What's in a name? by D.A Lascelles
Names can be hard. I know many imaginative and creative people both in the writing and Live Roleplaying communities - people who can come up with exciting and interesting plots and stories, twist and subvert stereotypes and push the envelope of good taste and style with everything they do and say – and yet, even among this exalted and talented bunch a common refrain is ‘I am useless at names’. I say it myself on occasion and I am sure many of you out there agree with this sentiment.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="134" caption="He is Qi’raj-kar’toth, slayer of men, Lord of Qu'art, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and holder of the Bronze swimming certificate! His friends call him Qi."][/caption]
It applies to many aspects of writing. Names of characters, names of places, names (well, titles) of stories, names of alien or fantasy races... basically any place where you have to give something a label and it is very easy to fall back into comfortable pastures and resort to common names used in the real world or throw random syllables together with some apostrophes to make some hideous mash up of an alien name like Qi’raj-kar’toth and hope no one asks you to translate its meaning into English (easy: it means ‘son of the creature who didn’t know what to name his offspring so made some random stuff up’, a fine old traditional name on Qua-arak-ohr-te which translates as ‘planet of the made up name’).
I think there is a lot of concern about names because we place a lot of emphasis on them. Names have power because, in our minds, they shape the thing they label. This is why many people are wary about names because, once they have given a name to something they think it fixes something about the personality or other aspects of that object or person. It’s possibly an irrational feeling (because, logically, names are independent of the nature of the thing they name for many reasons) but it is a very real one that cannot be ignored.
So, for this post I thought I would share some of the methods I have used in the past to overcome my own fear of naming.
1) Use a ‘placeholder’ name. Often, when writing a story and a new character pops up into my head out of nowhere and insists on getting involved in the action, I find there is a tendency to stall while trying to think of a name. This can sometimes be problematic as it breaks your flow. To prevent this, I try to not bother naming the character until I have time to do so and certainly not until I have got to the end of whatever is currently pouring out of my mind and onto the page. Instead, I slot in a line of X’s which, in my own personal editing notation, mean ‘this is a name you haven’t thought of which needs to be filled in at some point’. I sometimes also use a generic random name as a sort of ‘working name’ for the interim. Sometimes I go back in the edits and change these to another name, sometimes I look back and consider it a reasonably good name and leave it as is. The point is that, to my mind, if trying to think up a relatively trivial detail is slowing down your productivity then avoiding the whole issue is a good way to keep going.
2) Buy a baby name book. There are loads of websites out there which give names and meanings for names and they can be great resources. There are even name websites specific for different cultures and some list popular names and meanings for different eras of history (for example, there is a Norse naming site or two which are very useful if considering Viking character names). However, websites don’t always help in deciding on names. An actual physical baby name book is a good thing to have because you can use it to randomise. A common method I use is to close my eyes, flip through the pages of the book and then put my finger down somewhere on the page. The name closest to my finger, assuming it is appropriate for cultural or gender purposes, is the one I at least consider trying on for size. There are other ways to randomise. One LRP organiser I knew produced a list of common names (forenames and surnames) appropriate to the period he was running games in so that his crew could quickly select a name by randomly picking one from each list. You could draw up tables and roll dice or use some other method such as writing a software app to scroll through names in a database (if you have the knowing of it, there is a way in Excel to do this, I’ve seen it used in schools to select prize winners from lists of pupils who have had full attendance that week but I have no idea how it was done). Randomising names is a good way to avoid getting writer's block because of an inability to think of a good name.
3) Consider internal consistency. Names within cultures follow rules and conventions. It could be a tendency to name children after the prophet of a god (it is common for Muslim children to be called Mohammed, for example, or Spanish children to be called some variant of Jesus), or to name them after the current monarch (hence why names like George and Victoria were common in the UK at the end of the 19th century). These real world examples are backed up by examples in fantasy and SF such as the Bajoran rule in Deep Space 9 that the family name comes first (hence Kira Nerys, Kira is the family name and Nerys is her personal name and only really close friends call her Nerys everyone else uses the more formal Kira) and a number of fantasy worlds where children are given a new name when they reach puberty to represent their adulthood. A little research into naming conventions both real and fictional can help give you ideas for your own versions.
4) Steal from friends. I remember a few years back when a friend of mine was commissioned to write a comic based on Starship Troopers. He named all the characters after people he knew. We all had competitions to see who got the most interesting death or whose character was the least like them in personality or appearance. None of us were offended by this use of our names (at least no one made any public comments to that effect) and I think most were flattered to have been included. So, do not be afraid to consider namechecking a few people you know in real life. You don’t need to use their full name either. Why not mix and match – use a forename from one person and blend it with the surname of another? Which leads to the next method...
5) Do a cut and shunt and re-spray job. Want to steal names from friends but not want them to know about it? Looking for interesting and unusual names for characters from fantasy or SF worlds? Well, I came up with this method quite recently and it seems to work. I even posted the results of using this method on my personal blog where all my friends could read it and challenged them to work out who was who. No one was able to guess any of them (apart from one but that was done deliberately easy). The method works as follows:
- Take a friend’s name – forename and surname. Can be any friend. Or a member of your family, person from TV or whatever. This is your starting point.
- Look up the meaning of the names. This is relatively easy to do on the internet or if you have your baby name book to hand (mine sits on the bookshelf behind the computer). Forenames are easier to find meanings for than surnames sometimes but a few clicks on the internet can usually find some meaning for most surnames, even if you have to regress back a few hundred years to before the name was mutated. A good start point is to type '[the name] meaning' into google.
- Take the meaning of the name and throw it into a translation website like Google Translate (or, if you are good at this language stuff, work out the translation yourself...).
- Pick through the different languages. Either pick one because it is appropriate for the culture you are writing or flip through them randomly until you find something that looks ‘right’. You might have to go through a few different variants of the meanings and a lot of different languages to find one that works in your mind so don’t despair if you only get nonsense or silly sounding names. You may even have to ditch the original name and try again but eventually you will find something that works.
- Write your newly translated name down. Then examine it critically. Does it work? Does it fit the character? Does it still sound too close to the original name? It is not too late to ditch a name completely at this point if you don’t like it. You can also at this stage add another layer of changes to the name by transposing letters, changing the spelling, adding extra letters, swapping forenames and surnames round, shifting syllables about and so on.
This method for me has resulted in a number of fairly good fantasy sounding names. It gives you a random element that can help overcome uncertainty but retains an overall control of the process so you can insert your own creative ideas into the mix. If you apply the rules consistently, for example always using the exact same language and method of changing it for each culture or race, you can also create names which appear to follow an internally consistent set of rules, something which can really help when it comes to creating the appearance of a coherent and logical culture.
So, there you go. That is how I manage to overcome 'name fear'. If you feel like posting a comment to this, why not share some of your own ideas?
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="134" caption="He is Qi’raj-kar’toth, slayer of men, Lord of Qu'art, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and holder of the Bronze swimming certificate! His friends call him Qi."][/caption]
It applies to many aspects of writing. Names of characters, names of places, names (well, titles) of stories, names of alien or fantasy races... basically any place where you have to give something a label and it is very easy to fall back into comfortable pastures and resort to common names used in the real world or throw random syllables together with some apostrophes to make some hideous mash up of an alien name like Qi’raj-kar’toth and hope no one asks you to translate its meaning into English (easy: it means ‘son of the creature who didn’t know what to name his offspring so made some random stuff up’, a fine old traditional name on Qua-arak-ohr-te which translates as ‘planet of the made up name’).
I think there is a lot of concern about names because we place a lot of emphasis on them. Names have power because, in our minds, they shape the thing they label. This is why many people are wary about names because, once they have given a name to something they think it fixes something about the personality or other aspects of that object or person. It’s possibly an irrational feeling (because, logically, names are independent of the nature of the thing they name for many reasons) but it is a very real one that cannot be ignored.
So, for this post I thought I would share some of the methods I have used in the past to overcome my own fear of naming.
1) Use a ‘placeholder’ name. Often, when writing a story and a new character pops up into my head out of nowhere and insists on getting involved in the action, I find there is a tendency to stall while trying to think of a name. This can sometimes be problematic as it breaks your flow. To prevent this, I try to not bother naming the character until I have time to do so and certainly not until I have got to the end of whatever is currently pouring out of my mind and onto the page. Instead, I slot in a line of X’s which, in my own personal editing notation, mean ‘this is a name you haven’t thought of which needs to be filled in at some point’. I sometimes also use a generic random name as a sort of ‘working name’ for the interim. Sometimes I go back in the edits and change these to another name, sometimes I look back and consider it a reasonably good name and leave it as is. The point is that, to my mind, if trying to think up a relatively trivial detail is slowing down your productivity then avoiding the whole issue is a good way to keep going.
2) Buy a baby name book. There are loads of websites out there which give names and meanings for names and they can be great resources. There are even name websites specific for different cultures and some list popular names and meanings for different eras of history (for example, there is a Norse naming site or two which are very useful if considering Viking character names). However, websites don’t always help in deciding on names. An actual physical baby name book is a good thing to have because you can use it to randomise. A common method I use is to close my eyes, flip through the pages of the book and then put my finger down somewhere on the page. The name closest to my finger, assuming it is appropriate for cultural or gender purposes, is the one I at least consider trying on for size. There are other ways to randomise. One LRP organiser I knew produced a list of common names (forenames and surnames) appropriate to the period he was running games in so that his crew could quickly select a name by randomly picking one from each list. You could draw up tables and roll dice or use some other method such as writing a software app to scroll through names in a database (if you have the knowing of it, there is a way in Excel to do this, I’ve seen it used in schools to select prize winners from lists of pupils who have had full attendance that week but I have no idea how it was done). Randomising names is a good way to avoid getting writer's block because of an inability to think of a good name.3) Consider internal consistency. Names within cultures follow rules and conventions. It could be a tendency to name children after the prophet of a god (it is common for Muslim children to be called Mohammed, for example, or Spanish children to be called some variant of Jesus), or to name them after the current monarch (hence why names like George and Victoria were common in the UK at the end of the 19th century). These real world examples are backed up by examples in fantasy and SF such as the Bajoran rule in Deep Space 9 that the family name comes first (hence Kira Nerys, Kira is the family name and Nerys is her personal name and only really close friends call her Nerys everyone else uses the more formal Kira) and a number of fantasy worlds where children are given a new name when they reach puberty to represent their adulthood. A little research into naming conventions both real and fictional can help give you ideas for your own versions.
4) Steal from friends. I remember a few years back when a friend of mine was commissioned to write a comic based on Starship Troopers. He named all the characters after people he knew. We all had competitions to see who got the most interesting death or whose character was the least like them in personality or appearance. None of us were offended by this use of our names (at least no one made any public comments to that effect) and I think most were flattered to have been included. So, do not be afraid to consider namechecking a few people you know in real life. You don’t need to use their full name either. Why not mix and match – use a forename from one person and blend it with the surname of another? Which leads to the next method...
5) Do a cut and shunt and re-spray job. Want to steal names from friends but not want them to know about it? Looking for interesting and unusual names for characters from fantasy or SF worlds? Well, I came up with this method quite recently and it seems to work. I even posted the results of using this method on my personal blog where all my friends could read it and challenged them to work out who was who. No one was able to guess any of them (apart from one but that was done deliberately easy). The method works as follows:
- Take a friend’s name – forename and surname. Can be any friend. Or a member of your family, person from TV or whatever. This is your starting point.
- Look up the meaning of the names. This is relatively easy to do on the internet or if you have your baby name book to hand (mine sits on the bookshelf behind the computer). Forenames are easier to find meanings for than surnames sometimes but a few clicks on the internet can usually find some meaning for most surnames, even if you have to regress back a few hundred years to before the name was mutated. A good start point is to type '[the name] meaning' into google.
- Take the meaning of the name and throw it into a translation website like Google Translate (or, if you are good at this language stuff, work out the translation yourself...).
- Pick through the different languages. Either pick one because it is appropriate for the culture you are writing or flip through them randomly until you find something that looks ‘right’. You might have to go through a few different variants of the meanings and a lot of different languages to find one that works in your mind so don’t despair if you only get nonsense or silly sounding names. You may even have to ditch the original name and try again but eventually you will find something that works.
- Write your newly translated name down. Then examine it critically. Does it work? Does it fit the character? Does it still sound too close to the original name? It is not too late to ditch a name completely at this point if you don’t like it. You can also at this stage add another layer of changes to the name by transposing letters, changing the spelling, adding extra letters, swapping forenames and surnames round, shifting syllables about and so on.
This method for me has resulted in a number of fairly good fantasy sounding names. It gives you a random element that can help overcome uncertainty but retains an overall control of the process so you can insert your own creative ideas into the mix. If you apply the rules consistently, for example always using the exact same language and method of changing it for each culture or race, you can also create names which appear to follow an internally consistent set of rules, something which can really help when it comes to creating the appearance of a coherent and logical culture.
So, there you go. That is how I manage to overcome 'name fear'. If you feel like posting a comment to this, why not share some of your own ideas?
