Suppose I wanted to write a science-fiction or fantasy story, and I made up a fake name for the race/country/planet in the story. Is there any index of names that have already been taken, so that I don’t accidently give my aliens a name that was used in, say, an old Doctor Who episode? Or has every conceivable two and three syllable word been used at one time or another in the eighty years or so since mass-produced SF began back in the pulp days?
There’s an Encyclopedia of Alien Life Forms, I forget the exact name or publisher or whatever, that’s supposedly a pretty thorough compendium.
C K Dexter Haven, you may be thinking of Alien Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Alien A-Z by Andrew Donkin.
You’ll catch a lot of pre-used ones by doing a google search for the name. That way, you’ll also find out if the word means something that you didn’t know about, like in a different language.
I just did a search on ‘alien’ names I used in one of my stories (well, not all were alien, some were human but from the far future). The only two that came up with 0 google hits were Jevocet and Zeltskin. Shylent is a fairly common username but I don’t know why.
Don’t worry about it. People will just think it’s an homage.
I find it highly doubtful that every single three syllable word has been used. Suppose for simplicity’s sake that there are thirty consonant sounds used regularly in English and ten vowel sounds, and that every syllable has one consanant sound, then one vowel sound, and then another consonant sound. That gives us (30^6)(10^3) possible different three syllable words. That works out to 7.2910^11 words possible. Although a few of them might sound somewhat awkward.
Reusing a name that’s already been used should be about the 99th thing you worry about when writing a story. Start with character, plotting, setting, dialog, ideas, structure, prose, and all the other stuff you should have been taught in English class first. I’ve read stories by stories who cared more about making up alien names than the rest of it and the pain still haunts me.
There are a couple of random names generator out there which may meet your needs. Here are the one which I favours:
http://www.flatearth.com
http://spitfire.ausys.se/johan/names/default.htm
The above two usually gives names which look arachic. If you want names which resemblances English or something closer to what we use in our daily life:
http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin/names.shtml
(You can spot traces of English, elvish names from Tolkien and others all mix-up to form new names).
There are some generators for science-fic too:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/
It doesn’t matter if you accentally use a name that was previously used, say, on a single story in a 1950s Galaxy. It’s only an issue if you use a well-known alien name (not counting things like “Martian”), and you’re likely to know those already.
If there is a connection you’re not aware of, your editor will point it out.