New names!

Though I'm not writing on the game this month, I have been using bits of time to do some creative admin-work, like cleaning up character goals and names. I want the names to represent a good spread of all the cultures here, as well as acting as lodestones for what their personalities are like.

You may recall the Bokkie character, for whom "Bokkie" was just a nickname. I've taken that idea further now and given almost all characters a nickname which will function as the name you know them by. Thus, the following character names have now changed:

• Aten-Ko the equitaur: previously named for some Ancient Egyptian gods, I decided Egypt was too overdone. He is now named Boerewors, after a food that I encourage you to look up. The relationship will be evident :P
• Bul the boerboel. I was never super happy with this name, but couldn't find a better fit. I now have: "Jags". This is the short form of "Groot Jagter", which means "Great Hunter". Kids here often get named things which express their parents' desires for their lives. You can compare it with people calling their kids Charity or whatnot, except it can be even more direct. A good example is the first name "De Wet", which directly translates as "The Law" and stems from a religious background. Plus, "Jags" has an exceedingly apropos meaning, so ;)
• Bek & Stert: "B" is a very common consonant here, so I ended up with a lot of names starting with "B". I thus opted to rename Bek to Kop. Bek means "mouth", so it was already not an ideal match when paired with Stert ("tail"), but I enjoyed the ability to use it without being insulting (bek refers to an animal's mouth specifically, and using it to describe a human's mouth is degradatory; "mond" is the human equivalent. But he was a wild dog so it made sense...or did it? Yada yada). But kop ("head") is a more fitting match and solves the "B" problem, so.
• Aonyx: this character changed from an otter to a meerkat, swapping species with Rav. But "Aonyx" was originally chosen as it's the scientific name for the African clawless otter. This wasn't a dealbreaker, but I ended up renaming him to "Suri" for a bit more flavour. "Suricate" is another name for meerkat.
• Bokkie: this nickname seemed so mundane after I'd gone and upgraded the others to have better flavour, so after some thought, I renamed him to "Zef". It nicely represents his personality, and is absolutely dripping with local flavour.

There are a couple other characters who I won't name here--since you'll get to meet them soon enough--who also had names changed, but you'll never know the old ones anyway. I hope to get a nice fat chunk of new gameplay out by the end of May, accommodating the entire arrival at Paardenrust and the meeting of many, many characters. Exciting times!