Louisiana Creole Translations

[khaleesiofsnow]

I feel like this might be too off-the-wall to get many answers, but I'm building a modern fantasy world with a friend that's set on the bayou and while we're using preternatural creatures that are already established, we want to come up with names for the sub-species that sound local.

I used google and found this site which has helped me some -

Comments

[angelinw8ing13]

Why I can't be much help as we just moved to New Orleans less than two months ago my hubby's family has been here for generations. We just took a tour last night with his cousin (who is an official tour guide)to my understanding and I could be very wrong here and will ask his cousin as soon as I can but because you do have a lot of Irish, German, Spanish, and French here things were referred to by the cultural names not a mix. It's also very hard to "translate" some of these for you because the stories just don't really exist down here. For example my husband's family is Primary Irish/French. The Irish side did grow up in the Channel. And while I have heard a lot of family tales of ghost, voodoo, zombies, and even vampires I have not heard one tale of the Banshees. Yes they are Irish but I haven't heard any local tales here. St. Patty's Day is REALLY big here they have a parade and everything but no tales of Leprechauns. The one reference I did hear to Banshee and Leprechaun was actually around St. Patty's day and they were pronounced just like we say them anywhere else. The big lore here seems to be Zombies because we have to bury our dead above ground because if not the bodies rise during the floods. I hear last night about the casquettes (pronounced casket) girls who came over with the french rumored to have brought the remains of vampires with them in their casquettes, chest like travel cases. But the bigs ones where are ghosts, pirates and their ghost and buried treasure. I could ask about some of the other more common words but like someone else said please do not use Cher on every page it's really not that common here. You hear honey, darling, and Ms. a lot. Our close family calls our daughter Ma cherie (where the cher comes from) but it is only by my husband's family and the much older generation.

One more thing I forgot this book Quaint Essential New Orleans : A Crescent City Lexicon by Kevin Bozant might be a big help if you can find it. When we lived in Florida i was able to inter-library loan from another library because mine did not carry it.