naming yourself in Lojban

if you've been speaking Lojban for a while, or if you've generally just been around Lojban speakers for long enough, you'll know that most of us tend to go by Lojban names, at least when we're speaking the language. this is not because we're some kind of cult where you get a new name after initiation; it's just a tradition of sorts we have.

I think some of it has to do with how adapting most people's names into Lojban already requires you to distort them somewhat — some names just turn into terrible cmevla.0 there's also the fact that Lojban culture has developed almost entirely online, where most people tend to use "fake" names anyway. it's also just fun to come up with a new name: it can be a form of self-expression, and having a Lojban name does feel more like you're a "real Lojbanist" in a way.

so, if you've just started learning this language and want a Lojban name for yourself, or you already have a Lojban name but for some reason you want to change it: this guide is for you. I'll try to explain some of the tendencies of how people come up with their names, and maybe that can help you choose yours!

1. you can just use your regular name, kind of

so, the first option you have is that you can just use whatever name you use outside of Lojban spaces and transcribe it into a Lojban cmevla. you can technically do this with any name, but some names will just sound better than others when you do this. if your name is "Hugglesworth", which already sounds extremely silly in English, you could Lojbanize it as one of the following options:

xýglzuuyrt — this has irregular stress, two y's, a syllabic consonant, and a /w/ expanded to /u.w/ just to fit Lojban's phonotactics. it's not only weird for a Lojban word (even for a transcribed foreign name), it also sounds weird and looks even worse. I would think this is your Discord account's password, not your name.

xagylzvort — this one is regularly stressed on the first syllable (y is skipped for stress purposes) and generally feels more "Lojbany" (the /w/ is just adapted to /v/ instead of forcing an extra syllable into the name, and it also avoids the problem of syllabic consonants and too much y), but it's still kind of off, for some reason. still, it's way better than the first one.

anyway, my point is that not every foreign name is going to adapt into a good Lojban name. (I might make a more detailed post someday about how to come up with good, native-sounding "five-vowel cmevla".)

but there are also names that do adapt into Lojban quite well — they generally don't have word-internal glides, syllabic consonants, stressed y (or even better, no y at all)0, or very long consonant clusters, and they also have regular second-to-last-non-schwa-syllable stress (so no accent marks):

Zearen (this one is the name of an actual Lojbanist) → ziren. note that this one Lojbanizes perfectly. you don't have to change the name at all, since it already ends in a consonant and has "normal" phonotactics for Lojban.

Lucas → lukas; also Lojbanizes with no modification.

Mohammed → moxamed, mo'amed. I would use x here as it's more a "real consonant", while ' is simply a break between two vowels that can be pronounced anything from [h] to [ɦ] to [∅] (silent). (on the other hand, ' used to break vowel clusters generally feels more "native" than inserting glides, as in xu'an for Juan. in the end, a lot of this boils down to personal preference as well.)

Marina → marin; marinas would also be possible. generally names ending in a vowel are "patched" by adding a consonant at the end (mostly s), but if the name is three syllables or longer, deleting the final vowel can also be considered.0 note that in the first option here, the stress is márin, but that's fine — stress in cmevla isn't particularly phonemic anyway, and forcing the irregular last-syllable stress makes the name stick out compared to more "native" Lojban forms.

2. "native" Lojban names

while adapting your existing name into Lojban phonetics is an option, it's not the most common option by far. most people come up with an entirely new name, and usually that name is just a Lojban verb (all content words in Lojban are verbs).

most verb names are a single root word: lalxu 'lake', jimpe 'understander', tsani 'sky'. your name doesn't have to have a very "namey" meaning, either: there are people named janbe 'bell' (well, she's a musician, it makes sense), srasu 'grass' and so on. you're probably fine if you like the meaning, as long as it doesn't mean something like "penis".

(getting jumped by two Lojbanists would be a very similar experience. I don't know any people named denci 'tooth' or jgalu 'nail, claw', but I wouldn't be surprised if that was someone's actual Lojban name.)

not every name is this short, though: your name can also be a compound. compound names are usually made of two short combining forms (3 letters each, not counting ‹'›): nalvai [← 'unimportant', na'e + vajni, a humbly self-deprecating name]0, travu'e [← tarti + vurde 'behavior-virtuous', a calque of Alice], solpa'i ['sun-lover', from solri + prami]. more rarely, compounds of a short affix and a full root word can be seen: latkerlo [← mlatu + kerlo 'cat-ears']. anything with three or more morphemes is very unusual, as it'd be too long. zi'evla ("freewords") are also very unusual as names.

3. coming up with your own name

now that you know what most Lojban names are like, you can try finding something that works for you! it doesn't even have to be an existing word in the dictionary — you can come up with your own compound-word name, even (as long as the compound makes sense, generally).

a good way to start is looking for words that either have the same meaning as your non-Lojban name, or that sound similar to your name. I recommend la traide sisku as a dictionary app for this, because it allows for wildcard searching.

so, for example, if your name is Hope, you could be la pacna in Lojban, since pacna means 'to hope'. or if you're a Henry, you might be xendo 'kind' (because the first syllable is the same).

you can also just choose a word you happen to like — if for some reason you'd like to be named zgike 'music', lurgu'i 'moonlight', or maybe even senpi 'doubtful' (because skepticism is one of the personality traits you like in yourself, for example), just go for it! just look for a word you like in the dictionary, or try making your own compound name from two combining forms!0

I do think this is easier to understand with some more detailed examples, though. I'll show how I decided on my own name, and then show the Lojban name I helped one of my friends who doesn't speak Lojban choose for himself.0

Mati → tcima 'weather'

my name is pronounced [ˈmatʃi] (the t sounds like "ch". if I were to write it in Lojban spelling, it'd be ‹matci›). it turns out that matci really is a Lojban word, but it's not a great name. it means 'mattress', which is kind of silly for a name — and Lojbanists do have silly names, don't get me wrong, but I wanted something more... "namey".

I knew very little Lojban when I tried to come up with a name, so I opened traide sisku and did some wildcard searching. first I tried looking for root words that began with ‹ma›, like so:0

I ended up kind of liking makfa 'magic' and manci 'to feel wonder, awe', but neither of those two were quite it, so I tried other combinations — looking at words that just generally began with an m, or that ended in tci or ti, until I decided to look for words that began with the letters ‹tci›, for some reason:

and this is how I ended up finding tcima, which is... Mati with the syllables backwards! it also has more of a "namey" quality to it, and sure, no one is actually named Weather, but there are people named after elements of the weather. there's at least a few Rains out there. so I felt like tcima both sounded like it could be a "real name", and it also sounds like my actual name. perfect!

Drudge → dradji 'wishes for correctness'

Drudge is the nickname of a friend I met in the Classical East Asian Languages Discord server. he doesn't speak Lojban, but he does read all the Lojban rants I send him — to ki'e sai la dradji! i mi mutce co gleki lo nu do jundi tcidu lo se cusku be mi toi0 — so I decided to try giving him a Lojban name too.

I showed him a few options: traji 'the most, -est', dradji 'correct-wishing' [← drani djica], and rulgu'i 'flowerlight' [← xrula gusni]. the first one is a regular root word, while the other two are compounds I kind of made on the spot: dradji sounds like Drudge, and rulgu'i is from his Chinese display name, 櫻燈 'eang tong 'cherry lamp'.0

he ended up liking dradji the most out of the options (I had also considered dradju 'right-helper', but didn't tell him about that one). the meaning is generally positive — to drani djica can be wanting or wishing for the right thing, wanting to be morally right, or even wanting to be scientifically correct. the least charitable reading is that it means always wanting to be right just so you can win an argument, but that's kind of a stretch. I think the meaning is generally positive for this one.

(as a final note here, I do feel like I have to say that rulgu'i, while not my friend's chosen Lojban name, is very pretty. -rul- in particular has such a nice sound to it as a combining form...)

4. "native namewords" (jvocmevla) and fake-verb names

the examples I've shown this far assume that if you're using a non-Lojban name as-is, you're going to adapt it into a cmevla, and that if you're coming up with a new Lojban name, your name is going to be a verb. this is generally how it goes, but there are exceptions.

the main exception to this are jvocmevla — cmevla that are made of combining forms used to make compound words, but end with a consonant-final affix instead of the vowel-final forms that are required to make regular verbs. an example of this is conlang musician tetsusquared ( YouTube ), whose Lojban name is la tirprij. tirprij is a compound of -tir-, the combining form of tirse 'iron', plus prije 'wise' — without its final consonant to make a cmevla. I think jvocmevla are a particularly good option for a native name if your name would be a compound, but its second element doesn't have a short terminal rafsi. they aren't particularly uncommon either — I would say a solid fourth of Lojbanists have jvocmevla names.0

lastly, there are also "fake verb" names. sometimes people's names just happen to either sound or look like (in spelling) they could be valid Lojban verbs morphologically, and that can be used as a tongue-in-cheek nickname of sorts. I remember having to talk about someone named Maple in Lojban once, and I just called her la maple — and yes, that's [ˈmaple], not /ˈmeɪpəl/. similarly, people sometimes jokingly say pride [ˈpride] masti for 'Pride Month', and I've been called matci 'mattress' as a joke, because it sounds just like Mati, even though it's not my name.

I've never seen anyone with a "fake verb" as their "formal" Lojban name — but honestly, we're all just speaking Funny Internet Language, and these aren't our legal names or anything, so it wouldn't really be weird to see someone using a nonexistent verb as their actual Lojban name. it would at most be a little bit unusual, but Lojbanists are unusual.0

... and, I think that's it? I could have said some more, like how at a time there used to be someone who went by the comically overlong la zo zo zei zei zei fa'o0, or I could have shown some examples of foreign names that accidentally sound like jvocmevla, but I hope I've managed to give a good overview of what Lojban naming practices are like.

fe'o. ki'e mo'u tcidu, di'ai!
that's all. thanks for reading, have a nice day!