The names are almost the most important thing for a character, because they have to drag that around with them for a hundred and twenty thousand words or more…with no escape.
Another point, they should be culturally consistent with each other, which then raises the bugaboo of the culture itself. Nothing turns me off more than bad naming culture and conventions. I will DNF so fast…
I feel they have to resonate well. Juan isn’t a good name to mix with Hee-young, unless there’s a solid reason those cultural bits should be close. They have to have the same vibration, and persuasively work in the same world.
Ironically what we think of as "normal English names" are a heterogeneous mix of Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek and Roman, French, German, Celtic, and on rare occasions the occasional Anglo-Saxon name.
Very true. With all its knocks and bangs, English survived as a language, but its names did not.
Shortly before the Conquest, a Norman princess coming to England to marry the king changed her name from the strange and foreign Emma to the much more ordinary and homelike Aelfgifu.
One notes that fewer Anglosaxon names were known in medieval times than in modern ones. There was a Victorian revival, with all the perils. (Apparently "Cedric" is a misprint from the original "Cerdic.")
Additional thought on names (especially for characters in fictional societies).
How long should the name be? A name with twenty or more letters in it would be hard to spell every time it is used and how often would a name that long be used in that society?
Oh, as Pam Uphoff found out, it's one thing to use those long names in one book but another to use those long names in future book. 😉
I made a real rod for my own back with my series, with every name being invented. Not quite a cast of thousands, but I have a file that keeps track of all the names. It’s not exact because there’s some supporting text in there, but a quick word count shows there are about six hundred names. Some may only be mentioned once, but they still need to work. At least not to be jarring.
I suppose my biggest problem in this regard is that every time I name a character, I have to turn to my fiancée and tell her another one we can’t use for our future children
What about a character whose name is completely different in culture from everyone around them? I'm thinking of the Xanadu story by Ms. Wyman where one important character, the hero's girlfriend/best friend and confidant to the Empress, is named Fatima and is usually dressed in a bedlah with the Arabic style headscarf, while everyone else around her tends more towards either classical/English in name (Octavius, Reginald, Alicia, and Jonathan) or sorta-French (her boyfriend Tabbe).
Would you consider Fatima's name to be a distraction or not, given that her background as a character was for her to be brought in to be a companion and friend to the Empress back when she was still just the heir? The story does hint that she was brought in from the far reaches of the new empire to make sure Fatima's family couldn't try using their new connection to the imperial household to make trouble, which is why the emperor didn't trust any of the 'local' nobles.
It was mostly part of her background and aside from playing into her depiction as a dancer and her style of dress, didn't come up very much.
I should add that this series used anthropomorphic characters and was done in visual style (like a graphic novel), so everyone's species played a sort of visual shorthand in helping to establish their characters, either by having them seem to be much like some of the stereotypes of their animal species, at first (Fatima was a fox, so she was elegant, graceful, intelligent, etc.) but some traits that go against those same stereotypes, like Fatima being a loyal and compassionate woman who cared deeply about others rather than a selfish backstabber like the usual depiction of fictional foxes.
The names are almost the most important thing for a character, because they have to drag that around with them for a hundred and twenty thousand words or more…with no escape.
Another point, they should be culturally consistent with each other, which then raises the bugaboo of the culture itself. Nothing turns me off more than bad naming culture and conventions. I will DNF so fast…
So much trouble making them all sound like the same culture.
I feel they have to resonate well. Juan isn’t a good name to mix with Hee-young, unless there’s a solid reason those cultural bits should be close. They have to have the same vibration, and persuasively work in the same world.
A world with lots of travel. A time patrol that picks its patrolmen across space and time.
Ironically what we think of as "normal English names" are a heterogeneous mix of Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek and Roman, French, German, Celtic, and on rare occasions the occasional Anglo-Saxon name.
Very true. With all its knocks and bangs, English survived as a language, but its names did not.
Shortly before the Conquest, a Norman princess coming to England to marry the king changed her name from the strange and foreign Emma to the much more ordinary and homelike Aelfgifu.
One notes that fewer Anglosaxon names were known in medieval times than in modern ones. There was a Victorian revival, with all the perils. (Apparently "Cedric" is a misprint from the original "Cerdic.")
Additional thought on names (especially for characters in fictional societies).
How long should the name be? A name with twenty or more letters in it would be hard to spell every time it is used and how often would a name that long be used in that society?
Oh, as Pam Uphoff found out, it's one thing to use those long names in one book but another to use those long names in future book. 😉
Are you going to do an audio book?
Also consider that in real life, long names are often broken down into nicknames.
I wasn't and while that character had a nickname, I later divided his name into a "personal name", a "family name" and a "clan name".
All good advice.
I made a real rod for my own back with my series, with every name being invented. Not quite a cast of thousands, but I have a file that keeps track of all the names. It’s not exact because there’s some supporting text in there, but a quick word count shows there are about six hundred names. Some may only be mentioned once, but they still need to work. At least not to be jarring.
I don’t count sheep at night, I think of names.
I always make a list of names. No matter how short the story or few the characters.
I don't always keep them straight despite that.
I suppose my biggest problem in this regard is that every time I name a character, I have to turn to my fiancée and tell her another one we can’t use for our future children
How true!
What about a character whose name is completely different in culture from everyone around them? I'm thinking of the Xanadu story by Ms. Wyman where one important character, the hero's girlfriend/best friend and confidant to the Empress, is named Fatima and is usually dressed in a bedlah with the Arabic style headscarf, while everyone else around her tends more towards either classical/English in name (Octavius, Reginald, Alicia, and Jonathan) or sorta-French (her boyfriend Tabbe).
Would you consider Fatima's name to be a distraction or not, given that her background as a character was for her to be brought in to be a companion and friend to the Empress back when she was still just the heir? The story does hint that she was brought in from the far reaches of the new empire to make sure Fatima's family couldn't try using their new connection to the imperial household to make trouble, which is why the emperor didn't trust any of the 'local' nobles.
It's part and parcel of her depiction there, then. The question is whether her far reaches origin was a distraction or wisely used.
It was mostly part of her background and aside from playing into her depiction as a dancer and her style of dress, didn't come up very much.
I should add that this series used anthropomorphic characters and was done in visual style (like a graphic novel), so everyone's species played a sort of visual shorthand in helping to establish their characters, either by having them seem to be much like some of the stereotypes of their animal species, at first (Fatima was a fox, so she was elegant, graceful, intelligent, etc.) but some traits that go against those same stereotypes, like Fatima being a loyal and compassionate woman who cared deeply about others rather than a selfish backstabber like the usual depiction of fictional foxes.