Tuesday, August 25, 2015

What's in a Name?


I don't remember now when exactly the name "Undecima" became officially the name of the game – it took me quite a while before I came up with it. I have decided right away that I'm not going with any "generic" game names like "The Age of Dragons", "The Clash of Giants", or "The War of Heroes" – there were too many variations of that kind in the Internet already and I wanted something unique. 

So, my next attempt was the "Middle-Earth" way – something like Elandor, Oarvind, or Meaneer – something that sounds like the name of a fantasy kingdom. Having together A and E (like Evealore) would make it even cooler as it would sound a bit more "Elvish". But again, all these names were lacking some substance; it wouldn't make much difference whether it's Evealore or Evaelour as neither mean anything to anyone.  

My last attempt was to use something from a different language; I played with some languages and gradually descended to Latin. At that point I already have an idea of separating the game into multiple levels, but wasn't sure into how many levels exactly. Again, I wanted to have some "unusual" number, and the first number that I couldn't associate with any other game I knew was eleven. I tried "Eleven" to see how it sounds in Latin – it was Undecimo - liked it, changed the ending to a feminine form and Undecima was the name.

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