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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36423
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 **We are good at pattern recognition and if you keep the bizarre names to a minimum you should be OK.** Long is fine, so long as they can be scanned and not confused with one another.

I rather like _Tey-filen_ as it suggests a compound word, and for whatever reason evokes the adjective-noun construct. It's easy to say, too.

_Exopeildelivur-thneya_ is not easy to say, so that one is tough. BUT, it is easy to recognize. In particular, the 'Exo' is parsed as independent, a prefix of sorts, and so any long word starting with Exo- might risk scanning as this 'thing.' SO - I'd say do **not** have a second term called Exodelipinc-frolya (for example), because it would be hard to keep the two straight. But a nonsense word like _Qinjanlin_ would be recognized as a separate from the two words you already have ... because it 'looks' different.

Be sure your strange words are not too frequent and also (most importantly) they should start and end differently from one another. When we scan, we pick up on the first and last letters. Thus, the famous passage:

> Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae

can be understood. If your words start with different letters, and end with different letters, your readers will have an easier time keeping them straight.

Fantasy folks are more tolerant of this sort of stuff than readers of some other genres, in part because we are trying to be anywhere but present-day Earth.

Original score: 27