Natti's Nest

Introducing Pxaywll, a funny little original creature I invented for my little Na'vi swamp. He's large and in charge and will swallow you whole 🖤

I based it on a Chinese giant salamander with crocodile hunting mechanics.

Vague spoilers for my fic Reflections of Eywa.

Enjoy!

Pxaywll

Creature: Pxaywll (Commonly: Silt-Stalker) 

Na'vi Name: Pxaywll (Derived from Pxay—meaning "to be silent/quiet" and wll—a truncated form related to water/swamp).

Diet: Piscivore/Opportunistic Carnivore (If it fits in the mouth, it’s lunch). 

Threat Level: High. It doesn't hunt by sight; it hunts by vibration. 

Pandora Logic: Unlike the Thanator which relies on speed and active hunting, the Pxaywll relies on things stumbling into its immediate area. If you are unfortunate enough to tread it’s waters you likely won't realize it until it's too late. It is an opportunistic hunter so anything that is of substantial size, whether it’s a small animal, a Na’vi or something larger, it immediately becomes a prey item.

Physical Structure: Instead of standard legs, the Pxaywll has six sets of short, strong legs with clawed toes used for traction, digging, and steering through the water.. It has a large massive tail that they use to launch them out of the water with shocking speed (like a crocodile)

Sensory Pits: Lining its heavy, flattened jaw are dozens of electro-receptive pits (like a shark or crocodile), which allow it to detect the tiny muscular twitches of a Na'vi, animal treading water, or fish even in zero-visibility murky swamp water.

Skin/Camouflage: Its smooth speckled skin mimics the pattern of the silt and samp bottom. Usually covered in algae, it becomes indistinguishable from the swamp floor.

Pxay actually means “many” (the word for “to be silent” is fnu), and wll is usually short for 'ewll, which means “plant” (this abbreviation is very common in flora names, naturally hrh, though I don’t think I’ve seen it in a fauna name before). For example, the Na'vi word for dapophet, that healing plant that grows near water in AFOP, is paywll - “water plant”! Pxaywll would mean "many plant".

hmm...if I may make a suggestion, perhaps something like wangoa? From wan meaning "to hide" and ngoa meaning "mud", because it hides in the "mud" (murky water)! Just a suggestion of course, feel free to take it or leave it 🙂

If you need a good source for Na'vi words in the future, these three dictionaries are the go-tos for most of the language community; they are reliable and well-maintained/kept up to date! 😁

I have a loose but not great understanding of the language (tho I'm planning on working on this because I honestly love the idea of learning it properly) but I came up with the English name first and then made a clearly bad attempt to translate it myself using internet resorces 😅

If anyone has any advice on naming mechanics I would greatly appreciate it.

Character and Clan:

The vast majority of these names do not use existing vocabulary at all: that is to say, they don't really have meanings. "Neytiri", "Lo'ak", "Tonowari", "Omatikaya", etc. don't really translate to anything, they're just names!

On the rare occasion that a character or clan does use existing vocabulary as a name, it's only a single word, most often a noun. For example, Atan (light), Tsyal (wing), or Zeswa (grass).

A good in-depth resource for how to make character and clan names if you're new to it is Karyu Olly's name guide! 🙂

Flora and Fauna:

There are a number of flora/fauna names that, like character/clan names, don't come from any preexisting vocabulary: for example, palulukan or nantang or pa'li or ikran.

However, unlike character and clan names, it is very common for flora and fauna names to pull from existing vocabulary! Additionally, flora/fauna names tend to derive from multiple existing words, not just one like the rare vocab-based character/clan name. A few examples include:

toruk - tor last + uk shadow txampam - txan much + pam sound (English name: soundblast colossus) kxaylspä - kxayl high + spä jump (tiger cricket) winzaw - win fast + swizaw arrow (arrow deer) ekxanwll - ekxan barricade + 'ewll plant (gateway lily) lakwll - lak shell + 'ewll plant (rock orchid) tarsyu - tare connect + syulang flower

Sometimes the full words just get smushed together directly, like with toruk or kxaylspä, other times one or both will get abbreviated, like winzaw or tarsyu, or the the common -wll from 'ewll.

....a small note on making names this way, though - you might already know about this, I'm only mentioning it because it's a very common mistake I've seen in the fandom - be aware (if you aren't already) that the apostrophe in the Na'vi language is not decorative: it's a letter that represents a sound (specifically, a glottal stop: think the little catch in the back of your throat when you say "uh-oh")! It can't just be sprinkled in anywhere and it is not word glue, for the love of all things decent please do not use it as word glue 😅

(by which I mean, if you want to name your creature, say, "long-tongue", and you look in the dictionary and see that "long" is ngim and "tongue" is ftxì - do not call it ngim'ftxì! Put the apostrophe down!! Having it there is equivalent to calling it "longptongue" in English, with the extra P (or any other consonant) thrown in the middle for no reason. Please pretty please, just ngimftxì, sans-apostrophe 🫠)

cough anyways 😅

If you want a more comprehensive list of flora and fauna names, Karyu Eana Unil has a great one here of all the creatures and plants from the AFoP base game! It doesn't have every creature from the entire franchise, but it should still be more than enough to get a good idea of how flora and fauna names tend to be built 😁

Introducing Pxaywll, a funny little original creature I invented for my little Na'vi swamp. He's large and in charge and will swallow you whole 🖤

I based it on a Chinese giant salamander with crocodile hunting mechanics.

Vague spoilers for my fic Reflections of Eywa.

Enjoy!

Pxaywll

Creature: Pxaywll (Commonly: Silt-Stalker) 

Na'vi Name: Pxaywll (Derived from Pxay—meaning "to be silent/quiet" and wll—a truncated form related to water/swamp).

Diet: Piscivore/Opportunistic Carnivore (If it fits in the mouth, it’s lunch). 

Threat Level: High. It doesn't hunt by sight; it hunts by vibration. 

Pandora Logic: Unlike the Thanator which relies on speed and active hunting, the Pxaywll relies on things stumbling into its immediate area. If you are unfortunate enough to tread it’s waters you likely won't realize it until it's too late. It is an opportunistic hunter so anything that is of substantial size, whether it’s a small animal, a Na’vi or something larger, it immediately becomes a prey item.

Physical Structure: Instead of standard legs, the Pxaywll has six sets of short, strong legs with clawed toes used for traction, digging, and steering through the water.. It has a large massive tail that they use to launch them out of the water with shocking speed (like a crocodile)

Sensory Pits: Lining its heavy, flattened jaw are dozens of electro-receptive pits (like a shark or crocodile), which allow it to detect the tiny muscular twitches of a Na'vi, animal treading water, or fish even in zero-visibility murky swamp water.

Skin/Camouflage: Its smooth speckled skin mimics the pattern of the silt and samp bottom. Usually covered in algae, it becomes indistinguishable from the swamp floor.

Pxay actually means “many” (the word for “to be silent” is fnu), and wll is usually short for 'ewll, which means “plant” (this abbreviation is very common in flora names, naturally hrh, though I don’t think I’ve seen it in a fauna name before). For example, the Na'vi word for dapophet, that healing plant that grows near water in AFOP, is paywll - “water plant”! Pxaywll would mean "many plant".

hmm...if I may make a suggestion, perhaps something like wangoa? From wan meaning "to hide" and ngoa meaning "mud", because it hides in the "mud" (murky water)! Just a suggestion of course, feel free to take it or leave it 🙂

If you need a good source for Na'vi words in the future, these three dictionaries are the go-tos for most of the language community; they are reliable and well-maintained/kept up to date! 😁

The ones that are already good to go as-is are:

Lo'ung Ekxu - would not be pronounced with an S sound - will explain more below 🙂 Israra Mivu Sey'ay - first half would be pronounced like the English word "say" - if you want "seh", drop the Y 😉 Ru'ola Syumìo - syllables would be [syu] [mì] [o]. If you want the pronunciation to be mee-o, use the unaccented i (mio) - the accented ì is more like in the word "mitt" Ti'eslo Kizesia - syllables would be [ki] [ze] [si] [a], ki is pronounced like the English word "key" Tekna Faylanari Tsarila - ts is pronounced like in "tsunami" Zingra - it's only two syllables: [zing] [ra] Veyliri Rai'tel Anakiri Talunai Iskali - the syllables here would be [i] [ska] [li] Raolara E'sara Neysot'alotìno - bit of a mouthful but still technically valid lol! Though the tìn at the end would sound like the English word "tin" (as in tinfoil), rather than "teen" Noetra - syllables would be [no] [et] [ra] No'ul Taraku

Txeptun is also valid phonetically, but unlike the rest of the list it's actually an already-existing word! It means "orange" (tun by itself is a color word that covers the entire red-orange spectrum; txep by itself means fire - txeptun is essentially "fire-orange" 🙂)

Speaking of which, it's important to note that the X you see in txeptun or Ekxu actually is not a standalone letter, and it doesn't really make its own sound. The X in Na'vi is always paired with a K, P, or T, and it's there to mark those sounds as ejectives! Here's what the ejective consonants sound like compared to their non-ejective counterparts:

Kx, Px, and Tx are kind of like a more "popping" or "clicky" version of the regular K, P, and T 🙂

It's also good to note that, unlike in English, the pronunciation of vowels in Na'vi is very consistent! For example, an E will always be pronounced like eh, never like ee (if you want the ee pronunciation, you'd spell it with an I instead!)

Here's what the vowels (and diphthongs, which are essentially two vowels smushed together into one syllable) of (Forest) Na'vi sound like - doing it over audio because trying to "spell them out" can be unclear!

...all that said, here's some suggestions for "fixing" the remaining names on this list, if you'd like them! 🙂

Yil'e'umn → Yil'e'um Consonants can't cluster at the end of a syllable in Na'vi, and Na'vi doesn't use silent letters anyways (assuming the N is supposed to be like in the word "hymn")

Tìr'eorm → Tìr'eormì Again consonants can't cluster at the end of a syllable, so we move the M to a new syllable by adding a vowel - [tìr] ['e] [or] [mì]! Also worth noting that if you want the "teer" pronunciation at the beginning, you'd want to use the regular i (sounds like the vowel in "seat") rather than the accented ì (sounds like the vowel in "sit") 😉

Ke'tsyra → Ke'tsìra With the exception of the diphthongs ay and ey, Y is never used as a vowel in Na'vi like it sometimes is in English! (yes, this does indeed mean that "Sylwanin" is also technically incorrect - it should be something like Sìlwanin ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Liy'wye → Li'wey

T'mzy → Tì'umzi You have several potential options here really - the important thing is that you need vowels! I think Tì'umzi would be the version that gets closest to your intended pronunciation.

Ne'yt → Ne'yìt or Ni'yìt Ne'yìt would be valid, but Ni'yìt would better match your intended pronunciation!

Maxodn'Tey → Matsyonte (Forest) or Machonte (Reef) As mentioned above, X is not a standalone letter! Your note pronounces it as ch, which is a sound that does technically exist in Na'vi, but only in the Reef dialect. In the Forest dialect the closest you can get to that sound would be tsy!

Tìftang (the apostrophe thing) also cannot go between two consonants, so it's been dropped (note that tìftang in general is not decorative - it is a letter that represents a sound and affects the pronunciation of a word/name! The sound it represents is called a glottal stop - think like the little catch in the back of your throat when you say "uh-oh"!

Rynara → Raynara

Jir'ka → Tsyirka The sound/letter J does not exist in any currently known dialect of Na'vi! It is usually transliterated as tsy - for example, the official transliteration of Jake is Tsyeyk. As mentioned earlier, tsy in Forest is pronounced as ch in Reef, so if this name is for a Reef character you can optionally spell it Chirka. Tìftang dropped because it can't go between two other consonants.

Reyrorm → Reyrormì

Esyla → Esila The syllables here would be [e][si][la] - Na'vi syllables can't end in S!

If you want to learn a little more about the sounds of Na'vi I'd recommend this video, or this one for a little more about building syllables, which is very important for making "valid" names! 😁

Additionally, while most "Na'vi name generators" you can find online will just spit out messy nonsense, there are two reliable/trustworthy ones programmed by actual Na'vi speakers that will give you valid names every time*, if you want to play with them! They are these two:

Pamìrìk's Name Generator Tirea Aean's Name Generator

*well, 99% of the time anyways: I've noticed that Pamìrìk's will occasionally forget to put a consonant in front of pseudovowels (rr and ll). But as long as you're aware of that, it's an easy thing to fix in your names. Also, due to the randomized nature of both of these, it's a good idea to double check anything they give you in a dictionary (especially shorter names) to make sure you aren't accidentally naming your character something like "Outside" or "Empty" etc. lol

Sorry for the long response; hope it was helpful! 😁