NA’VI NAME GUIDE

Ta Olly

Kaltxì !

This document is my attempt at creating a Na’vi naming guide, primarily for those who do not speak the language but want a Na’vi name for themselves or an original character. This doc is meant to be as comprehensive as possible and provide various tools and methods for you to choose from when creating your name. That said, a single doc can’t cover everything, so feel free to explore more options or ask questions! Siva ko!

DO NOT REQUEST EDITING ACCESS TO THIS DOCUMENT. I will not grant it, for any reason, and you will expose your email address and any name associated with it to me. If you want to share the document, please just copy the link. If you want to report an error, DM me.

DO NOT MESSAGE ME ASKING TO MAKE YOU A NAME OR VERIFY A NAME’S VALIDITY. Please only DM me for help if you are having trouble understanding the content of this document. I am a tired, busy college student so I don’t have time to address these requests (and the doc is meant to teach you how to make your own!). Irayo!

Table of Contents

Click on the headers to be taken to the corresponding section of the document.

Phonetics and Linguistics stuff

1. Basic Pronunciation
2. What Na'vi Doesn't Have (Don't use these!)
3. What People Often Misuse
4. Reef Na'vi Stuff
5. Syllables in Na'vi

Name creation methods (go here to skip the linguistic stuff)

6. Applying What You've Learned
7. Full Names and How They Work
8. Name Generators
9. How To Convert Your Name into Na'vi
10. Stick With What You Know
11. Grab The Dictionary
12. Pamìrìk's Method

BASIC PRONUNCIATION: How the heck do I even say this?

The Na’vi alphabet consists of 29 letters, plus an additional 4 diphthongs.

The alphabet is as follows: A, Ä, E, F, H, I, Ì, K, Kx, L, LL, M, N, Ng, O, P, Px, R, Rr, S, T, Tx, Ts, U, V, W, Y, Z, and ‘.

The diphthongs are Ay, Ey, Aw, and Ew.

The above alphabet according to the IPA chart is represented like so: [a], [æ], [ɛ], [f], [h], [i], [ɪ], [k], [k’], [l], [l], [m], [n], [ŋ], [o], [p], [p’], [ɻ or ɽ], [r], [s], [t], [t’], [ts], [u], [v], [w], [j], [z], and [ʔ]. You can find each letter’s respective IPA symbol and listen to it on the IPA website linked above to hear how it’s said.

The diphthongs are: [ai], [ɛi], [aw], and [ɛw].

This seems like a lot to memorize, but don’t stress too much about getting pronunciation absolutely perfect or memorizing every sound. For now, we’re going to focus on the most important distinctions for non-speakers wishing to make realistic names.

Further resources

WHAT NA’VI DOESN’T HAVE (Don’t use these!)

Na’vi lacks quite a few of the letters and phonemes found in English, which can be confusing for some people when trying to create a name. This section will go over what sounds are not in Na’vi and/or how to write them correctly in the Na’vi alphabet.

Also, remember phonemes? English and other languages have a habit of using different letters to represent the same phoneme. For example, K and C in English share the same phoneme; they are pronounced identically. Na’vi does not have this: you will not find different letters representing the same phoneme. Because of this, there are some sounds that are both in English and Na’vi, but they are represented differently.

But what about ‘Px’, ‘Kx’, and ‘Tx’? What about ‘Ng’?

Another important distinction is that - again - Na’vi does not have a singular X or a singular G sound. Many new learners and non-speakers are confused by the X found in Px, Kx and Tx, and the G found in Ng, however, it becomes less confusing when explained that all of these are digraphs.

A digraph, as mentioned earlier in the document, is when a phoneme is represented by 2 consonants to distinguish it from other sounds. In English, for example, Sh and Ch are digraphs. The X and G in Na’vi are used for the same purpose. The X is only to mark that the sound is an ejective, and the G is to distinguish N from Ng. You won’t find X or G on their own and you don’t actually pronounce an X in the ejectives or a G in Ng.

WHAT PEOPLE OFTEN MISUSE

This section covers things that exist in Na’vi, but are often misunderstood and misused by non-speakers. The first, and most infamous, is the tìftang; also known as a glottal stop. In Na’vi, it’s written as an apostrophe ( ‘ ) and you’ve likely seen it all over Na’vi, in names like “Tsu’tey” and “Mo’at”, and of course, in the very name of the language. In many conlangs, the apostrophe is a decorative character used for creating a more “alien” or otherwise interesting appearance to viewers. In Na’vi, it is not a decoration. It is a consonant and has its own sound.

Say “uh- oh”. Do you feel that catch or close in the back of your throat in between “uh” and “oh”? That’s a glottal stop/tìftang! It’s part of the Na’vi alphabet and changes the way a word sounds, and in some cases, can change its meaning (i.e. ‘eylan - “friend”. Eylan - sans tìftang - “friends” (plural, 4+). Both are said differently.).

The most important part of using the tìftang is knowing that it must precede or follow vowels. It can’t be put in between two consonants, i.e. “Len’ti”. Put simply, a tìftang put between two consonants (like our previous example) becomes unpronounceable - and, since the apostrophe is not decorative in Na’vi, there’s no reason to have it in the name if you can’t pronounce it.

So, in summary, let’s make this extremely simple and clear.

• Le’ti, Ma’tuwey, Sa’eyn, Mo’at, etc.: Good! Beautiful! Perfect!
• Len’ti, Mat’wey, San’leyn, Mon’kat, etc.: NO! NO! STOP! PUT THE TÌFTANG DOWN NOW! DO NOT PUT THE APOSTROPHE BETWEEN CONSONANTS! DON’T!

*Exhale.* Next, let’s talk about diphthongs. As mentioned, Na’vi has four diphthongs. A common mistake of non-speakers is using a diphthong that exists in Na’vi, but representing it how one would in English. For example: Ey in Na’vi and Ei in English (weight, eight, etc.) are pronounced the same.

Why can’t I write it that way?

The answer is syllables, which we’ll discuss more thoroughly in the next section. Any two vowels following each other in Na’vi are pronounced as separate syllables unless they form one of the four diphthongs (ay, ey, aw, ew). Here’s a funny word you may have seen before and makes a great example:

• Meoauniaea: “harmony, living at one with nature”

If it looks hard to pronounce to you, that’s because it is! It actually has 8 syllables. ‘Me-oh-ah-oo-nee-ah-eh-ah’. This rule applies to all Na’vi words. Any time you have a string of vowels, they are said as separate syllables, with the exception of the 4 diphthongs. This means Ey is pronounced differently than Ei in Na’vi.

• Ey: 1 syllable
• Ei: 2 syllables; eh-ee (e.i)
• Ay: 1 syllable
• Ai: 2 syllables; ah-ee (a.i)

One minor point related to this: two of the same vowel or consonant cannot appear in a row in Na’vi. Saaki, Ffole, etc. are considered invalid. Note that a and ä, and i and ì, can appear in a row since they are different sounds, although they look similar when written.

And finally, Y: The letter Y does exist in Na’vi, but it is never used as a vowel, such as when an English word ends in a Y that makes an ‘ee’ sound (barely, Marley, etc.). Your mind might go to the name of Neytiri’s sister, Sylwanin, and indeed, this name is not accurate to Na’vi phonetics: it should be Silwanin or Sìlwanin.

REEF NA’VI STUFF

Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room. As revealed in Avatar: The Way of Water, the reef Na’vi clans of Pandora, such as the Metkayina and Ta’unui, speak their own dialect of Na’vi, aptly called Reef Na’vi (which will be abbreviated as RN, and the dialect we are most familiar with–forest Na’vi–as FN.). RN, distinctively, has different phonetics, including sounds that are otherwise non-existent in FN. For a full overview, check out the interview with Paul Frommer wherein he covers RN’s phonetics (discussion on phonetics begins at 24 minutes).

Before we begin, it should be noted that if you are making a name for a forest Na’vi character, or want your name to be in FN, you can disregard this section. It is important, however, when naming reef Na’vi characters/if you want your name to be in RN.

So you’ll see that reef Na’vi includes many things we consider forbidden in forest Na’vi. Again, this is more important if you are making a reef Na’vi character or want a reef Na’vi name. It should still be noted that just because it’s present in reef Na’vi, does not mean it is acceptable for a forest Na’vi character/name. The dialects are separate and should be treated as such, but this does open the door to different possibilities, particularly in the realm of converting English names into Na’vi, which we’ll cover later.

SYLLABLES IN NA’VI

This section will touch on syllable structure and adjacent topics. It’s not terribly important to review this stuff when creating a name, so feel free to skip past it, but it may be interesting or relevant for the fiercely devoted and/or linguistically inclined.

Every language has something called phonotactics. Phonotactics is a fancy way of describing what sort of letter combinations are natural in a language and which aren’t. Syllable structure and consonant clusters are relevant words for this section.

To explain that more in-depth, let’s take a look at Na’vi’s syllable chart:

Wow, that’s a lot. To explain: An onset consonant is a consonant a syllable can start with. A pre-consonant is a consonant that can come before the onset consonant. A coda consonant is a consonant a syllable can end with.

I ain’t reading all of that.

I know it’s a bit much to memorize, especially for people who aren’t really interested in linguistics, so if you want a reliable way of checking that your name follows the syllable structure but don’t want to memorize a bunch of linguistic terminologies, here is a flow chart made by Pamìrìk that walks you through making a name according to proper Na’vi syllable structure.

Repeat for as many syllables as you want your name to have.

Examples of valid syllable structures (a period represents a syllable break):

• Tska.lep
• Fte
• Lrr.tok
• ‘a.’aw
• Ska.’a
• ‘e.wll
• A.o
• Krr

Examples of invalid syllable structures:

• Rr.ma; RR cannot lead a syllable, it must have a consonant before it.
• Tsvun.e; V cannot be the onset consonant if a pre-consonant is used.
• Ni.llom; LL must have a consonant before it.
• Hunes; Syllables cannot end in S.
• Fzuwa; Z cannot be the onset consonant if a pre-consonant is used.
• Lun.’.pa; 3 consonants in a row/tìftang cannot go between consonants.
• Ffere; Same consonant in a row.

Taking our example, Zuf’iki, we can correct this name by doing any of these things to it:

• Put a vowel between the F and the glottal stop, i.e. Zufi’iki, Zufa’iki, etc.
• Move the glottal stop to the left or right: Zu’fiki or Zufi’ki.
• Remove the F altogether: Zu’iki.
• Remove the glottal stop: Zufiki.

Aaaand we’re done with phonetics stuff! From here on, we’ll focus solely on methods of name creation.

APPLYING WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED

That was a lot to digest, so let’s go over some pointers for applying all of the phonetic stuff you’ve learned for creating a name.

If you feel like checking your know-how, here are some random names: guess whether they are valid or invalid! To check the answer key, highlight the blacked-out text with your cursor or copy and paste it into another service.

1. Zaelnu
2. Möatse
3. Sevinrr
4. Fewotill
5. Sen’vey
6. Chawen
7. Sàïko
8. Mungllpaw
9. Xatey
10. Ku’mino

Answer key:

11. Valid!
12. Invalid–there is no ö in Na’vi
13. Valid!
14. Invalid–the LL needs a consonant before it.
15. Invalid–the glottal stop cannot be between consonants.
16. Valid in Reef Na’vi, invalid in Forest Na’vi!
17. Invalid–there is no à or ï in Na’vi
18. Valid!
19. Invalid–there is no singular X in Na’vi
20. Valid!

FULL NAMES AND HOW THEY WORK

Chances are, you’ve seen these before; one is even brought up in a deleted scene from the film. Na’vi full names are composed of 3 parts: First name, family name, and parent name.

Example: Neytiri te Tskaha Mo’at’ite - Neytiri of the family Tskaha, daughter of Mo’at.

[First] te [Family] [Parent]’ite/’itan.

For the sake of example, let’s construct one of these names ourselves.

• First name: This part’s easy. Just grab the name you want your character to be called. Let’s use “Luwayei” for now.
• Family name: This part of the name is similar to surnames in the real world and represents what family your character descends from. Let’s say our family name is “Tskoya”. Our name so far is: Luwayei te Tskoya: Luwayei of the Tskoya family.

• Parent name: One tricky aspect of this section is that both the parent name and the suffix that comes after depend on the gender of your character. Let’s say our character is female. In that case, the parent section will be the name of the character’s mother, followed by the word ‘ite, meaning “daughter”. You can also think of this section like old Norse names; Thor Odinson, Neytiri Mo’atdaughter.

Let’s say Luwayei’s mother is named Nehaya and Luwayei is female. Her full name will now be Luwayei te Tskoya Nehaya’ite: Luwayei of the Tskoya family, daughter of Nehaya. Remember, no space between ‘ite and the parent name; they create one word.

If Luwayei were male, we repeat the same process, but swap the mother’s name for the father’s, and follow it with ‘itan, which means ‘son’. If we decide the father’s name is Muhe, the name is now Luwayei te Tskoya Muhe’itan: Luwayei of the Tskoya family, son of Muhe.

And if my character is nonbinary?

There is no canon example for non-binary characters/people. There is the community-made suffix, ‘itu, a gender-neutral form of ‘ite/’itan, or ‘eveng, which is the existing gender-neutral word for “child” in Na’vi. There is no rule or pattern for which parent’s name will be used, so that’s up for interpretation.

How do family names inherit?

Good question, to which there is not really a canon answer. However, we can use some clues from the second film to deduce it:

• Jake and Neytiri’s children (Neteyam, Lo’ak, Tuktirey, and Kiri) all inherit the family name Suli (Jake’s last name in Na’vi phonetics). Neytiri and her father, Eytukan, share a family name: Tskaha.
• In Avatar: The Way of Water, Tonowari greets Neytiri not as Neytiri te Suli Mo’at’ite, but as Neytiri te Tskaha Mo’at’ite.

We can theorize, therefore, that when a male and female Na’vi marry, the female Na’vi keeps her given family name, but their children will inherit their father’s family name. As for same-sex couples: no idea.

NAME GENERATORS

Definitely the quickest and easiest way to get yourself a Na’vi name is to use a name generator. Unfortunately, however, a lot of name gens you’ll find online for Na’vi are really… bad, as in not accurate to the Na’vi language. Many of them don’t account for syllable structure, or really, anything of what we discussed earlier. Because of this, it’s not ideal to grab any generator you find on the first page of Google and use that. Thankfully, there are a few name generators made by the community that will always produce valid results:

Tirea Aean’s name generator: Click here

• This generator also gives a family and parent name and lets you customize the syllable count for each part of the name.

Pamìrìk’s name generator: Click here

• This generator allows you to widely customize the kinds of sounds you want in your name, as well as the syllable count.

Eytukan’s /generate:

• If you are in the Kelutral.org Discord server, the Eytukan bot has a name generation command: use /generate in the bot channel.

You may also wonder what names made by a generator mean: same as before, these names do not generally have a meaning behind them. They may be similar to existing Na’vi words by coincidence, but the name generators are not programmed to draw from existing words or give any of the names any sort of “meaning”.

HOW TO CONVERT YOUR NAME INTO NA’VI

Another popular method for creating Na’vi names is to take an existing name and run it through Na’vi phonetics and syllable structure to create a valid Na’vi name from it. This involves swapping out any letters that aren’t in Na’vi and replacing them with the closest Na’vi equivalent, as well as changing certain letters such as i or a to ì or ä if needed. This can sort of be thought of as a Na’vi saying an English name with a Na’vi ‘accent’. The linguistic term for this is transliteration.

Keep in mind, however, that everyone has different accents and we all pronounce certain words a bit differently sometimes, so my interpretation of how a certain name should be written in Na’vi may not be one you agree with.

Additionally, you may have seen little ì’s being inserted into names where there previously were none; for instance, Grace Augustine’s canon Na’vi name, Kìreysì. Why is there an ì between the K and the R and one at the end? If you reviewed the syllable section, you may already guess why: some consonant clusters (for instance, the Gr/Kr in Grace) are invalid and Na’vi and some names end in letters/sounds that Na’vi syllables cannot end with. Ì is considered a very soft, short sound, so it is usually chosen as the ‘filler’ vowel–but technically, any can be used.

To demonstrate, let’s convert a name: I’ll choose Brittney because I think it’s a fun one, and we’ll say we’re converting it into Forest Na’vi.

• Start: B is not in Forest Na’vi, the B must become a Px or P. I’ll go with P.
• Next: I look for invalid consonant clusters. In this case, Br-/Pr is not acceptable. Therefore, there must be a vowel between the P and R, or I convert the R into an Rr. I like the former option better, so now I am left with Pìr-.
• Next: There’s an i in this name, how do I pronounce it? A long ‘ee’ like in machine, or a short one like intelligence? I and I’d say most others pronounce it the latter, so I’ll replace the i with an ì. The T and N do not need any changes, so now I have Pìrìt. I don’t need a vowel between the T and N because Na’vi syllables can end in T.
• Finally: The -ey. I don’t know of anyone who pronounces this part as ey like in hey; I’ve only heard it as ‘ee’. Therefore, I will change the ney into ni.

Our final result is Pìrìtni. You’ll notice there were quite a few other options for converting this one based on preference; it could’ve been Pxrrìtni, Prrìtney, etc… That’s the fun of transliterating a name; you can customize it based on what you prefer or how you say your name.

StICK WITH WHAT YOU KNOW

One of the easiest ways besides using a name generator to get a name is to just keep it simple. Short, consonant-vowel (or vice versa) with recognizable sounds. Most people will instinctively know how to say these at first glance, so there isn’t much hassle of trying to figure out pronunciation, but they still fit the Na’vi aesthetic.

Examples:

Ana

Rani

Mika

Neya

Luk

Saki

Luna

...etc.

GRAB THE DICTIONARY

Although not my favorite method, taking words from the dictionary and using them as names for yourself/characters is technically a valid method of creating a Na’vi name. If you do want to employ this method, I’ll give a few words of advice:

1. If it’s for a character, don’t just go with the cool, edgy-sounding words like Vrrtep and Vawm or Tstal. Try and think of a reason why their parents would’ve named them after a word in particular and what significance the meaning of that word might have.
2. Pay attention to what type of word it is. It is not uncommon in the real world for kids to be named after nouns and sometimes adjectives, but naming your kid after a verb or an adverb, most would agree, would be very strange. A character named Tsìlpey (noun: hope) isn’t that unusual, but a kid named Nìsìlpey (adverb: hopefully) kind of… is. It may sound pretty, but to anyone who is familiar even at a surface level with Na’vi vocabulary, it sounds rather goofy.

How do I know what kind of word it is?

Any Na’vi dictionary worth its salt will list what type of word it is next to it using a small indicator. Here’s all of them and what they mean:

• N. / n. = noun
• Pn. / pn. = proper noun
• V. / vin. / vtr. = Verb, verb-intransitive, and verb-transitive respectively (do not recommend using these for names)
• Vinm. / vtrm. = verb-intransitive-modal and verb-transitive-modal respectively (don’t recommend these either)
• Adj. / adj. = adjective (can work, but it depends on the word)
• Adv. / adv. = adverb (do not recommend)
• Intj. / intj. = interjection (definitely not)
• Conj. / conj. = conjunction (no)

There are more, but these are the main ones you should look out for.

PAMÌRÌK’S METHOD

This method is similar to the previous one with some slight alterations. Basically, it involves breaking down the sounds of words or phrases and combining them to create a unique name that sounds like a word or phrase you like but is something more unique.

A significant difference between this method and simply making up a name based on nothing is that these names can have some sort of residual “meaning”, although they will not really translate to any word or phrase.

Disclaimer: This method is from Pamìrìk and he outlines a more detailed process in this document.

Using a phrase:

1. First, find the phrase you like. I’m using the translation I did of “I dreamt I was a butterfly”:

oel uniltsa futa lolu zize’

2. To start, isolate some sounds within the phrase that you like; I try to draw some from each word in the phrase.

oel uniltsa futa lolu zize’

3. Mash those sounds together, and we get something like:

Oe + ol + tsa + zi = Oletsazi

4. Modify as you like. This ended up being my Na’vi name, so I altered the E to more closely resemble my actual name (Olly): Olìtsazi

Using a word (or several):

1. Gather some words with sounds that you like:

Fwefwi, fe’ran, sìlpey, herwì

2. Deconstruct them down to a few syllables that you like:

Fwefwi, fe’ran, sìlpey, herwì

3. Combine and rearrange as you like:

Fwi + fe’ + lpey + wì = Fwelpeywì

Note this method doesn’t really have a ‘meaning’ because it’s hard to make a sensical meaning of “whistle–bad-natured–hope–snow”. Unless you want to say that’s what your name means. I won’t stop you.

That concludes Name Guide 2.0. If you have any questions pertaining to the guide itself, you can use the resource thread. Please do not DM me asking me to make a name for you, I had to retire that service because I was getting way too many DMs and I am, unfortunately, a tired sad college kid.

Checking the validity of names created using this guide, or just asking someone to help you make a name without reading this guide, can be done in the #na’vi-name-help channel in Kelutral.

Have fun!