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The best way to deal with this situation is to just assume whatever material you reading are being translated to your own language. Presumingly when you have characters speak Elvish, you are not literally inventing a new language and forcing the players to use that for all communication.
Trust me, you really don't want to go down the route of renaming every word with a basis in something specific to our world. You would have to take chainsaw to the English language.
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You're correct that the etymology comes from the Isle of Lesbos and the poet Sappho.
But regardless of that, I don't think it's important enough to try to come up with a Golarion specific term. Because it wouldn't even be Golarion specific. It would be language specific. Unless you think every language on Earth uses lesbian as the word? Because that's definitely not the case. Romance/European languages do, as well as other languages that just borrowed the term because they didn't have their own word for it (presumably, not an etymologist).
If you're asking is there any specific myth that would lend itself to establishing a source for a word meaning homosexual women? Not to my knowledge. And I don't think it's worth adding just to create an extra layer of complexity just to translate a word into a fake language.
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I mean, they're not speaking english we're just translating the local tongue into something the players can understand.
But I might suggest that Golarion's progressiveness is so deeply rooted there isn't really a separate term for this it all. A person being in a relationship with a woman is no more noteworthy than a person being in a relationship with a man, regardless of the gender of the subject.
If anyone asks, make something up. Otherwise, just leave the etymology assumed.
As an example, you can say Jandrilla Lesbin of the Church of Shelyn became a living saint when she hunted down the cultists who abducted her wife to sacrifice her to dark gods, slaying them to a man and the godess bestowing her blessings on the two. As the story spread across Avistan, women who love women have been known as "Lesbians" in her honour.
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I am pretty sure that, in a setting with Asmodeus and the like, there is a word for anything that differentiates between people.
Sure, but Asmodeus probably has a word for "I will only share a meal with people who are not left handed" but those who are not really interested in Big A's agenda needn't actually maintain that fine a distinction. His goal is, after all, to divide people and set them against each other.
The baseline for Golarion should probably be "I am/am not attracted to women/men" is not actually more noteworthy than "I am/am not attracted to fair-haired/dark-haired people" or "I am/am not attracted to short/tall people." Obviously individuals are going to have individual preferences and that's not unusual, and when we're talking about a world in which most people are only ever going to meet a few hundred people in their lifetimes it's enough to say "I fell in love with a woman" without having to offer comment on all potential other people you might have fallen in love with.
Just like how it's the other way around in a courtroom, Shelyn holds more sway than Asmodeus in this arena. So the baseline model for relationships in Golarion is probably something like "gray-acepositive, binormative" specifically "If you've already met someone to fall in love with, congratulations to the both of you, but if you haven't just keep your eyes open and you might find that person, and it could be any kind of person."
The best way to deal with this situation is to just assume whatever material you reading are being translated to your own language. Presumingly when you have characters speak Elvish, you are not literally inventing a new language and forcing the players to use that for all communication.
Trust me, you really don't want to go down the route of renaming every word with a basis in something specific to our world. You would have to take chainsaw to the English language.
Expanding on this, there are hundreds of different cultures and as many if not more different languages, dialects, etc. Not all of them would use the same word(s). Even in English we use more than one word for this idea (gay, lesbian, pan/bi-sexual).
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If anyone asks, make something up. Otherwise, just leave the etymology assumed.
As an example, you can say Jandrilla Lesbin of the Church of Shelyn became a living saint when she hunted down the cultists who abducted her wife to sacrifice her to dark gods, slaying them to a man and the godess bestowing her blessings on the two. As the story spread across Avistan, women who love women have been known as "Lesbians" in her honour.
Jandrilla Lesbin had me spit out my coffee. I hope she's doing okay, that most legendary of wlw. xD
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I would call them cute or handsome, depending on the lesbian in question.
Probably something affiliated with a goddess that has the same orientation/inclination/what have you, as this is a fantasy setting with a lot of gods that people follow in their day to day lives as lay worshippers.
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I don't know, there are how many wlw goddesses? How would you pick just one? Shelynites, Sarenites, and Desnans all to start...
Though maybe as a metaphor, a "sun's lover"...
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I don't know, there are how many wlw goddesses? How would you pick just one? Shelynites, Sarenites, and Desnans all to start...
Though maybe as a metaphor, a "sun's lover"...
I maintain that Kazutal trying to set Arazni up with “a nice Arcadian girl” could be a wonderful metaplot swing.
I don't know, there are how many wlw goddesses? How would you pick just one? Shelynites, Sarenites, and Desnans all to start...
Though maybe as a metaphor, a "sun's lover"...
A fair observation, it would probably be something between the metaphor you mention here and something like what keftiu says. "A nice Shelynite girl" or "A warm Sarenite girl" or something like that? Hm.
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I maintain that Kazutal trying to set Arazni up with “a nice Arcadian girl” could be a wonderful metaplot swing.I don't know, there are how many wlw goddesses? How would you pick just one? Shelynites, Sarenites, and Desnans all to start...
Though maybe as a metaphor, a "sun's lover"...
Oh I adore that.