With fantasy dominating the bestseller lists, it’s easy to imagine that major bestsellers such as Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros, and George R.R. Martin are a 21st-century phenomenon. In reality, fantasy writing has been capturing imaginations since long before the romantasy takeover.
Human history is steeped in myths and folklore, passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth long before 600-page epic fantasies hit our shelves. Legends of gods and goddesses, and fairytales about heroes and monsters, became ways of understanding our world, sharing our collective history, and cementing beliefs across cultures and regions.
What makes fantasy so special as a genre? It’s the ultimate form of escapism. Fantasy novels aren’t restricted by the rules of our reality, making them the ultimate playground for authors and our imaginations. That said, most fantasy novels are heavily influenced by folklore and history, making these magical locations and languages feel familiar in so many ways. In this blog, we’ll be exploring the language of fantasy.
A game of tropes
First up, let’s spend a little time considering the most popular fantasy tropes. A trope is defined as a recurring theme, image, or plot device found in a work or genre of literature. These provide familiar conventions that readers associate with the style of writing; indeed, tropes are often the thing most beloved by avid fantasy readers.
Fantasy novels are universally appealing because they often represent familiar aspects of human nature, and this is clearly represented in character tropes. For example, the idea of the chosen one – one person who is capable of fulfilling a purpose that will resolve the entire plot’s conflict – often occurs in high fantasy. Harry Potter is a classic example of this particular trope.
Then we have our reluctant hero. What do Samwise Gamgee of The Lord of the Rings and Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games have in common? Quite frankly, neither of them particularly wanted to be there. Samwise wanted to enjoy his second breakfast and hang out in Hobbiton, and Katniss wanted to stay as far away from the Games as possible and live her life in the woods. Both were called forward for noble purposes to save their lands.
What about plot tropes? Any avid fantasy reader will be familiar with the story of the battle our hero just can’t win… but then miraculously does! Or the looming evil that was banished many years ago, but is set to return and will completely destroy the world as we know it, unless our hero can step in and save the day against all odds (think A Court of Thorns and Roses and Game of Thrones). Or perhaps it’s a noble quest that must be completed, sprinkled with cannon-fodder characters that embark on an impossible journey with excruciatingly high stakes.
A favourite trope for readers of romantic fantasy – and other genres – is the always sensational enemies-to-lovers plotline. Two of our main characters meet and hate each other on sight, only for them to realise they’re crazy about one another. Of course, if authors overdo it with any trope, it gets tired very quickly. But as #booktok and the popularity of series such as Fourth Wing have shown us, a spicy romance never gets old.
Do you believe in magic?
Magic, and magic systems within fantasy novels, have a tremendous amount of influence on the language within. Some fantasy authors decide to create their very own constructed language – that is, a language whose rules and vocabulary have been artificially invented – in order to introduce certain concepts or characters.
Popular examples of this include the Dothraki and Valyrian languages of Game of Thrones, and Tolkien’s Sindarin, which is spoken by the elves of Middle-earth. Tolkien is one of the most prolific and celebrated creators of fantasy language, coining multiple words and phrases across his massive body of work, including hobbit, eucatastrophe, wargs, orcs, and even tweens!
If fantasy authors create their own language, is it even a language? The answer is yes. Many of the languages created in fantasy novels are formed around logical linguistic structures, with grammatical rules that mean readers can learn and speak them if they choose. The producers of the Game of Thrones TV series, D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, worked with the Language Creation Society to flesh out the Dothraki language beyond Martin’s original works, giving it more than 500 words and phrases. Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen, chose to learn the language for the role and actually spoke of how the process helped her recover from two life-threatening brain aneurysms.
Of course, it’s not a prerequisite for fantasy authors to create entire languages to write a great novel. Many choose to use the odd coinage in their work to explain certain concepts, often borrowing from classical languages such as Latin, Arabic, Greek and Sanskrit. For example, Tolkien’s hobbit was etymologised as a modern form of the old English ‘holbytla’ or ‘hole-builder’.
In Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, the author has spoken of how she borrows Gaelic words to give a sense of place in her novels. For example, the name of one of the key settings in the books, ‘Basgiath’, is derived from the words ‘bàs’ (death) and ‘sgiath’ (wing). However, the series has received some criticism from Scottish Gaelic speakers for the books’ misspellings and mispronunciations.
Location, location, location!
So much of the language of fantasy depends on the setting. Sometimes authors like to build their own worlds from scratch, but this can occasionally make it difficult for readers to relate. Often, writers rely on familiar settings from the past to contextualise their world and give readers something to grasp on to.
Many fantasy novels take on a European medieval setting, giving them access to swords, knights and excellent armour. In George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones novels, we see striking similarities with the structure and governance of early modern England, likely because they were inspired by the Wars of the Roses of the 15th century. This parallel is perhaps most clearly seen in Fire and Blood, a fictional history of Westeros, where we’re introduced to one of the bloodiest civil wars in the world’s history, known as the Dance of the Dragons. This disastrous war finds its own roots in primogeniture. Deriving from the Medieval Latin ‘prīmōgenitūra’, it literally means ‘the birth of a first child’. In medieval European society, primogeniture referred to the right of the eldest son to succeed to the estate of his ancestor.
Writers also often borrow the clothing and fashions of real-world settings. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, there are plenty references to medieval military clothing, such as hauberks, a long coat of mail designed to cover the neck and shoulders. Whereas in S.A. Chakraborty’s bestselling Daevabad Trilogy, which kicks off with The City of Brass, we find ourselves in 18th-century Cairo, where the city itself is located in one of the hottest areas in the fictional world, and so the fashions we read about are very different to those of the cold climates of medieval northern Europe. For example, there’s the dishdasha, defined in Collins as a white long-sleeved collarless garment worn by Muslim men in the Arabian peninsula, and in the book, popular amongst the Geziri people.
A dragon is for life, not just for fantasy
Last but not least, let’s talk about the myriads of creatures you’ll find within the pages of fantasy. Familiars and animal companions are a popular concept, both in more witchcraft-inspired novels such as Harry Potter, but also books such as Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, where dæmons act as an external physical manifestation of a person’s “inner self” that takes the form of an animal.
While fantastical creatures often play key roles in this genre, dragons and dire wolves aren’t just inventions without basis in the real world. Dragons appear prominently in folklore and myths from across the world, with the word dragon originating in the Latin ‘dracō’ and the Greek ‘drakōn’, words that were both used to describe huge serpents or giant sea fish. Likewise, dire wolves weren’t invented simply as companions for the Stark children. Closely related to the modern wolf, the dire wolf existed during the Ice Age, alongside woolly mammoths and the giant tortoise. The word derives from the Latin ‘dīrus’ meaning ‘fearful’ or ‘ominous’.
And of course, sometimes the creatures we encounter in fantasy are downright terrifying. In George R.R. Martin’s works, we come to fear the wights, an undead army who seek to destroy Westeros as we know it. They possess superhuman strength and are thought to be impossible to kill. But did you know that wight features in the Collins Dictionary? In our world, it’s either used as a noun referring to a human being, or as an adjective meaning ‘strong’ and ‘brave’, originating from the Latin ‘vincere’, to conquer.
If you’d like to learn more about the language of fantasy, check out these blogs:
- 80 years of The Hobbit: The unique language of J.R.R. Tolkien
- 9 words of Tolkien terminology
- Dragons & direwolves: Exploring the language of Westeros
- ‘Wights’, ‘maesters’ & more: The etymology of Game of Thrones
- The return to Westeros: the essential House of the Dragon glossary
By Rachel Quin
Rachel Quin is a freelance marketer and copywriter with a love of language, books and cats.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
