-claw - a very skilled fighter -face - a very attractive cat - indicative of good health - likely to have healthy kits -fang - a cat reasonably skilled in two areas, normally hunting and fighting, but can be others occasionally -fish - a very skilled fighter. -fish as in the verb. (I made this because valuing swimming but not fishing is dumb, given fishing is inherently more valuable) -flower - sign of being a good mother, or being valuable for raising kits -foot - fast runner -leaf - denotes incredible skill as a medicine cat -nose - a very skilled tracker -path - a cat with the signs of being a good mentor -step - correlating - walks like their prefix. Pretty limited to mammal, insect and bird prefixes. Could potentially denote a cat with a very weird gait. -stream - a very skilled swimmer -tail - a very agile cat or a good climber -whisker - a very skilled hunter
Personality
-cloud - a gentle cat -dash - a hasty cat who can make quick decisions in an emergency (I made this as an opposite to -stone) -heart - a cat with a strong sense of morality -scar - a cat who suffered grievous wounds as an apprentice but still had the perseverance to become a warrior -stone - a cat who is cautious and in good control of their emotions -storm - basically, they're bi-polar
Jacks of all trade
-fur - favoured on long-haired cats, but that is not a strict rule -pelt - favoured on short-haired cats, but that is not a strict rule -stripe - favoured on tabbies
And anything else not listed is probably a name-change name: they have to reflect the injury.
Most other suffixes seem insulting to me when you think it through, so a lot of them will be used to denote murderers and criminals in Gustclan... Once I reach that stage.
I can't copy and paste from my archive of good prefixes, but some general grey prefixes that you could use (assuming a northern british setting) are ;
Yes, I've used quite a lot of these - that's probably why I can remember them - but a lot are ones I plan to use, so should be unique or at least pretty rare. Though, shotgun on Horsetail (horse- after the plant Horsetail)
@Adiebaby I think how our naming systems are different is kinda interesting. In my system, absolutely no names are gendered except -flower can only be given to a female cat or a male cat who is willing to adopt random kits. I really dislike -vixen because there's so little difference between a dog-fox and a vixen appearance-wise that I doubt the cats would have separate words for it, whereas ram-, stag-, etc. could denote more than the general term for the animal, if the difference is a head pattern. Eg ram- is a fluffy white cat with black ears or stag- is a brown cat with white ears. Also, I wouldn't use branch- because, to me, that suggests that the territory only has one type of tree, if the cats can just assume that any branch is a specific shade, that probably means all there branches are a similar shade, which is most likely if there're all from the same tree. In certain environments (eg farms, human grown tree colonies, areas away from trees so the cats only have a faint recollection of different shades, tundra with only pine trees, high mountains with only spruce trees, etc.) using branch- can be an interesting way to reflect the territory, but it's down to the clan whether I would deem it a valid prefix, essentially. But those differences are pretty interesting to me over all.
Step and Toe - Bestowed on the stealthy ones Foot - Bestowed on the fast ones Leap - Bestowed on the jumpers Whisker - Bestowed on the hunters Nose - Bestowed on the seekers Claw - Bestowed on the fighters Fang - Bestowed on the those that hunt and fight Flight - Bestowed on those that glide over the hills Stream - Bestowed on the swimmers Stone - Bestowed on the sturdy Heart - Bestowed on the outspoken Blaze - Bestowed on the brave Cloud - Bestowed on the unruffled Storm - Bestowed on the fierce Feather - Bestowed on the gentle Pool - Bestowed on the calm Berry - Bestowed on the gatherers Leaf - Bestowed on the healers Wing - Bestowed on the dreamers Tail - Bestowed on the climbers Pelt and Fur - Bestowed on the remarkably average Belly and Flower - Bestowed on the carers Rain - Bestowed on the self-sacrificing Face - Bestowed on the beautiful Strike - Bestowed on the really good fighters Frost - Bestowed on the hardy Gaze - Bestowed on the wise
Is it okay if I add some of your prefixes to this list?
@Dino Of course! There's genuinely no way that I'm going to use up all the unique names, and especially not all the unique names with all the ways they sound good/decent I like the idea for something stealthy so I might add one for that, if that's alright too?
@Starry Not never! Well, hardly ever! I have no idea what that's a reference to, but my brothers loudly sing that to mean "basically no"
@Adiebaby I always find it pretty interesting how differently people interpret the naming system.
So I'm pretty harsh on suffixes, but because all my rules for prefixes being able to be used are ; must be related in a clear way to a trait visible at birth that is likely to be permanent, the prefix is not insulting, the prefix is not blasphemous against Starclan (as sun-dewtail would have been) and it must not contain two potential prefixes (eg strawberry is not allowed, because straw and berry are both separate concepts; however raspberry is allowed in the form "rasp" because berry is a separate thing, but rasp is not, so rasp must refer to a raspberry); but because so many animals and plants are in a form where the raspberry treatment works, I get a ridiculously thorough total list. I can also replicate ideas, eg the matchstick fungus is also called the British soldier, in reference to beefeaters: so a cat named after it could be match-, british, brit-, soldier-, beef- or eater-. In practice, I'd probably only use match- but that doesn't mean I couldn't use the others. Argusheart is my only current cat who that splitting thing applies to; her prefix refers to the Northern Argus Butterfly; butterfly is in strawberry form (butterwort not actual butter) so cannot be used, and north refers to something else, so argus is what's left. And because of a my weirdness with prefixes, I've probably ended up with a unique naming system, as have probably a lot of other people.
Yeah sure, feel free to add it! I know people for some reason hate the canon name 'Daisytoe' but maybe -toe is based off to TIPTOE w/ it meaning stealthy.