks like a five spoke wheel and the other one ended up being the Octagonal Church or the Church of the Spider because spiders are considered sacred to them. There's also a hybrid church called the Lirrian Orthodoxy which exists only in Lirry.

As for what to call holy people, I just made up a word, but its fine to call them shamans, priests or druids if you want. Failing that I usually call them servants, brothers, or speakers (as in speaker for the gods). As for places of worship, for my current WIP, I just ended up going with church. I don't really think there's anything wrong with calling it a church, if it is in face pretty much a church.

However, in another of my stories, set in a middle eastern environment, I couldn't use a common name (church sounded too European and mosque, to me, implies monotheism. Temple didn't really seem right either because it always makes me think of Greece). I ended up using the term "hall of the gods" or just hall. While I make up plenty of words for the religion itself, the mythos, and even the practitioners, for places of worship, I prefer to use regular terms so that the reader will know immediately what it is without me having to explain. Inventing words can give a world flavor, but overdoing it can just make everything confusing.

 

[Miskatonic]

This is something I'm still waiting to devote time to.

 

[TheKillerBs]

I pretty much stick to the generic, non-religion-specific terms of priest, prophet and ascetic (monk/nun). I guess that makes for a boring hierarchic naming system, but I find it to be quick and effective.

 

[WooHooMan]

I got Paladin-Lords, Warrior-Priests, Big Brothers, Masters of Charity, Inquisitors - basically, I call them what they do.

 

[Velka]

More great ideas, thank you! I agree with what many people noted, it does depend a lot about what culture/geographical region you're working with to make things sound organic.

While I make up plenty of words for the religion itself, the mythos, and even the practitioners, for places of worship, I prefer to use regular terms so that the reader will know immediately what it is without me having to explain. Inventing words can give a world flavor, but overdoing it can just make everything confusing.

This sums up the problem I've experienced - using familiar terms removes the need for explanation, but sometimes falls flat in originality, whereas making up everything from scratch necessitates a lot of definition which is a pain to work in.

 

[Devouring Wolf]

This sums up the problem I've experienced - using familiar terms removes the need for explanation, but sometimes falls flat in originality, whereas making up everything from scratch necessitates a lot of definition which is a pain to work in.

The way I try to balance the two is again, by looking at differences. How does the thing in the story differ from its real-world counterpart? Continuing with religious examples. In my story, I just use the word church for a place of worship, because its a building where people get together to worship, which is essentially what a church is. Now if I were to write a more nature-oriented religion where the place of worship is a sacred glade or a tree, ect. I can't think of a word in English that accurately describes that and paints the right mental image so I would invent a word.

This is also why in earlier drafts of my story when my religion was in the background and there was no reason for me to extensively develop it, I just used the word "priests" for holy men, because they were pretty much priests dressed up with a few fantasy embellishments (which isn't a bad thing, that's all they needed to be). When religion became a bigger focus, I realized that they weren't really like what you would think of as a priest at all. They didn't pray or really fulfill the functions of a priest so the word became inaccurate and I made up a new one.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

I have a few religions in my world and their names are all pretty generic (or not really named at all):

The oldest religion just worships animals. There's no real name for it as a religion, people just refer to them as the animal gods. Basically, groups of people will relate to an animal and worship the spirit of that animal. They revere the animal, won't hunt it, stay out of its way, etc. Those who practice are just called followers of the animal gods.

There is also the Elemental Gods. In this religion, there are gods for Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Practitioners are just referred to as followers of the elemental gods.

The newest polytheistic religion is The Ten Gods, usually referred to as The Ten. There is a god for each finger, paired off by dualities (love-anger, joy-sadness, etc), to represent the duality of man. Like the rest, people who worship are just called followers of The Ten.

Monotheism is just catching on my world. Different groups have come up with ideas of what the one god is named and what customs he or she wants and there is a lot of fighting on this point. None of the monotheistic sects have a name, they just refer to themselves as "Followers of" whatever name they gave the one god.

I guess I didn't realize it, but everyone just kind of calls themselves followers.

That's just for humans, though - other races have their own religions.