Character Creation Inspiration - Ball of Nothing (Part 3)
I will be covering the inspiration for names for the Half Moon Villagers today! Just a small trivia, I get a lot of inspiration when I'm in the toilet, in a pool or in bed just about to keel over from exhaustion most of the time so feel free to guess how I got the inspiration for the Half Moon Villagers. There are a total of 38+1 villagers in Half Moon Village so I might not cover them all. It will be a very long blog post so please take breaks in between reading if you have to.
If you have any blog topics you'd like to see me cover, do let me know! If I can do it, I will schedule it accordingly.
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In case you did not know, this is my Ball of Nothing's entire Character Profile list. It's available for viewing for anyone with a link, so click it! Also, Ball of Nothing's Wiki still needs readers to maintain so feel free to contribute! Also, this should already be obvious but if you don't want spoilers, please don't continue reading past this point.
#1 Chieftess
When I first designed Half Moon Village's chieftess, I wanted her to be of a strong character with weaker stereotypes. The rabbit beastman design came first before the name. As the village's concept is a place for misfits to gather, I wanted someone to lead them in the way a rebel would. Hence, after much research about historic queens, Queen Zenobia fits the description. I adopted the name after researching about her. She's not a very famous queen but she's a worthy one.
#2 Founder
As I designed Half Moon Village, I also thought about how it came to be a place for rebel and designed the backstory in mind. Grandma Moppo was the only survivor of her village's massacre. Her lineage is unique to the story of her village and its name was only developed later. As a love child between fae and dwarf, this character has to be the one to suffer the most from living in a village completely different from the one in her memories where she grew up from.
Her character requires the fortitude to move forward despite the shackles of the past. The resolve to forget everything and start life anew with her new chosen family is what inspired the name Moppo. In Chinese legend, on the Naihe Bridge of reincarnation, there is an old lady called Meng Po who gives everyone soup to drink to forget everything about their present lives so they can have a fresh start after reincarnation. Moppo comes from Meng Po :)
#3 Cockatrice Descendants
Funnily enough, the inspiration for the cockatrice family in Half Moon Village comes from two different sources. I'll start with Amaraline whom I designed the fortune-telling ability. Her name comes from a flower - Amaryllis. The flower's meaning means 'to sparkle' but there's actually a gory tale about it. The flower has many versatile meanings and the purple variation is about spirituality so I thought it was a good reference to the name.
The names Lowis and Clowis come from a similar source - Louis. As they are both head warriors at different points in the story, I wanted names that gave them warrior vibes. However, it was too troublesome to call one Louis and the other Louis junior. It's more confusing to name them Louis and Lewis. I know that because I teach many students and this is a very popular name apart from Jayden and Kayden.
The only logical solution? I simply made a variation of Louis. Also, Louis came from Clovis. (I have a student actually called Clovis as well.)
#4 Mother & Son
As one of the two full-blooded human in Half Moon Village, I named the mother Karris after the image of unconditional love. Karis (originally spelled with 1 'r') has a beautiful meaning that was what I needed in my character. However, I changed the spelling to double 'r's because I liked it better.
When the baby vampire-human was born, I wanted him to be the opposite of Ruth whose name meant compassion for someone else's misery. Although Ruth suffered a lot from miasma poisoning and his strong clan died out, baby Seff was different. He had a weak human mother to protect and I wanted him to be raised strong (he eventually was but was also raised spoiled).
#5 Village Guardian
I think one of my favourite characters in Half Moon Village has to be this lovely zashikiwarashi (household ghost) Zoe. She was not an original occupant of the village but thanks to the love that the village was built on, she came to materialise as a by-product of that love. However, after the village was ruined, it was Zoe who helped Grandma Moppo rebuild it. As Half Moon Village grew, so did Zoe's happiness. Her name is her existence.