On fantasy names.

[theweaselking]

Someone recently [1] had an essay on fantasy names and why expecting normal names was dumb.

And I agree, in principle.

In practice, there reaches a point AND YES I AM LOOKING AT YOU MISTER WEBER wherein you have to realise you have just named a character "Howard Wilson" and spelled it "Hauwerd Wylsyn".

Or "Jasper Clinton" spelled "Zhaspahr Clyntahn".

Or "Rahzhair" for "Roger". I'm just saying. Mr Weber. For the record.

It makes me stabby.

[1]: I am on my phone or I would look it up.

Comments

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

Yeeeah, that gets to me too. Haha!

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

I try to use names that actually exist, but aren't necessarily common. If every other letter is a Y, much eyebrow-raising is going to ensue.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Unless your character is Welsh.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Fair point. Most of my characters aren't Welsh, though.

Omg, Reepicheep icon!

[possbert.livejournal.com]

Best not to point Mr Weber to this website then - http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/1.html

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Amen! That book drives me nuts!

[maelorin]

might be one reason why i stopped reading weber *years* ago ...

[skington.livejournal.com]

It might have been this rant (http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/276539.html).

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's the one!

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

I get the whole "orthographic drift" thing, but it's a little too-clever-by-half and just plain _distracting_ to decipher.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Part of my problem is that all the nations drifted, apparently, in the same direction.

Even with the "orthographic drift", they all drifted the same distance in the same direction... Despite being DESCRIBED as having accents that are almost unintelligible to one another?

You can't guess nation by name convention on Safehold. You can't even guess continent.

Butting In...

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

I didn't know what book you were talking about, but I see your point now.

If the nations are right next to each other, you could see their languages remaining similar, particularly if they were originally populated by the same group. True case in point--French, Italian, Portugese, and Spanish all arose from Latin and still sound fairly similar. But, even taking that into account, they all have their own unique "flavor," and with a rudimentary knowledge of them are fairly easy to discern from each other.

Ugh, I had to explain to my future sister-in-law once why German wasn't a "Romance Language." She was totally convinced that it was. *face, meet palm*

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

Universal Church, Universal literacy, universal origin (not all _that_ long ago). For all that there are some different political set-ups, Safehold is very homogenous (and unsurprisingly so).

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yes, but given that the names have changed-spelling-to-reflect-changes-of-pronunciation, and the accents from various regions are described as thick and sometimes unintelligible to one another despite a common language.... why would everyone have changed all the spellings in the same way?

Leaving aside, of course, the annoyance factor inherent in that these AREN'T different and unique Fantasyland names - they're perfectly normal white-characters-in-1950s-sitcom names, that you then have to translate.

[a-jaclyn.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Gentlemen Broncos yet? That lesson about fantasy names is invaluable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0OIprioPqI.

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

Thick/unintellgible accents in the same language? Cornish vs. Glaswegian vs. Irish vs. Welsh vs. Boston vs. Alabama vs. Maine vs. Australian.

...and yet we all spell things the same way (with some small exceptions). If we were all taught to read by the same global institution from a large volume of texts that came down to us from the Creation of the World, we'd probably spell things even more uniformly.

Safehold's Church and the Testimonies are going to cause the whole planet to "drift" in synch orthographcially.

It's still _really_ annoying and distracting from the text, but that's not quite the same as implausible.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

We play-tested a D&D module for a friend of the GM's awhile back.

Every single proper noun was High Fantasy Gibberish. When you actually have to SAY the names--and remember them, because they're plot points--as sounds instead of as a little visual pictogram in a book, they were completely unusable. Our poor GM had to getting a running start at each one.

After a few sessions of this, we stopped even trying to use those names and began making up our own. Our more recent campaign has been characterized by very clear, distinctive names completely lacking in accent marks or renegade Y's.

[jerril]

Oh dear. Been there as That GM, ended up with my players re-christening NPCs as "Bob".

I've even renamed the Duerogar in D&D (to Dvergar) because I can't take a blind stab at the "official" spelling - I know it's an Anglo-Saxon spelling, and I speak English and all, but yeah, not happening now or ever.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I would argue that an exception that proves the rule is Anathem. But otherwise, yes with the stabby.