I... am bemused by those who are passionately crapping on your idea, as if your idea ran over their cat or something
It's not like I am trying to take away the epithet that they seem to cherish; I actually like "The Black Butterfly", as a epithet. Simply adding a translation of "Black Butterfly" into the Celestial language would not diminish their beloved epithet.
..Black Butterfly's true name being difficult to spell using letters...
Black Butterfly's True Name being difficult to spell using letters means that worshipers will refer to her using an epithet... Reformulating my request, what I really want are the translations of the English words black and butterfly into the Celestial language. James, would you be willing to put your stamp of approval on something like qala for "black" and misa for "butterfly" in [the dialect of] the Celestial language [as spoken by the aasimar of Tianjing]? (Of course, feel free to propose alternative Celestial vocabulary.)
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..Black Butterfly's true name being difficult to spell using letters...Black Butterfly's True Name being difficult to spell using letters means that worshipers will refer to her using an epithet... Reformulating my request, what I really want are the translations of the English words black and butterfly into the Celestial language. James, would you be willing to put your stamp of approval on something like qala for "black" and misa for "butterfly" in [the dialect of] the Celestial language [as spoken by the aasimar of Tianjing]? (Of course, feel free to propose alternative Celestial vocabulary.)
Feel free to make them what you wish for your game, but I'm not going to put any sort of official stamp of approval on them.
Why? Well, you'll note that we rarely ever print translations of words from other languages in our products. There are some examples, such as aiudara for "elf gate," but for the most part we avoid this. When we present a book for print, we strive VERY HARD to make sure it's as perfectly edited as possible. Our editors are amazing, but they don't speak Elven or Celestial or any of the other made-up languages in the game, so whenever we do something like introduce a word like aiudara into the game, that adds one more nonsense word they have to specifically track the spelling of. For monster and deity names, it's a bit easier because the format of those has the name in giant letters at the top of a page typically, but introducing translated words from other languages does not—they have to each be tracked separately. Worse, unlike proper nouns, things like this also need to be tracked per language so that if in the future we do so again, we have to remember that in some book we said, for example, the word "blodnah" meant "hungry" in orc if we ever want to have an orc say that in the future. It's one thing to track a few of them that have popped up over the years, but doing so all the time would spiral out of control very quickly.
So... for each individual GM, you should absolutely feel free to make up these words as you wish, since you know your own comfort level in tracking other words in other languages, and you don't have an entire staff of dozens of other people who need to learn those words and memorize them as well. Also, you don't have to worry about an entire internet's worth of society being ready to jump in and correct you from now until the end of time to correct you when you make a mistake in presenting a word you made up a decade before... ;-P
I think one thing about some of the deities/demigods that are referred to by things that don't sound like names and are probably titles or sobriquets is that they probably need more of those.
Like Sarenra is the Dawnflower, the Cleansing Light, the Everlight, the Healing Light, and the Healing Flame. In probability, there are dozens more. For the Black Butterfly we have "Desna's Shadow" (which is probably not ideal since it implies Desna is more important), and "the Silence Between" (which is cool, but sort of awkward to use to as a singular subject in a sentence.) But I guess since her followers include the mute and people sworn to silence, you're not going to talk about her a lot.
...Also, you don't have to worry about an entire internet's worth of society being ready to jump in and correct you from now until the end of time to correct you when you make a mistake in presenting a word you made up a decade before
Not surprisingly I am disappointed to hear Paizo's stance regarding in-game languages, but I can certainly sympathize with your reasons; we gamer geeks can be vicious when we perceive a slight to our beloved hobby.
Some take her just because she's the only non-evil deity with the void domain.
That is largely why I like her, but my reasons are more thematic than mechanical. I use her as the Good shard of a previously Neutral Rovagug that was separated sometime prior to his imprisonment, unintentionally conjured into sentience and imprinted upon by her conjurer Desna.
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...Also, you don't have to worry about an entire internet's worth of society being ready to jump in and correct you from now until the end of time to correct you when you make a mistake in presenting a word you made up a decade beforeNot surprisingly I am disappointed to hear Paizo's stance regarding in-game languages, but I can certainly sympathize with your reasons; we gamer geeks can be vicious when we perceive a slight to our beloved hobby.
Invented languages are MUCH better in non-interactive stuff like novels or movies, where you don't have to make up anything more than what's on print or on screen and you either have only one person in charge (the author) so they can make up what they're comfortable with, or you have a budget that's several orders of magnitude larger than what we have to pay our staff (in the case of movies or shows).
I've also recognized this problem. I have a character from Arcadia who follows her. Name I use for her is Calamisa. It's a type of south american butterfly with very appropriate looks.
I have not actually used the name Xephiqali in a game yet. For my goal of recognizability I like the fact that the name Calamisa is already in use within a Pathfinder game. With influence from the Hindi word kala for "black" and the spelling of the Hebrew word Qabalah, I think I will go with qala as the Celestial word for "black"; misa is the remainder, so I will have that be the Celestial word for "butterfly".
I kinda figured it'd be Ansed...you know, Desna spelled backwards?
The idea of an "inverted" Desna would make more sense if her Alignment was also inverted, but the fact that Black Butterfly is not Evil is one of the reasons I like her. My solution for the connection between Desna and Black Butterfly is that Black Butterfly's Voidal essence had previously existed in a pre-sentient state and that the conjurer (Desna) unintentionally imprinted a portion of her psyche upon the conjured (Black Butterfly). If a deity other than Desna had been the one to conjure "Black Butterfly" into sentience, well, she would not be a butterfly.
...does Desna have any monopoly on butterflies?
Do you know of any other Pathfinder deity strongly associated with butterflies?
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...does Desna have any monopoly on butterflies?Do you know of any other Pathfinder deity strongly associated with butterflies?
Dunno, there's too many of them and I cba to check every one.
More on the point, I can totally see an Evil deity trying to subvert Desna by creating an anti-Desna being which mockingly takes the form of a butterfly. That's pretty much moot since we know that it's Desna who created her ... or at least that's the official story. Just ask Asmodeus how reliable origin and creation myths are.
I can totally see an Evil deity trying to subvert Desna by creating an anti-Desna being which mockingly takes the form of a butterfly.
A Chaotic Good "anti-Desna" isn't really "anti" though. I do however like the idea that Black Butterfly was originally actually a pre-sentient shard of a Lovecraftian deity (Rovagug).