Anybody who creates a world, whether they’re writing paranormal, urban fantasy, straight fantasy, etc. has a need to generate random words to go along with their culture. Some people take their existing language and throw in extra letters. Like all those funky silent “h”s in J.R. Ward’s stories. Other people take existing foreign words and adapt them. The broad term for the paranormals in my world is Mirus, which comes from Latin. Or the wolf-shifters are referred to as Wylk (which comes from the Bulgarian word for wolf). But sometimes you want something completely new.
I have notations all over my manuscript where I need made up words. [Mirus poison] [Wylk term of endearment] [Wylk insult for non-pack wolf]. I get really tired of these, so I finally went in search of a foreign word generator. There are a few online that I found, but they really weren’t giving me stuff I wanted to use. Then I found this: Random Word Generator 11.0, a free, shareware program that gives you all KINDS of parameters to play with. I have no idea how to use all of it, but I got a name for my poison right off, so I’m definitely digging having something right on my desktop to play with.
If you need made up words, go check it out. And as always, be sure to scan anything you download for viruses before you install.