Sorry - total newbie question but I’m a bit lost!
I’m working on making a new course and I have some words that are nouns but could also be used as names for people. For example, “tol” means “fire” but can also be used as a male name, and “lyn” means “snow” but can also be used as a female name.
Is there a way I can mark this in the word items list apart from making an alternative translation that keeps it as a name i.e. “tol” --> fire, Tol; or is that how I’m supposed to do it?
Thanks!
A noun that is also a name is called a proper noun. There is not one definitive way of doing it, and you need to make your own descision whether you think you should teach names or not.
I usually teach names, and this is what I usually do: Usually in my courses, one Memrise level is for one Lesson, Chapter or Unit or whatever it is called.
I would list the nouns itself in the level (chapter of the book for example), where they occur, simply like this:
“tol” “fire” “noun”
“lyn” “snow” “noun”
Then, when the word is used as a proper noun, probably in another chapter, I would make an entry in that chapter, like this:
“Tol” “given boy’s name (lit. fire)” " proper noun"
“Lyn” “given girl’s name (lit. snow)” “proper noun”
“Mueller” “surname” “proper noun”
Consider this for whether you want to teach which names. One, for a students all words, including names are possibly new (except for very well known ones such as Deng Xiaopeng or George Washington). That would be a good reason to teach any and all names.
Two, capitals: Some languages don’t use capitals that signals that it is a name or all nouns are written with a capital. Since the capital might make it clear that it is name, students might not feel compelled to bother learning them. It wouldn’t be my approach though, if it was only because it is still helpful to indicate that ‘FERRELL’ and ‘COWAN’ are surnames (as opposed to given or place names).
If a language has no capitals or other markers that it is name, I would always teach the proper noun: for learners it’s as new as any other word, though they might only study it for recognition.
Three: meaning: in some cultures/language the meaning of (given) names really matters, and then it makes sense to list (or even teach) the meaning. I would always do this for cultures where this is somehow important, or just interesting. But I don’t think that many people bother about the meaning of the given names “Archibald” or “Leonard” (which means lion’s heart), and neither for surnames like “Green” or “Brown”. As said, it is helpful though to teach that these are surnames and boy’s names.
Hope this helps! What language/book are you going to make a course for?
Thanks for your response! That really helps!!
I’m attempting to make a course for Ryl aka Twi’leki, a conlang from the Star Wars universe. It’s an incomplete conlang (only 319 words that I’ve been able to find so far) but some random person on a random forum once told me I shouldn’t learn it coz that would be stoopid so I’m making a course for it out of spite! Majority of the words are of the noun-proper noun type, but some are adjective-proper noun.
Currently I’m working on making levels coz I didn’t realise where I was making the words list was actually a level 
so that’ll be fun. After that I’m going to have a go at making verbs out of weapons/tool names since there’s legit like five verbs and they’re pretty internal (look, like, know, etc).
Thanks again for the information, I’ll be sure to fix up how I’ve listed the words in my course asap! 