Updated on

Nouns

A noun is any sort of person, place, or thing, and comes in two varieties: common and proper.

Common Nouns

Common nouns are generic words that identify members of a class of people, places, or things. In Romániço, all common nouns end in -o:

maġo wizard
provincio shire
anelo ring

The plural adds -s:

maġos wizards
provincios shires
anelos rings

Words that are not already nouns can be made into one simply by adding -o to the root:

maligno (from maligna “malignant”) evil person or thing
incanto (from incanter “bewitch”) incantation
éxtero (from exter “outside of”) outsider

The -o of Romániço nouns should not be confused with the masculine -o of Spanish and Italian; every noun in Romániço, whether it’s male, female, neuter, or epicene, ends in -o. So to specify that a noun is male or female, one can add -as- or -is- to the root:

germano sibling
germanaso brother
germaniso sister
pulo chicken
pulaso rooster
puliso hen

Note that -as- and -is- should only be used to avoid potential confusion. When speaking about Senioros Smith (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith”), for example, one might need to distinguish between Senioraso Smith (“Mr. Smith”) and Senioriso Smith (“Mrs. Smith”), but not when addressing either one of them directly (both are Senioro Smith).

Proper Nouns and Foreign Words

Proper nouns name a particular person, place, or thing, and as such have no generic ending; they are treated as immutable “foreign” loanwords, pronounced as closely as one can get to the original within the limits of the Romániço phonetic system. Those originally written in the Roman alphabet (including Latin renderings of Greek, Biblical, and other names) are transcribed as-is; those written in other alphabets are transcribed phonetically. Such words include names of individual people as well as words that are exclusively national or local:

Shakespeare Shakespeare
Khrushċóv Хрущёв
Wałęsa (aut Walesa) Wałęsa
Sheol Sheol / שְׁאוֹל
dogecoin dogecoin
samurái samurai / 侍
Beijíng Běijīng / 北京
Lisboa Lisboa
New York New York
München (aut Munchen) München
Moskvá Москва

One should use the foreign plural form, too, if such exists and is known: una fida'i, dua fida'iyin, una pound, dua pounds. If neither is the case, one can pluralize the word’s adjectives, if any and where necessary, or add -(o)s (including the hyphen): dua fida'i, dua pound, las fida'i, las pound, fida'i-s, pound-os.

When a personal name is known to be a national variation of an internationally common name (e.g., John, Jean, Giovanni, Juan, Hans, and the many other descendants of Biblical Yohanan), one can use the name as-is, or one can use its Latin or Latinized form along the following guidelines:

*Proper names transcribed Gu- in Romance should be transcribed V- [w] here.

The desinences of Latin or Latinized proper names are elidable in Romániço for purposes of adding suffixes: Iacobus “Jacob”, Iacobisto “Jacobite”, Iacobus Iacóbido “Jacob Jacobson”.

Romanicized Proper Nouns

One could, if one were so inclined, go a step further and completely Romanicize Latinizable names (including the names of places) by doing the following:

However one renders names, they can all come in three forms: short, familiar diminutive, and affectionate diminutive. The first is produced by simple truncation, when possible; the second by adding -i to a short form or -et- to a long form; the third by adding -uci- to any form:

Vilhelmo (or Vilhelmus) William
Vil Will
Vili, Vilhelmeto Willie
Vilucio, Vilhelmucio Willikins

Finally, names that are in fact anglicizations of other names can be directly translated into Romániço:

Sperantia “Speri” Letitia Glass Esperanza “Hopey” Leticia Glass
Pelegrino “Regineto” Tuc Peregrin “Pippin” Took
(calqued from Razanur “Razar” Tûk)

See here for a list of Romanicized names.

Countries and Demonyms

The names of countries, oceans, and international rivers and mountain ranges preserve their Latin (or Latinized) form, but conform to Romániço’s orthography and have, where necessary, been altered for the sake of regularity:

África Africa
América America
Asia Asia
Europa Europe
Ċina China
Costarica Costa Rica
Peruvia Peru
Rusia Russia
Usona* The United States
Mediteráneo The Mediterranean Sea
Pacífico The Pacific Ocean
Balcanos The Balkan Mountains
*From a 19th-century acronym for “United States of North America”

In English, the name of a country’s inhabitants is sometimes the basis for the name of the country and language (e.g., “England” and “English” from the ancient Ængle), sometimes the other way around (e.g. “Congolese” from “Congo”). In the latter case, the language might instead be derived from the ethnic group whose language it is (“Spanish” in the case of Mexico), or have its own name (“Swahili” in the case of Kenya).

While this is true in Romániço as well (Anglia “England”, is named after the ancient Anglos, Conganos “Congolese” after Congo), modern peoples are named not after the ethnic tribe from which they descended, but the country of which they are citizens. A person legally living in England, then, is an Angliano, whether that person is ethnically Angla or not; any citizen of Great Britain is a Britaniano, even though the ancient Britanos that gave Britain its name are no more.

A shorthand for the names of languages can be formed by adding -enso to the name of a country, for example Ċinenso “Chinese”, which might more specifically be Mandarinenso, Guandonghenso, or many others. Usonenso refers to American English. Gualienso, however, or “the language of Wales”, is not Welsh (Gualenso), but English; for that reason, it’s generally more accurate to name languages not after the country they’re spoken in, but the people who first spoke them (Anglenso “English”; Anglienso “English as spoken in England”).