Most fantasy names are decoration. A writer wants something that sounds elvish or old or sinister, reaches for some apostrophes and hard consonants, and moves on. I can’t do that. Ever since I first read Tolkien’s Ring poem, and realized that ash must mean “one” and nazg “ring,” I’ve been called to untangle the names and find the patterns and meanings behind the sounds and feelings. As a computational linguist who teaches machines to hear human speech, I build the languages of my worlds with real linguistic machinery: the aesthetic balance of sound and meaning, with histories that leave marks, and with logic that makes a word inevitable rather than invented.

Andowan, the world of Crown of Crows, has two well-developed languages so far: Artanga, descended from Modern Irish, and Pizan, grown from creolized Spanish with English pressing in at the edges. Every name in the book is built from them, plus a few snatches of Dragon speech and even stranger things. Andowan is an animist world, a mindful world. Below is a map of Artír and a sample glossary of its words and names, with notes so you can see some of the bones in the broth.