Names in fantasy books....

I teach at a college, so every semester I have the embarrassing "fun" of reading a list of unfamiliar names aloud (names that are printed on a roster in a relatively small font as well). I have an easier time with some unfamiliar names than others. And each semester, there are a handful I can never get my mouth around, no matter how often the student in question corrects me. I think people get "used" to certain combinations of letters and sounds, based on the languages they've had experience with.

There's also a tendency to pronounce letters the way they're most commonly pronounced in your experience. For instance, I always catch myself wanting to pronounce the y in "Kyra" the way I pronounce the y in sky, even though I know the name is really the same as Kira. At least in a fantasy book, I don't have to worry about hurting the character's feeling if I'm mispronouncing his or her name inside my head. I read LoTR several times before someone told me that Legolas the elf's name waas pronounced LegOlas, rather than LegoLAS.

When I run into trouble is books with a lot of characters that are introduced in the first few chapters when there are a lot of unfamiliar names, even relatively easy to pronounce ones, that are somewhat similar. It's not a deal breaker, but I was recently reading a book where a name popped up and I was scratching my head because that character had died a few chapters ago. So I was wondering if the author was hitting me with an un-cued flashback. Turns out it was a different character with a vaguely similar name.

I had been pronouncing one of my favorite author's names wrong for a whole year before I got a book on tape for a long trip and heard it pronounced completely different. Felt stupid. lol.

Bergen said:

Who was the author?

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No way I'm ever telling.

To me, a character's name gives an insight about the character itself. Strong masculine names for strong hero-types... or feminine names for the damsel in distress. It must suit the personality of the given character!

Imagine a Princess. Golden ringlets framing her face. Lips resembling plums, blue eyes reflecting the sky... shy and feminine... and her name is Gundah.

WTF moment. It throws off the image. Gundah. Really? Now that would be an appropriate name for a dwarf. A male one, to boot. One with overgrown beard and thick moustache.

Names give a romantic feel to the whole story. Also, having an avid interest in numerology, the name I'd choose for a character must align with their destiny (the numerology of the name = the destiny of the character)

But that's just me being crazy! It's fun though! I'll even assign a starsign that matches their personality

Well, to me "Gundah" sounds like a lovely name for a Germanic princess.

You can't ever predict how a reader will react.

benbenberi said:

Well, to me "Gundah" sounds like a lovely name for a Germanic princess.

You can't ever predict how a reader will react.

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True. Readers opinions are far and wide. But as the writer of the story, it has to match with your own perception of the characters.

I can't ever accept a Gundah for my princess. I would prefer a Lily. Even though Gundar sounds more 'fantasy' than the modern 'Lily'.

A nice piece of advice I came across a long time ago is to name all your characters, especially supporting characters, with different initial letters. This helps the reader avoid confusion. For example, it probably isn't helpful to have two supporting characters named Mitchell and Mikale, since their time on stage is limited compared to the main characters. It gets worse if they are mentioned often in separate scenes with other main characters in common.

And I'd like to second a previous point about giving names cultural consistency, although this is less helpful in truly melting pot cultures (like America). Two people from the same isolated tribe should definitely have a common linguistic connection between their names.

Another trick (rather a meta trick) is to use the readers' widely-held beliefs about cultures in the real world to guide how you name your characters, although you can easily fall into the trap of generalizations and stereotyping, so one should tread smartly here. But the trick is to not actually copy a real civilization's names, but to copy the sounds. Making use of widely-held stereotypes in subtle and creative ways, especially when you use them to turn those stereotypes on their ears in order to surprise or enlighten, can be a useful tool of the craft.