During today’s very fruitful conlanging session, I gave NisseLang a language name! The language name is Nómàk’óla, which means “voice of the Northern Lights” and connects with the nisse lore that they come from the Northern Lights.
The speakers refer to each other as nísse, which comes from an old compound meaning “guardian” (they view themselves as guardians of nature and anything that falls within their realm).
They call their community níssetòŋtú, which comes from a phrase meaning “guardian who uses magic.” The prepositional tòŋ- means “with, using” and marks the instrumental. It comes from the verb tóŋo, meaning “to feel”, which extended to mean “to understand.” It reflects the idea that, to use something, you must first understand it.
With that, I managed to fit nisse, tonttu, and gnome into some very important words for my speakers!