Happy birthday!

Oh wow thanks so much!

I love your Tantie Merle story and Nightward is on my to read list.

Feel like starting a fresh notebook is one of the fun things about writing

Very close! It's partially Caribbean inspired so lots of ships ☺️

Thank you!

Ahhhh I literally just posted my first ever mood board earlier today. Feel like this is a sign!

That's all for now. I will probably do a thread about naming conventions of the Northern country in my fantasy world later. Since the North is partially inspired by Nordic culture (ie: Vikings), I think Danish names will crop up but more on that later.

Toodles!

I specifically named some of the islands using the Taino language as inspiration.

The Taino, the Maya, the Lokono, and the Lucayan people are some of the first people in what is now the Caribbean so I wanted to include those cultures in the Caribbean inspired world I'm creating.

Historically Indigenous ppl in the Caribbean arrived from other parts of the Americas.

In my fantasy, it's similar & the very first islanders came from the Southern continent (analogous w/ South America). These first people named the islands so I created names inspired by that.

BUT, the fantasy island names also follow the real world convention of having Indigenous names.

So, just like the real Caribbean, the fantasy names for individual islands are inspired by Indigenous words and names.

So for people's names I chose very old or unusual European names (British, French, Spanish, Danish, etc). Some places names also follow the Euro inspired convention.

But in the fantasy world I'm creating, instead of colonialism, islanders have European-style names b/c they're descendants of seafarers who traveled to the islands. Explorers from a Euro inspired world were among the earliest to arrive, and so they created the naming conventions.

I'm finally finding the courage to write the genres I love with the Caribbean flair that I've been too scared to include. So I'm excited about incorporating Caribbean culture/aesthetics into the romantasy I'm worldbuilding.