I need another name for the Yuan-Ti Pureblood race?

[Nikushimi]

Hey there! It's pretty simple.

Yuan-Ti Purebloods in the worlds that I play are very rarely actually connected to the Yuan-Ti and I tend to separate them, but I have a hard time doing so without feeling like people would question their origins, or referring to the racial name "Yuan-Ti" Pureblood.

I am here to ask for help in coming up with a simple name that isn't something so on the nose as "Snake Blooded" or something.

So far the names I have are

--Snake Blooded (but it just seems kinda meh).
--Serpent Touched (Also meh, but...idk)
--The Venym (you know...venom, but like...fancy cause it has a y).

Honestly, I'm trying to figure out something that is simple and not complex, but isn't too...boring or long.

The current world I am building is based off of ancient myth (Celtic, Norse, Greek, Egyptian), and so if anyone has any kinda of inspiration from such mythology that could allow me some insight into words from those cultures that may mean Snake, Poison, Venom, or something similar that would be great.

Or do you think I should just not make it complicated and stick with Yuan-Ti Pureblood even though they have no relation in game?

[RogueJK]

Apophians {Scrubbed}

[Temperjoke]

I'd go simpler and base their name off the land they live in, or just have them be commonly called "Serpentfolk". You start involving other languages and such and it becomes harder to keep things straight.

[Amechra]

Ophidians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophidia).

[Rule-Of-Three]

Ophidians is good, was used in Chronopia. Stygians too.

How about going a different direction? Maybe they self-refer as "the Illuminated" as they see themselves as gnostic initiates in a snake cult, fundamentally different from humans and marked with blessings for their devotion.

They might see themselves not as a racial group, but a religious identity. Say the rite of initiation (if you don't want to have them born into it) is what transforms them.

[Izodonia]

{Scrubbed}

Or you can just call them Snakeholes.

[JediMaster]

Hydra. Think levels deep on this one. Like i%2.

[Segev]

Hebijin, if you want a Japanese flavor. It literally means “snake person.”

“Southerners” or “jungle-folk” or something related to a land they’re known or believed to be from could work, too.

The Alethi of the Stormlight Archive novels have very distinctive hair, but are just another human race. Thes humans who have a hint of scales could be no weirder than the humans who have red hair or pale skin.

[JediMaster]

Hebijin, if you want a Japanese flavor. It literally means “snake person.”

“Southerners” or “jungle-folk” or something related to a land they’re known or believed to be from could work, too.

The Alethi of the Stormlight Archive novels have very distinctive hair, but are just another human race. Thes humans who have a hint of scales could be no weirder than the humans who have red hair or pale skin.

Hebijin? When I google that term it doesn't come up with snake person?

[Segev]

Hebijin? When I google that term it doesn't come up with snake person?

“Hebi” means “snake,” and “-jin” added to any word typically means “person,” at least in the same way we’d say “snake-person.”

I’m no scholar of Japanese, but this is a construction that oc urs in anime often enough that I’ve picked it up. I don’t know the precise meaning of “jin” in its own. I do know for a fact that “hebi” means “snake,” and am 100% confident that a Japanese-speaker would recognize “hebijin” to mean what we recognize “snake-person” to mean.

[JediMaster]

“Hebi” means “snake,” and “-jin” added to any word typically means “person,” at least in the same way we’d say “snake-person.”

I’m no scholar of Japanese, but this is a construction that oc urs in anime often enough that I’ve picked it up. I don’t know the precise meaning of “jin” in its own. I do know for a fact that “hebi” means “snake,” and am 100% confident that a Japanese-speaker would recognize “hebijin” to mean what we recognize “snake-person” to mean.

By the google response I think you are dealing with swear words. Swear words play on language and require insider knowledge to decipher what is meant as the meaning is transmitted in code. I am guessing the word is deragotory of homosexuals.

[JackPhoenix]

Shulassakar. Those are rainbow-feathered, good Yuan-ti from Eberron associated with couatl and the Silver Flame.

[Galithar]

By the google response I think you are dealing with swear words. Swear words play on language and require insider knowledge to decipher what is meant as the meaning is transmitted in code. I am guessing the word is deragotory of homosexuals.

My Google-fu says that Snakeman in Japanese would be Hebio.

Additionally when trying to translate Hebijin from Japanese to English I got an autocorrection to Danin, which is apparently another way to say snake man in Japanese.

So Hebijin may very well be a slang or swear of some sort.

[JellyPooga]

Ourobourans?

[Arkhios]

Slitherface

[Rynjin]

My Google-fu says that Snakeman in Japanese would be Hebio.

Additionally when trying to translate Hebijin from Japanese to English I got an autocorrection to Danin, which is apparently another way to say snake man in Japanese.

So Hebijin may very well be a slang or swear of some sort.

Based on my extremely rudimentary knowledge and vague recollections from subbed anime, "hebijin" would probably be how you'd refer to someone who is "snakelike" in some way. Think "that person's a sneaky snake". Or maybe for somebody who works with snakes for a living (like a snake charmer), since it can be a profession based suffix (eg. doujin, or fan/independent artwork).

[Millstone85]

Shulassakar. Those are rainbow-feathered, good Yuan-ti from Eberron associated with couatl and the Silver Flame.I am (finally!) about to play one myself. Kept the racial traits from Volo's, simply replacing Abyssal with Celestial.

However, per Eberron lore, shulassakar are also divided into purebloods, malisons and abominations, though they call them bloodsworn, flametouched and transcendent.

So if the idea is to give snake-like humanoids a name that suggests no connection to the yuan-ti, this might not be it.


Ophidians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophidia).Yes, calling them ophidians was my first thought.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yes, calling them ophidians was my first thought. Another vote for ophidians. :smallsmile:
TIL: Hebio is Japanese for "snake person"
Cool.

[Segev]

By the google response I think you are dealing with swear words. Swear words play on language and require insider knowledge to decipher what is meant as the meaning is transmitted in code. I am guessing the word is deragotory of homosexuals.


My Google-fu says that Snakeman in Japanese would be Hebio.

Additionally when trying to translate Hebijin from Japanese to English I got an autocorrection to Danin, which is apparently another way to say snake man in Japanese.

So Hebijin may very well be a slang or swear of some sort.

"o" is usually a suffix for "ruler," not "man" or "human" or the like.

I am not using Google translate, and I assure you I'm not resorting to slang. I have not heard "hebijin" used. I am constructing it via the same means I've seen other fantasy races constructed. "Gaijin" is a real-world term that means "foreigner," the "-jin" syllable indicating it refers to person. I don't know that it breaks apart into two words, though. "Majin" is a common term, translated sometimes as "demon" and sometimes as "dark wizard," But literally just means "evil person." In this case, the syllables do break apart meaningfully, with "ma" meaning "evil." Or "dark" or "wicked" or "malign."

Like I said, I've never heard of "hebijin" being used anywhere. If you are finding it is used as a slur or slang term, then that's news to me. I do not think "hebio" would be correct, but again, I am not actually a scholar on the subject. Just a low-level hobbyist. Japanese portmanteaus are fascinating to pick apart.

[Rule-Of-Three]

The only time the word for snake coming up during my time in Japan was when they were drowned in sake and I was drinking the venom. Despite my self-poisoning, I distinctly remember the word used was "habu" not hebe.

This might be a dialectal difference between regions, or a habu is a specific kind of snake. But since we're doing armchair translations based off watching anime, I figure it's relevant. Maybe it's Habujin?

[Segev]

The only time the word for snake coming up during my time in Japan was when they were drowned in sake and I was drinking the venom. Despite my self-poisoning, I distinctly remember the word used was "habu" not hebe.

This might be a dialectal difference between regions, or a habu is a specific kind of snake. But since we're doing armchair translations based off watching anime, I figure it's relevant. Maybe it's Habujin?

I just googled “‘snake’ in Japanese” and the first entry was “snak” with the long vowel dash over the “a,” and the second was “hebi,” with a kana way of writing it above it.

Also, this site has a number of fantasy race names: https://www.curufea.com/games/western/5e/races_n.php

There’s a column for Japanese, and several of the entries have the “-jin” suffix. This includes “doragonjin”
for mature cold-blooded lizard men and “doragon” for ancient cold-blooded lizard men. Pretty sure this is specific to some specific game, though. “Doragon,” for the record, is a common way that Japanese people pronounce the English word “dragon,” when they want a “exotic” sound or they want to differentiate from “ryu,” which is “dragon” in Japanese but can carry some different cultural expectations.

Anyway, that’s only relevant if the names help the OP come up with an idea for renaming the yuan-ti pure bloods in his campaign.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

I would give the name Yuan-ti to the purebloods and let the seperate more monstrous creatures be snake people. another option would be Setites as from Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and later the clan with snake powers from V:tM.

[Dragonsonthemap]

I only have a couple years of college Japanese, but here's some help with that:

The -jin suffix is the alternative reading of the kanji for "hito," which means "person" or "human" on its own. It's pretty common for kanji* to have multiple readings, often one drawn from the native Japanese word and one drawn from a Chinese loan word, and for this to be taken advantage of for compound words.

"Hebi" does mean snake, as in snakes in general, on its own. Whether it would remain hebi or it would would be replaced with an alternative reading when combined with -jin I'm unsure.



*old Chinese characters imported into Japanese, used alongside the indigenous kana writing systems

[TyGuy]

Proper self identifier: S'haalessh
Other races usually refer to them as the following:
Polite-ish: serpentkin
Less polite: snake-bloods
Not polite/ slurs: fork-tongues, boot-skins, snakes, etc.

[SirDidymus]

Slytherin?

[Guy Lombard-O]

Ophidians is pretty great.

Maybe Nagaborn?

[Segev]

I only have a couple years of college Japanese, but here's some help with that:

The -jin suffix is the alternative reading of the kanji for "hito," which means "person" or "human" on its own. It's pretty common for kanji* to have multiple readings, often one drawn from the native Japanese word and one drawn from a Chinese loan word, and for this to be taken advantage of for compound words.

"Hebi" does mean snake, as in snakes in general, on its own. Whether it would remain hebi or it would would be replaced with an alternative reading when combined with -jin I'm unsure.



*old Chinese characters imported into Japanese, used alongside the indigenous kana writing systems

I knew "hito" meant "person" on its own; I was unaware that "-jin" was "hito" by another pronunciation but the same character(s). Interesting!

[micahaphone]

How about "nahadune" or "doonat-ha", from very very bastardized gaelic, of


duine nathair, aka snake person
which should roughly be pronounced dun-ye nah-hed.

But again, that's very rough pronunciation because I don't know how to use the fancy letters that dictionaries use. You can use this site to get a few different pronunciations of gaelic.

https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/nathair

[Nikushimi]

Ophidians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophidia).
Seems quite a few people liked this one, and so I'll think about it. It does seem pretty good.


Apophians {Scrubbed}
Not bad. This is tied with Ophidians for me. I'll keep it in mind.


Ourobourans?
Lol, this isn't bad and I'd have to play around with it though as I think it's a bit too long.


I would give the name Yuan-ti to the purebloods and let the seperate more monstrous creatures be snake people. another option would be Setites as from Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and later the clan with snake powers from V:tM.

This actually isn't a bad idea. I might do this, or at least take it into consideration. This would definitely make it easy and it would get it across easily that there is a difference. The purebloods are simply "Yuan-Ti" and the others are simply "Snake-Folk" or "Snake creatures" with no real name, or perhaps some other monstrous name that I can think up. I like this option a bit more than the others, but I'll keep it in mind.
----

I appreciate all the replies and help. I am open to more suggestions if people have them. Thank you!

P.s. The setting is that the Purebloods are a part of civilization, and have a part in both the Egyptian based land as members of the Clergy and in the Greek Based land as part of commerce and trade and even chose representatives. So they aren't living out in the wilds in tribes or anything. They are part of the civilized world. So naming them after a jungle or something wouldn't work. Maybe after a snake deity who, in the past, blessed a group of people with snake like abilities, and thus have since spread around the world.

[Segev]

The setting is that the Purebloods are a part of civilization, and have a part in both the Egyptian based land as members of the Clergy and in the Greek Based land as part of commerce and trade and even chose representatives. So they aren't living out in the wilds in tribes or anything. They are part of the civilized world. So naming them after a jungle or something wouldn't work. Maybe after a snake deity who, in the past, blessed a group of people with snake like abilities, and thus have since spread around the world.

Doing my best to back-translate the lettering, google translate tells me that a word for "priest, parson, skypilot" is "iereys." If they're regularly members of the clergy, that might work. They also might be "pythians" or "pyth" or something like that, given that the Oracle at Delphi was Pythia, and associated with pythons. (I think; I might be wrong about that last bit.)

[Nikushimi]

Doing my best to back-translate the lettering, google translate tells me that a word for "priest, parson, skypilot" is "iereys." If they're regularly members of the clergy, that might work. They also might be "pythians" or "pyth" or something like that, given that the Oracle at Delphi was Pythia, and associated with pythons. (I think; I might be wrong about that last bit.)

Ooooh, this isn't bad. Thanks for the info!

[Ettina]

I knew "hito" meant "person" on its own; I was unaware that "-jin" was "hito" by another pronunciation but the same character(s). Interesting!

That's pretty common in Japanese. My understanding is that when they borrowed Chinese characters to form kanji, they also borrowed a bunch of Chinese words corresponding to those characters. So most kanji have two pronunciations - the Chinese borrow word and the equivalent Japanese word.

I studied Japanese, not Chinese, but WordHippo lists 8 different Chinese words for "person", one of which is "yīng", which I could see evolving into "-jin" when borrowed. So that would be my theory - "-jin" is probably a borrow word, "hito" is the original Japanese word.

[Kane0]

Serpentkin
Scaleykind
Bluebloods
Forktongues
Shedskins

[Arkhios]

Doing my best to back-translate the lettering, google translate tells me that a word for "priest, parson, skypilot" is "iereys." If they're regularly members of the clergy, that might work. They also might be "pythians" or "pyth" or something like that, given that the Oracle at Delphi was Pythia, and associated with pythons. (I think; I might be wrong about that last bit.)

From Wikipedia:

The name Pythia is derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. Etymologically, the Greeks derived this place name from the verb πύθειν (púthein) "to rot", which refers to the sickly sweet smell of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after she was slain by Apollo.

I'd say it takes a peculiar taste of smell for the Greeks to settle a place with such a described odor, but to each their own, I guess! :smallbiggrin:

[rlc]

I would give the name Yuan-ti to the purebloods and let the seperate more monstrous creatures be snake people. another option would be Setites as from Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and later the clan with snake powers from V:tM.

Same. Or even just “Yuan,” and have the other Yuan-Ti be types of naga.

[iTreeby]

In magic the gathering, they had a race of snake people called the Orachi. You'd think that there would be lots of good snake people art from the cards but they decided snake people need four arms.

[Arkhios]

Yuan-ti call themselves vrael olo (which means "favored ones"). Daily use typically uses the shortened "vrael", and can be modified to "auvrael" (meaning friendly or known yuan-ti) and "duthrael" (unfriendly or unfamiliar yuan-ti).
—Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd, Darrin Drader (July 2004). Serpent Kingdoms. (Wizards of the Coast), p. 10.—

[Witty Username]

Scale blooded? dragon touched? Serpent folk?

[KorvinStarmast]

Scale blooded? dragon touched? Serpent folk? With reference to their tongues, just call them forkers. :smallcool:

[Kemev]

I usually just go with snakefolk. In some ways it's not super creative, but most RL people are bad at naming things (River Avon? Gobi Desert?) so I figure it's an easy way for in-setting peasants to differentiate snake people from other reptile people (lizardfolk).


In magic the gathering, they had a race of snake people called the Orachi. You'd think that there would be lots of good snake people art from the cards but they decided snake people need four arms.

I forgot about the Orochi. They had a lot of tragically terrible art (like snake ladies with exaggerated cleavage, despite being egg-laying reptiles).

[Arkhios]

(like snake ladies with exaggerated cleavage, despite being egg-laying reptiles).

Well, platypus lays eggs and breastfeeds their litter, because they're mammals.

Just saying, maybe orochi are the same.


Now that I looked more into the Orochi cards, I wouldn't be surprised if they would be modeled after yuan-ti from D&D and the legendary Yamata no Orochi (or just Orochi), which is originally a mythological japanese dragon/serpent with eight heads and eight tails.

[Dragonsonthemap]

Well, platypus lays eggs and breastfeeds their litter, because they're mammals.

Just saying, maybe orochi are the same.


Now that I looked more into the Orochi cards, I wouldn't be surprised if they would be modeled after yuan-ti from D&D and the legendary Yamata no Orochi (or just Orochi), which is originally a mythological japanese dragon/serpent with eight heads and eight tails.

Kamigawa had a lot of cool setting design (some of M:tG's best and most underappreciated), but comes from a low point of mechanical design and artistic direction in M:tG's history.

There's some limited folkoric basis for snake people characters in Japan (especially a folktale around a character called Orochimaru, also the basis of the Naruto character), which is probably where they got it from. Whether Orochimaru's name comes from Yamata no Orochi or whether it's a different Kanji reading of hebi or another word, I'm not sure and haven't found a clear answer to.

[TigerT20]

Just steal from Ninjago. Perfect crime.

Lets see what I can remember...

They're generally known as the Serpentine
The 5 tribes are:
Venomari
Constrictai
Fangpyre
Hypnobrai
and the Anacondra.

(ok yes, I had to google it. I'm a sham)