Well, there is a good reason for these names: They are easy to grasp. Imagine a (rather) new player looking at race names like Ghonji, Zho'op, Rhrrdc and Xylz. While these names are distinct and there may be a good reason races are called this way, at the beginning these names cause stress. Player feel obligated to understand them but they cant at the moment, so they feel overwhelmed. The stress stops when they understand 'Ah, these are normal humans, these are evil humans, these are cat people, these are aliens', given they didn't give up at this point. Let's face it, Pathfinder HAS a steep learning curve which frightens off many people. So why force this stress upon people? Because of 'realism', because a veteran would enjoy creative names more, because of felt discrimination? Probably.
I propose dualism. Call all races by both an easy, humancentric term (e.g. halflings) and a political correct one with a background story (e.g. luckbonds).
Joe Hex: As it turns out, that's precisely what they're doing with catfolk. :)
Off the top of my head, Troglodyte and Skum also have their own race name.
Memory may be betraying me but I think the Halfling names for themselves from Tolkein was Kuduk whilst the other races called them halflings or hobbits.Close. They called themselves Kuduk. Other races called them halfling (in elvish) or Kud-Dukan or if they had business dealings with them, Kuduk. Hobbit is a product of the translation convention Tolkien used, being "modernized" from holbytla (old english translating Kud Dukan, which I think might be proto-Adunaic). They would have called themselves hobbits if proto-Adunaic were old English. Or maybe I'm mixing my mannish and the proto-Rohirrim shared linguistic roots with the people of Haleth rather than that of Beor and Hador that became Adunaic.
TL;DR If you think anything in Tolkuen's languages is relatively simple and comprehensible you're probably wrong. And I am way too much of a geek.
The lazy naming all around is a bit bothersome, but I think I may be more bothered by catfolk existing at all (especially as a player race) than by their name in particular.I could say the same thing about humans too, lazy name, and more infectious in a world then the bubonic plague.
That said Catfolk have just as much a right to exist in a world as elves and dwarves. And especially humans.
No, they really don't. They're a lazy anthropomorphism. Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and the various oriental and Indian races have a mythological basis. If anthropomorphic cats and rats had a mythological basis Paizo would have used the mythological terms like they did for the Indian races that many people don't recognize.
Halflings and Orcs at least predate D&D and halflings can be justified by runaway sexual selection.
It's okay to have modern anthropomorphic races, but they're hardly in the "you can't have a wide market fantasy game without them" territory that humans and elves fall in, nor do they come with the respectability of Asian mythologies.
Larry Niven wrote about Kzin in the 60s, thus predating the 70s Dungeons and Dragons.
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In the setting I'm working on, catfolk refer to themselves (and are referred to) as neko. "Catfolk" is a racial slur to them, the equivalent of using in real life. (Of course, why a fantastical world about people on floating islands in an open sky uses a Japanese word to describe them is a mystery for another time.)
Then again, what humans in this setting call dwarves, elves, and halflings, I'm content to give them the name "dorf," "elowaan," and "halfling." This is more endemic of "I liked Dwarf Fortress, I liked Starflight, and I'm lazy, in that order."
Larry Niven wrote about Kzin in the 60s, thus predating the 70s Dungeons and Dragons.
Beautifully said.
Annnnnd again you miss the mark. I'm sure the person putting effort into creating the catfolk and ratfolk races did a lot of work here at Paizo. But now you really want to talk lack of mythology? Or even established examples. As far as ratfolk go, even though Golarion's version have a much wider range of alignment possibilities, the most famous example is the Skaven.
As far as catfolk go, if you are wanting mythology, hello Egypt? Bast, Sehkmet, Mehit, Mafdet? Hell it was a pretty much accepted thing to the Egyptians that beings with human bodies and animal features existed, and those four are solid examples (In fact Osiriani is where I'd originate the Catfolk race in Golarion if I had a say.)
Japanese culture had the nekomata.
And for what Tolkein did for elves you aren't even going to give a nod towards authors like Niven for his Kzinti? Elder Scrolls is a video game sure but it's built a MASSIVE mythology and the Khajit and Argonians are deeply important to the world.
And then there is my beloved Kilrathi.
Star Trek is official with the Caitians.
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Random memory from a college era AD&D game.
GM's character is an elf named 'Elrod' (Elrond, minus one letter).
Player 1 "Elrod? Does that mean something?"
Player 2 "He's an archer. El Rod. It's elvish for 'the shaft.'"
Who's the black private di*k
That's a sex machine to all the chicks?
(Shaft!)
You're damn right
Who is the man
That would risk his neck for his brother man?
(Shaft!)
Can ya dig it?
Who's the cat that won't cop out
When there's danger all about
(Shaft!)
Right on
You see this cat Shaft is a bad mother--
(Shut your mouth)
But I'm talkin' about Shaft
(Then we can dig it)
He's a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman
(John Shaft)
Looks like I am making a new character.
Eh, it isn't about the weight of lore or how long something has been around.
Some people do not like catfolk because of cat girls and rabid internet fans and/or people at conventions/college/the game store that are WAY into cats.
I seldom hear about people being terribly upset about dog folk or rat folk or bird folk or lizard folk or whatever. It's the catpeople that get the majority of the ire.
Same goes for the hatred and dislike of the 'boring' races of human, elf, dwarf, gnome and halfling. Some people are tired of those or want to be different and expect more choices.
Anyway. It isn't lore or right to exist or whatever, it is personal choice and what you have been exposed to, what you want to do, and what you don't want wandering in your game because of those events.
To circle back to what the thread is about, it'd be nice for write ups to mention racial names and more history. While the X-folk name is good for instant recognition, knowing that the elves prefer blah and the catfolk are blah is much better for immersions sake.
I'm kind of glad that Paizo didn't go whole hog and introduce "hufolk" as a race.
I'm kind of glad that Paizo didn't go whole hog and introduce "hufolk" as a race.
Could be that is just vanilla humans. At least my kind from Denmark;)
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To circle back to what the thread is about, it'd be nice for write ups to mention racial names and more history. While the X-folk name is good for instant recognition, knowing that the elves prefer blah and the catfolk are blah is much better for immersions sake.
My understanding is that we will see that in Inner Sea Races. We definitely will for catfolk, and hopefully will for the others as well.
In my Archmage setting, I've done a few races that use a tweak on a scientific name or just made up words for their names.
Krodanoi = orcs (though they are so divergent from the typical orc design that they might as well be their own thing)
Syldanar = elves
Myrdanar = also elves
Rhuz = dwarves
Gnostra = small cat people
Chirops = small bat people
Hivekin = insect people (this being one of the few instances of the '-kin' suffix)
A bunch of others
...and humans (who are a genetically engineered amalgam of most of the 'natural' races).
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In the setting I'm working on, catfolk refer to themselves (and are referred to) as neko. "Catfolk" is a racial slur to them, the equivalent of using in real life. (Of course, why a fantastical world about people on floating islands in an open sky uses a Japanese word to describe them is a mystery for another time.)
In my Steampunk setting Catfolk are called Felins, and they are generally street urchins/thieves and their racial name is the origin of the term "felony" =p.
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I don't mind the naming scheme as is. As other's have pointed out, it makes it really easy to recognize what the race is supposed to be about.
It also makes it harder to remember what race is called what when they don't do this while offering dozens of race options. e.g. I can never seem to remember which race the name wayang is associated with, and I have to look it up to remember it's those weirdo little shadow gremlin guys.
Conversely, when someone says "ratfolk", I seldom have to grab the ARG to remind me that it's those little rat guys.