About ocean/sea names
Moody adjectives color these waters, from "The Sleeping Tides" to French results like "l'Océan Triste" and "le Golfe Volatile" that read as sailor superstition made official. Gulfs and bays imply coastlines to chart, while open ocean names define the blank space at a map's edge. Name the dangerous water first, since trade routes and plots both bend around it.
How ocean/sea names are built
Ocean and sea names use several templates on a water generic. The English forms join a coined word built from two fragment pools (536 and 266 entries) to a water noun after The and of, as in The Sea of Causaceeri or The Gulf of Broroare, while the French forms put a generic ahead of a descriptor (L'Écume Cristalleuse, Les Remous Flottante). The coined fragment word carries most of the English variation.
L'Océan Triste
l'Océan (generic) + Triste (descriptor)
French generic plus a descriptor
The Gulf of Broroare
The Gulf (water noun) + of Broroare (coined fragment word)
English water noun plus a coined of-phrase
Les Profondeurs Exquise
les Profondeurs (generic) + Exquise (descriptor)
French generic plus a descriptor
Naming notes
The generic scales the body of water: the nouns range from Gulf to Waters to Sea in English and Écume to Gouffre in French, so the same generator names a bay or a whole sea depending on the noun drawn. The French templates draw from a 12-entry generic bank and 160- and 173-entry descriptor banks. Pair a grand Sea or Gouffre name for the open water with smaller Gulf and Écume names for bays.
Questions about ocean/sea names
- How are ocean and sea names formed?
- Templates pair a water generic (Sea, Gulf, Écume, Gouffre) with a coined of-phrase in English or a descriptor in French, with the French forms drawing a generic and a descriptor from their own banks.
- Can one generator name a bay and a whole ocean?
- Yes. The generic sets the scale: Gulf and Écume read local, Gouffre is the deeps, Sea covers whole waters, so the noun you draw decides the size.
- Which bank carries the English variation?
- The coined fragment word after of, built from the 536- and 266-entry pools, so the of-phrase varies far more than the small set of water nouns.