# Looking for new creative name



## ScarletM.Sinclaire (Apr 20, 2018)

So I'm nearing the end of my book. I'm writing about a spiritual burial  ceremony. A character has died, and the MC is at the funeral. Now this  isn't a regular run of the mill funeral. This is a funeral in a  different world. So the customs are different. They put paint on the  face (for symbolic reasons) and wrap the bodies up in foliage like  leaves before they bury them. The thought behind that is the people think  the leaves will absorb the energy and return it back to the living. So a  piece of the deceased is always with the people.

Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a name for the person who buries  them. Google was no help, then again I am at work, so a lot of the  websites are blocked and I can't take my phone out due to the fact that I  deal with sensitive information. 

When searching with google, it gave me the names of a funeral director, a  mortician and the undertaker. I looked up the definition of all three,  but none of them apply to someone who actually buries the person. Unless  in the real world, family members are the ones who bury their loved  ones (I don't know, Ive never been to a burial only the funeral  service). 

If there is a name, I would like to change it to fit my world but I  can't for the life of me find a specific name. Any thoughts or help?


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## Jack of all trades (Apr 20, 2018)

ScarletM.Sinclaire said:


> So I'm nearing the end of my book. I'm writing about a spiritual burial  ceremony. A character has died, and the MC is at the funeral. Now this  isn't a regular run of the mill funeral. This is a funeral in a  different world. So the customs are different. They put paint on the  face (for symbolic reasons) and wrap the bodies up in foliage like  leaves before they bury them. The thought behind that is the people think  the leaves will absorb the energy and return it back to the living. So a  piece of the deceased is always with the people.
> 
> Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a name for the person who buries  them. Google was no help, then again I am at work, so a lot of the  websites are blocked and I can't take my phone out due to the fact that I  deal with sensitive information.
> 
> ...



I'm confused by the burning and burying. Nevertheless ...



> Gravediggers
> 
> There is one profession that every burial needs…the gravedigger. Gravediggers, also known as cemetery workers or burial ground custodians, dig graves in cemeteries for burials. It sounds creepy, but it's a job that must be done whenever someone dies and chooses to be buried.



When cremated, loved ones take the ashes home. But the bones rarely burn. I forget what happens to the bones, but it didn't seem very respectful.


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## JustRob (Apr 21, 2018)

The person who looks after a church and churchyard is called the sexton and the sexton was often the person who dug the graves and filled them in if a separate gravedigger wasn't employed. The sexton was also the bellringer, so there are references to the sexton ringing the bell in literature. The following quotation from Wikipedia may indicate where to look for an idea for your word.



> The words "sexton" and "sacristan" both derive from the Medieval Latin word _sacristanus_ meaning "custodian of sacred objects".



In a crematorium after the burning the remains are put in a grinder which reduces any remaining bones to dust. Hence the phrase "grind his bones" appears in literature to imply the complete eradication of physical evidence of a person's existence.

In the case of burials, when old bones needed to be disinterred to make space for new graves they were stored in a room called an ossuary or charnal house (in preparation for resurrection at the end of days). There are many ancient ossuaries around.


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## Bayview (Apr 21, 2018)

You could play up the leaves area and call them the Gardener or the Reclaimer or something...


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## sas (Apr 21, 2018)

One of my first poems was about how my illiterate grandfather would have loved the title of Sexton.
By day, he was a gravedigger, by hand. By night, he was a bar bouncer, by hand. 
Wish he could see us now.


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## EmmaSohan (Apr 21, 2018)

Keeper of the Dead?


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## JustRob (Apr 22, 2018)

You could also read up about "psychopomps", which term normally means spirit guides into the next life but can also be applied to living humans performing a similar role, such as shamans or even hospice workers. 

In my original novel, the longer version as distinct from the shorter one that I now give to people to read, the inexplicable time distorting phenomenon at its centre was given the name Hermes, but at the end of the story when the main character is dying he regards Hermes as being the Greek god, who was a psychopomp amongst his other roles. Instead of taking the path to the afterlife that is presented to him by this entity in his dying moments my character defies Hermes, or rather manipulates the time distorting phenomenon of that name, and finds himself back in his youth, having apparently taken an entirely different path outside of time. The question then remains as to whether by reliving his life with knowledge of how events happened previously he can change them, or whether he will simply be forced to re-enact the same life. I didn't like this cliff-hanger ending and felt that it cheated the reader into going on to read the next novel in the series, so removed this latter part of the story. If I were to start writing again I would now write an even longer version that continued to show how events actually evolved during his second life, but that would make a very long novel, which novice writers aren't expected to produce as their first offering. That is the story though and it has to be that way.

Readers tend to perceive my novel as straightforward science fiction, but it is actually more complex than that, if they get the opportunity to read enough of it. Maybe one day I will write the whole thing.


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## scarab (Jun 23, 2018)

If it's in a different world, surely you can choose any name to fit that world?
Are they a literal or metaphorical people? What do they call the other roles?
Do they have "undertakers", gravediggers, soul-hackers, etc?


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 23, 2018)

Te-Haj


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