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Okay, so I was looking through the Advanced Race Guide, when I realized just how dumb-sounding catfolk and ratfolk sound. I mean, sure, they look like cats and rats, but they're really the only races who seem singled out by that designation in their name.
After all, gnolls aren't called hyenafolk. There aren't ravenfolk, there are tengus. It's vanaris, not monkeyfolk. And gods help you if you call a minotaur a bullfolk.
So, why don't we have cooler names for catfolk and ratfolk, if every other animal-themed race gets a better name?
I call the ratmen from Scarred Lands Skaven. In the privacy of my own hole, no space marine can smite me!
On Akiton, ratfolk are known as Ysoki. Use that name
As for the catfolk, nekomimi. Or, as most people call them, nekos.
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No calling catfolk the japanese word for catgirls!
Since we already are at the topic of japanese words, how about calling ratfolk nezumi? They do have a strong presence in the dragon empires anyway.
Anyway, it's not like catfolk and ratfolk are alone with their creative nomenclature. They're right there with lizardfolk, merfolk and gillmen.
Seriously though what else would you call them? Rodent/Feline Golarians?
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I came in here expecting this to be about how his players named their catfolk and ratfolk characters Tom and Jerry for some reason... :/
I like using Skaven as well, I have a huge dislike on for catfolk so one has never come up in my game to give a better name too.
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I'd suggest if you are playing one... come up with a word that the cat/rat person uses to describe their own race, and have him treat Catfolk/Ratfolk as a racial slur.
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Okay, so I was looking through the Advanced Race Guide, when I realized just how dumb-sounding catfolk and ratfolk sound. I mean, sure, they look like cats and rats, but they're really the only races who seem singled out by that designation in their name.
After all, gnolls aren't called hyenafolk. There aren't ravenfolk, there are tengus. It's vanaris, not monkeyfolk. And gods help you if you call a minotaur a bullfolk.
So, why don't we have cooler names for catfolk and ratfolk, if every other animal-themed race gets a better name?
You forgot the lizardfolk (Bestiary 1).
And halflings, who are half the height of the "normal" races.Giant eagles, who are intelligent, and probably don't see themselves as giant, but as normal.
The entire line of giant races. They probably wouldn't call themselves giants - they are normal size. Its everyone else who is abnormally tiny.
Look at the race names as what those races are commonly referred to as. The races probably have their own names for themselves. Like in Faerun, most people call them halflings. But to the halflings, who don't see themselves as half of anything, they are the Hin.
"Catfolk", "Ratfolk", and "Lizardfolk" are probably just the generic, Common name for them. Each race probably has its own name, but that is something that should be setting specific.
I'd suggest if you are playing one... come up with a word that the cat/rat person uses to describe their own race, and have him treat Catfolk/Ratfolk as a racial slur.
Came here to suggest the same thing; I did essentially this when I offered a race of somewhat dog or wolf-like people in a homebrew game.
Similarly, it isn't often you'll catch a human self-applying the term "apefolk" with any sense of pride, but I can imagine the term being used as a slur or at least a trivial nickname by members of some other races.
The difficulty is always in coming up with a name. You either have to go with some embarrassingly cliche mutation of a related word (dogs = canids = uhm, let's go with "canidons"!) or try to come up with a random handful of syllables that doesn't sound too much like some kind of hemorrhoid medication.
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Most of the things you listed are Earthly inventions and where named a long time ago. Advanced Races guide is designed to be generic so giving things names with context does not seem like a good idea to me. People seem to be suggesting a lot of Asian themed names, but nothing about catfolk especially on Golaria is overly Asian. Calling them catfolk and ratfolk also makes it easy for people who are not familiar with them to get a fast understanding of what they are. Sometimes simplicity is a valuable tool.Okay, so I was looking through the Advanced Race Guide, when I realized just how dumb-sounding catfolk and ratfolk sound. I mean, sure, they look like cats and rats, but they're really the only races who seem singled out by that designation in their name.
After all, gnolls aren't called hyenafolk. There aren't ravenfolk, there are tengus. It's vanaris, not monkeyfolk. And gods help you if you call a minotaur a bullfolk.
So, why don't we have cooler names for catfolk and ratfolk, if every other animal-themed race gets a better name?
Well, intelligent, para-human animals is pretty pan-Asian - it's part of ancient myth in India, China, and Japan, specifically. Even the European version - the legends and stories of Reynard the Fox, Ysengrim the Wolf, etc., appear to be related to the Indian Panchatantra. The closest unrelated parallel would be the Native American traditions or possibly the Anansi stories of West Africa, but cat folk and rat folk don't have as much of a presence there. That's why Asian names for them probably keep surfacing.
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So, why don't we have cooler names for catfolk and ratfolk, if every other animal-themed race gets a better name?
To me Catfolk will always be Rakasta.
No calling catfolk the japanese word for catgirls!
That would be nekomusume. Nekomimi is cat ears.
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Cat-Folk and Rat-Folk is just what their proper name translates into Common from their own native languages. Our own language is full of such examples of names being based on simple physical descriptions with names that translate to "black rock" or "river city" from various different languages. Also, people's surnames based on professions like Smith, Weaver, Fletcher, Cook, etc. or family relations such as Erickson (Eric's son). Or consider the Elder Scrolls series where the proper names for Elves are Altmer, Dunmer, Bosmer, Dwemer, etc. with 'mer' meaning elf in elven languages.
Why on earth would catfolk call themselves catfolk? That's like humans figuring "we're related to apes, so we should call ourselves apefolk."
If anything they would call the animal they resemble after themselves, but not the other way around. Because from their perspective they are the default, and the cats are resembling them (to go back to a real world example about humans and apes, the German word for "ape" is "Menschenaffe" which translated back means as much as "human-monkey")
+1
I agree on disliking the names...
I don't know if it's solely a 'gender neutrality' thing, but the whole 'X Folk' thing just doesn't ring true,
likewise for Lizardfolk... Lizardmen would sound more like a name that humans would call them, if not their own name.
I would go ahead and use Ysoki for ALL Ratfolk within the Golarion universe, unless we learn new specific names.
I think the main concentration of Catfolk on Golarion is Southern Garund, perhaps some in Southern Tian Xia also?,
but those are so dispersed that very few would interact with both groups,
I think it's good enough to name each group after the Nation/Ethno-Tribal grouping they constitute,
which perhaps could be QUALIFIED with something like 'Purganet (country/ethnicity) Catfolk'.
dot
Kzinti?
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"Is your character a male lizardman or a female lizardman?"
And can anyone besides others of your kind tell the difference?
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To me, catfolk will always be Khajiit.
Of course, creating a new race just by picking an animal and making a sapient bipedal creature that shares superficial features with it will always seem lazy to me. If you're going to make a new race, make a NEW race, not a half-human-half-whatever-animal-you-can-think-of.
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"Is your character a male lizardman or a female lizardman?"And can anyone besides others of your kind tell the difference?
Experience suggests judging by the voice actor. If male, typically Jim Cummings or Cobra Commander. If female, they either get Jennier Darling or wind up stuck with a Patty/Selma voice.
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I call catfolk Ailurian, ratfolk Murid, and dogfolk Cynoan. I personally like the names for them all.
"Is your character a male lizardman or a female lizardman?"
We gotta give -folk credit for putting a stop to that at least.
Troglodytes are so lucky that they never were called lizardmen.
Ah Wing Commander.
Why on earth would catfolk call themselves catfolk? That's like humans figuring "we're related to apes, so we should call ourselves apefolk."How do you know their word for cat doesn't come from their word for themselves? If you look at your example, Menschenaffe meaning "human-monkey", someone could easily see the 'Mensch' in it and think it went the other way. But what's in a name, anyway? You could make up any proper name to call them by and it'd still be just that; made up. DYK that Tolkien originally wanted to call his Elves 'Faeries' but was talked out of it since, at the time, 'Faerie' was coming into common use as a derogatory name for homosexuals. But the term 'Elf' existed in folklore as commonly referring to short, funny-looking, rather gnomish characters (he also refers to the Elves that stayed behind in Middle Earth as "devolving" and referred to them as Gnomes in personal notes). So whatever you call them, the crux of the matter is that they are, relative to Humans, Cat-Folk. From their view, we'd be the 'Ape-Folk' because, from their perspective, they are the prototype for people (-folk) and they'd define other races in their own language based on how they compare to themselves. Rat-Folk would probably be 'Talking Food' while Elves would be 'Nearly as arrogant as us'. The names in the actual language would be more impressive.
Uhm. Okay let's say their word for cat would come from their word for themselves, but then Catfolk being the Common translation of their word for themselves would make even less sense. That would amount to something like humans calling themselves Humanoid-Folk.
"These creatures look kind of similar to us, so we should name them after ourselves.... and then we name ourselves after them."|
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Experience suggests judging by the voice actor. If male, typically Jim Cummings or Cobra Commander. If female, they either get Jennier Darling or wind up stuck with a Patty/Selma voice."Is your character a male lizardman or a female lizardman?"And can anyone besides others of your kind tell the difference?
Ugh!
Im such a nerd I use the EQ2 names for them: Ratonga and Kerran.
Well, cat hengeyokai are called Huli Mao and Maogui in Chinese and Bakeneko and Nekomata in Japanese, in the RW.
But those creatures are essentially a variant of the Kitsune, with their villainous nature highlighted.
Of course Japanese folklore cannot be specifically defined, as tales of different beings differ from place to place.
Hengeyokai are generally animal shapechangers, and most often primarily in anthropomorphic form with the ability to change to a normal human or a standard animal.
Bakeneko and Nekomata have cat as their primary form. Bakeneko are shapechangers, where as nekomata are not shapechangers.
Nezumi is Japanese for rat, not ratfolk, though L5R call ratfolk, nezumi that was their determination, not based on actual lore. Any standard normal rat that does not shapechange is a nezumi.
Neko is Japanese for cat, not catfolk. While there is a type of hengeyokai cat, there are no catfolk, per se. Neko is a standard normal cat, not catfolk.
You'd probably give some local name for such beings found, with the generic name of catfolk or ratfolk. Call them what you want...
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"Is your character a male lizardman or a female lizardman?"
We gotta give -folk credit for putting a stop to that at least.
Identifying the sex of any race, be it reptilian, mammal, or what have you is very simple. It's merely a matter of simple observation.
I really want to play one of these races and call all humans "apefolk" now.
That's actually a very good idea. It highlights the humancentric bias that developed these race names in the first place. Though then you have the pressure on the GM when the human in question says "Well, what do you call yourselves?"
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From what I recall - there were cat folks called Tabaxi in 1st ed.
But as someone said the -man or -folk thing is fairly common, merfolk springs to mind as another example.
But, in English, it is fairly common to give something an English name - rather than something based on what it is called in its native tongue. The one that always amuses me - is I call the Germans - Germans. However, I call people from Holland, Dutch. Which is based on the name the German's give themselves ...
In Italian and French - Germany is by two different names. Neither (as far as I can see) are related to the name the Germans have for themselves.
If I need a different name for something - I translate into a different language and then tweak to make it easy to pronouce in English. I generally use Italian/French/Latin, or Celtic languages because I am more familiar with them. For example might call Dogfolk - Chenin (French root) or cat folk, Karthir (Welsh).
However the easy way to do it is type Cat Folk into Google translate and hit buttons until you get something you like. :P
I can live with catfolk, I hate the name Strix. And I am German. :D
Identifying the sex of any race, be it reptilian, mammal, or what have you is very simple. It's merely a matter of simple observation."Is your character a male lizardman or a female lizardman?"
We gotta give -folk credit for putting a stop to that at least.
Yep, just look for the one that is doing the dishes, odds are it is a she.
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This is starting to get weird...
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I really want to play one of these races and call all humans "apefolk" now.
Yeah I'm sold on the idea. It fits perfectly with my monster civ heavy campaign.
Lol, lizardfolk city states take off, spread and are highly "civilised". They start to call the humans the greedy marauder monkey folk, or Gremms for short.
My Ratfolk Gunslinger named Slowpoke Rodriguez highly disagrees with you OP! And my friend's Catfolk Cavalier named Sylvestor (from the same campaign) also disagrees with you!
I did not read the first post...or any of the posts. The entire party by coincidence came into the game with Looney Toons themed characters. This game is 100% fun.