absolutely self-indulgent owl language breakdown from my owl house daemon au bc i was having fun with it today:

so we have 'wings-across-night' which is what the owl beast/firefly calls herself in her own language. the sounds of this name are spelled out as 'grr-click-growl', which, bc i have a sounds-to-general-meaning dictionary, is this idea of like...

the 'grr' and 'growl' are these lasting sounds, longer, and somewhat low and dangerous, which get across the 'wings' and 'night' idea that posit firefly as a hunter, who hunts best in the night. then we have the 'click' for across which is sort of a joining-together, and all-together it comes across as this long rumbling sound, ie of an owl in flight across the sky.

and then we get to FIREFLY, which, man it took me a WHILE to get to firefly as the translated witch-language/english version of wings-across-night. its this idea that...wings-across-night is a hunter of the night, she is someone who is found and associated with darkness, but it ALSO has an implication of being seen: she flies across the night, and is thus illuminated by it.

and so FIREFLY. as these creatures who glow in the dark, who live there and make it their own with something bright inside of them and its just so FUN.

and we get!! other names too! like 'king' being 'puffs out chest' because it comes from that sorta arrogance of his youth, being an itty-bitty baby who saw himself as the king of demons, but then later on its also this idea of like, how one might puff up as a sort of way of saying im HERE, not in an arrogant way but in a claiming this place as their own sort of way, which king does: he might be a titan but hes also a CLAWTHORNE.

'one that hoards' is what 'the collector' translates to in owl, but firefly doesnt call him this for long...bc the thing she notices about them is how SCARED they can get, how hesitant they are, bc theyve had so much taken from them and theyre protective of what they do have, yes in a way that can be harmful (look at their relationship w king lol) but also like...reaches out scared...and so we get this translating to 'sraf' in witch-language because that's what it is all about, in the end: the collector who has reached, terrified, for this thing he was told to avoid, and made it his own, and made himself sraf.

sea-and-light for luzmari is one of the first owl-names i came up with and one im still so fond of...they're called sea-and (mari) or and-light (luz) separately but no matter what we get the AND in there, tying them together as a pair despite all else. 'light' is straightforward for luz but 'sea' is a bit less for mari, but it connects for both of them similar things--light being the glyph luz finds first, ice being the one mari did, but mari not being so cold despite it all, but a thing ice melts into. (also when i was picking names i saw that 'maritza' means something relating to the sea, tho this was Years ago n i dont know how true that is lol since i dont have the source anymore). mari being first because she has chosen to be first, flipping the human-first script on its tail, bc firefly is an owl, and why would she follow convention?

im still poking around at my names for hunter and amity...last night i came up with something like berrysharp or berry-click or berry-(click) for amity and alma--i know they get a name together because they are almost always holding on to one another, and 'berry' for this sort of idea of both the purple but also like, berries can be bitter, sweet, something inbetween, and amityalma have been A Lot Of Things. and then the sharpness being the idea of like, throughout the fic amity is sort of the first character to just be HERSELF, especially when compared to luzmari who spend nearly the entire series really struggling with this...dunno this one im still turning over lol. the 'click' part of things is just bc 'click' tends to mean like, combining two things, which seems fitting for a name that is amity and alma together.

i have Nothing yet for hunter. some ideas. ive been toying with hunter and flapjack's name being something, and then somethings shadow--ie whatever name one of them gets, the other gets the same name with shadow tacked on, which fits their Vibes, plus when firefly meets them, which is post-hollow mind when things are Bad. prooooobably it would go flapjack and then hunter is flapjack's shadow, which i think is fun...but we'll see i still need a NAME. something to do with palistrom trees?

dunno. just...owl language <3