Female names that end in vowels

Is it just me, or do a lot of female fantasy names end in vowels? At least traditionally?

Leia (Star Wars)
Valeria (Conan)
Uhura (Star Trek)
Elora and Bavmorda (Willow)

How about less famous works? Has anyone else thought about this?

A quick count of this list shows 65 out of 100 girl names end in a vowel or vowel sound, so maybe it's not just in SF/F? Boy names, by the way, ended in a vowel only eleven times out of 100. :huh

From what I can tell, it's the "norm" that the female names end in vowels from the male version. Brendan = Brenda, Chris = Christa, Christina, etc..

Of course, not everything works this way but if you go through a name dictionary you'll usually find underneath a male name (female: ___) that most commonly ends in a vowel.

A lot of old culture (from who we inherit names) had a convention for how female names end and many of them use a vowel. For example the roman ia (fem) and ius (male).

My given name ends in a vowel.

I notice all of the female names cited end in the vowel "a". In all the Latin, Romance, languages the Feminine form is "a" the masculine "o".

In Spanish Margarito is a fine masculine name. Most English speakers confuse it with Margarita, a completely different name to the Latin ear.

I've heard this somewhere described as the Burroughs Universal Constant (referring to Edgar Rice Burroughs, not William) that wherever you go in the universe, female names end in an -a.

It's actually a very localised phenomenon. In the Indo-Aryan languages, for instance, it's usually male names that end in -a - Krishna, Brahma, Arjuna etc., though female ones sometimes do. Even in Latin, there were quite a few male names ending in -a, such as Agrippa, Nerva, Agricola etc.

Some languages are going to distinguish masculine & feminine words & names, in a variety of ways, others aren't. Some languages use prefixes or suffixes to indicate noun-category. Others don't include any recognisable grammatic structure in the word.

Keeping it European can have the advantage of making the reader feel safely on familiar ground, but it can also make it boring, if it's overdone. Personally, I like to experiment.

This is probably because in the romance languages a feminine word is marked by an 'a' at the end. My name, Alina, for instance, is Spanish in origin.

Whenever I've tried to introduce a fantasy female character name that doesn't end in a vowel, readers have objected vociferously (I love that word; I so seldom have the opportunity to use it in conversation) and demanded I stop confusing them. Analyze by all means, but going up against tradition and expectation always ends in tears.

Burroughs Constant Disproved: Diane the Beautiful, "At The Earth's Core" and his other Pellucidar novels. Hooja the Sly One was a guy. Gotta be careful of those personal dating ads when you're in subterranean worlds.

Order a Margarito in a Spanish bar and they'll bring you a mustached guitar player.

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies.

Interesting, I haven't had a problem with different types of names. I think if you get it fixed quickly in the reader's mind who a character is, they'll accept it. And it also helps if they can see the linguistic logic to the names.

I'm sure there's lots of exceptions to the Burroughs Universal Constant. I'm not sure who coined the "law", but it's basically a joke that makes a point.

the a- ending for female names was a common latin thing, which has passed into other languages. i belive that it is fairly common in greek, at least the feminine declension seem to have more as than os.

however, it's dependent on culture. fantasy has often been heavily influenced by latin. a number of popular works have used latin as the language of magic, including our friend HP, and such classics as Dr. Faustus

in SF, there is often an uwarranted assumption that space will be mainly european.

interestingly, Japanese feminine names tend to end in -ko.

In both Greek and Latin, the 1st Declension, which is mainly but not exclusively feminine, has its root as -a, though in many Greek words, it mutated into -e (that's why, for example, you can say either Athene or Athena). In both languages, though, there were plenty of feminine nouns (and female names) that were formed differently. But the -a is the one that seemed to catch on, in it became very common in both Italian and Spanish.

The -e is usually equally with the -a in Greek. Circe, Aphrodite, Melpomene. It fact the -e predominates and is the older form.

I agree with the idea that you should go with what feels right for you as a character name and, so long as you make it very clear in the beginning, don't worry about the reader figuring it out. Names heighten the perception of culture. :hat

Japanese names are supposed to mean something, and the addition of -ko simply indicates 'female'. So a boy's name could be Tomo, which means clever, and the girl's version would be Tomoko. But it's also possible to add -maru to a noun, such as Tomomaru or Tetsumaru, which designates the name as masculine. And it's just as possible that a girl would be named Tomo. Like Chinese names, it's the equivalent of naming your kid Lucky (Xing) or Peony (Botan) - and both those names are considered gender-neutral, by the way.

Most Japanese names will end in a vowel because of the phonetic system - to / mo / ko and to / mo / ma / ru; the vowel is inherent in the sound of the kanji or kana.

When using non-Angloeuro names, I find that readers quickly associate 'Tetsu' or 'Tomo' as male or female depending on what I tell them, because it's new. It takes a bit longer for them to associate, say, 'Sam' as a woman's name, but that's because of predisposition.

That is interesting, KLH.

I've noticed that a lot of females in my stories... novels... whichever have vowel endings.

No one has female characters with names like Ingrid, Cheryl, Beryl, Sharon, Allison, Caitlin, Ann, Shawn, Iris, Janis, Maris, Margaret, or Liz?:\

Sure do: Alex, Meg, Spark, Ellen, Susan, Kit. And guy's names: Tetsu, Kowari, Li, Rafe, Sasha. But once I read the topic, it was all I could do to stop staring at Celia, Tama, and Jackie, and get back to writing.

Have over a half dozen women in my novel. None of whose names ends in "a."

same here.

But we are talking about fantasy here... Maybe the conventions are different than mainstream/other genres?

Let's see... my female names are Kate, Grace, Lian, Agnes, Helen, Lillian, Ang, Emily.... none of them ends with a vowel. My guys' names are Greg, Howard, Victor, Chow, Paul, Martin, David, Kai, Aziz, Yao... two of them end with vowels...

Technically, Kate and Grace end in vowels - unless you mean in terms of a vowel sound? As in Celia - seel-ee-ah - versus Grace - grayss - ?

Right. I mean the sounds, not the letters.

Re: female names that end in vowels

The names of Roman women were feminised forms of male names - there were no `female' names as such. So the daughter of Julius would be Julia - that is now the convention of ending girl's names in A started. But it certainly isn't the norm over the planet, as other posters have pointed out.
The names of your characters should grow out of their own culture and language. Tolkien didn't end his female characters with a vowel. Eowyn, for example, came from the same linguistic source as Eomer - the Rohan word for horse - Eo.
Names are one of the hardest parts, for me - I try to match them to my character's age (if she was born in the 50s she's unlikely to be called something like Tyffani), culture and most important, since people do not choose their own birth names, what the parents were thinking.

Re: female names that end in vowels

Emily ends in a vowel too, since y can be a vowel or consonant. It was actually originally a vowel, invented by the Emperor Claudius to represent the Greek u, which was a totally different sound from the Roman one.

In my current novel, the main female character is called Anniol, and there are other females called Parrin, Rivil, Zillith and Kal (properly Owe-Kal). Also Eltava & Jafi, but there are male characters called Akdoia, Chenda & Zarai. It just depends what culture they come from (there's a lot of them represented)