Naming Questions

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The Second Moon

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Since I've joined AW I have had some questions regarding naming characters, but didn't want to start a thread for each one so I'm going to post them here. Anyone can join in if they have their own question about their own character names. I just though it would be nice to have a thread dedicated to character names.

I hope is isn't breaking any rules by starting this, if so please let me know. I read the stickies, but couldn't find anything against the rules about this.

Anyways here are my questions

If had a married couple named with the names Ray and Sunshine would that be weird. I mean they come from a planet where it is perpetually night, so names relating to the sun are common, but is that name set still weird?

Second question:

How would you pronounce this name: Duneapur. And does that name look weird...


Feel free to post your own name questions or answer mine.
 

KBooks

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I would pronounce it Dune-uh-purr, rhymes with Juniper. Not too weird for me, for sci-fi.

If the naming convention is to give everyone solar names, then Ray and Sunshine would make sense. But if it's perpetual night, do people ever see the sun? Would you name your child after a fish if you'd never seen one? Or do they go off-planet and see the sun?
 

The Second Moon

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You got Duneapur's name right. Good. I was worried it looked too much like diaper. :roll:

And about Ray's and Sunshine's planet... they both grew up on that planet, but moved to a different planet because space travel is possible. But everyone doesn't have solar names.
 

ElaineA

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Honestly, I didn't equate Ray with a ray of sunshine until you mentioned it. DOH! I don't think it sounds "too cute" if that's what you mean by weird. Since Ray is an actual name in English on Earth, that's probably the way a good chunk of your readers will first interpret it.
 

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Honestly, I didn't equate Ray with a ray of sunshine until you mentioned it. DOH! I don't think it sounds "too cute" if that's what you mean by weird. Since Ray is an actual name in English on Earth, that's probably the way a good chunk of your readers will first interpret it.

Sunshine is also an actual name in English on Earth. And for that reason, I think you can name characters Ray and Sunshine, but you might have to lampshade it - especially if they are couple. By lampshade, here, I mean deliberately call attention to the cute oddity of it. In a contemporary (non-fantasy) setting, I can see this as potentially useful for characterization - maybe Ray loves to point out how adorable it is every time they are introduced to someone new, while Sunshine rolls her eyes, tired of the joke.

In a fantasy setting I have less sense of how it would play, as I'm not a fantasy reader. If it's a fantasy setting where everyone has names like this, I suppose it's a bit of world-building. Beyond that thought, I defer to others.

:e2coffee:
 

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Know a couple named Shadow and Moonbeam. Went to high school with Rolleen Down. Dated a girl named Autumn Summers. She married a guy name Winters and her married name is Autumn Summers Winters.

Fiction mirrors reality...

Jeff
 

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How would you pronounce this name: Duneapur. And does that name look weird...

At first glance at the name, it did feel odd. Like it would read "doo-NEE-a-purr." If you want to have it sound like "Juniper," you might try leaving the E out. As in, Dunapur, or Dunipur. And even then, somebody will probably still say it wrong, just because some readers always do.

:)
 

frimble3

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If had a married couple named with the names Ray and Sunshine would that be weird. I mean they come from a planet where it is perpetually night, so names relating to the sun are common, but is that name set still weird?
To me, it sounds a bit too on the nose or cutesy for a married couple.
Like calling a couple 'Buddy and Holly', 'Fred and Wilma' or 'Dick and Jane'. Okay if they're minor characters, and the POV character only remembers that they're married.
Or, that they aren't really named 'Ray' and 'Sunshine' but they've very much in love, and have given each other cutesy nicknames, and introduce themselves that way to everybody but the police.

The name set does sound a bit 'off', more like they're siblings from the sort of family that goes in for 'theme' names. And they have other siblings named 'Dawn' 'Glow' and baby 'Sunset'.

Just because a particular set of names is 'common', doesn't mean that everybody has one or the other. In European languages, variants of 'Mary' and 'John' are very common, but it would feel strange if too many characters were named that (unless it was a part of the story - a small village where everyone has one of a very limited range of names, but everyone has a nickname or modifier).



How would you pronounce this name: Duneapur. And does that name look weird...
I'd pronounce it 'Doonipore' or 'Dunapur', like various Sanskrit-based Indian names. (And, of course, Singapore.)
 

Thomas Vail

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At first glance at the name, it did feel odd. Like it would read "doo-NEE-a-purr." If you want to have it sound like "Juniper," you might try leaving the E out. As in, Dunapur, or Dunipur. And even then, somebody will probably still say it wrong, just because some readers always do.

:)
My first reading of it would be Doo-NEH-a-pur. Parsing out the first part as 'Dune' just doesn't work for me.
 

The Second Moon

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At first glance at the name, it did feel odd. Like it would read "doo-NEE-a-purr." If you want to have it sound like "Juniper," you might try leaving the E out. As in, Dunapur, or Dunipur. And even then, somebody will probably still say it wrong, just because some readers always do.

:)

Dunapur is easier on the eyes. I might change it to that. Thanks.

Does anyone have any naming questions of their own?
 

Enlightened

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I read it as doo-nuh-pur. You can add it your writing, for readers (spell it however you like) that it almost rhymes with juniper, but with an "uh" sound.

I like Ray and Sunshine. It shows creativity. My WIP is filled with names like these, but I am into my first-ever WIP (so take with a grain of salt). Not knowing what genre it is (or what age designed for, MG, YA, or Adult), your call for appropriateness.
 
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Albedo

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All the characters in my current WIP have [common noun] names. It's probably more common in SF/F, but in a lot of real cultures people's personal names have transparent meanings. It might be the West that's odd in this regard, with our names that either have obscured meanings, or are constructed to sound nice.
 

neandermagnon

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I would pronounce it Dune-uh-purr, rhymes with Juniper.

In my dialect (SE England/Estuary/London) Dune is pronounced the same as June, so the it would be pronounced exactly the same as Juniper. And it won't sound the same as an American saying "juniper".

You'll never get all readers read a word in an identical way because of different dialects. Best thing is to make sure it follows fairly regular phonics so most people get it mostly right.
 

neandermagnon

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All the characters in my current WIP have [common noun] names. It's probably more common in SF/F, but in a lot of real cultures people's personal names have transparent meanings. It might be the West that's odd in this regard, with our names that either have obscured meanings, or are constructed to sound nice.

In my story set 40,000 years ago, the names are like this. Obviously they're meant to be in a very long dead Cro-Magnon language but I'm not going to try to reinvent their language and phonics and come up with a bunch of obscure, meaningless names that I'd struggle to remember (if the author can barely remember them, how's the reader going to?).

This reminds me of a funny story when I was first learning Arabic. (Note: I'm not that good at Arabic, but can read and write the script.) Arabic names have meanings and Arabic script doesn't have anything like upper case for proper nouns like in English. The sentence I read was something very simple like "Noor, Khalid and Jameel went to the shop" I went to the dictionary with help and got something like "Light, thing that endures and beautiful went to the shop" and couldn't figure out what on earth it was supposed to mean...
 

Albedo

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In my story set 40,000 years ago, the names are like this. Obviously they're meant to be in a very long dead Cro-Magnon language but I'm not going to try to reinvent their language and phonics and come up with a bunch of obscure, meaningless names that I'd struggle to remember (if the author can barely remember them, how's the reader going to?).

Same, but for the reason they're not human, so it'd be bloody impossible to represent their names phonetically with the alphabet. And you can infer a lot about a culture just by giving literal translations of their names.

This reminds me of a funny story when I was first learning Arabic. (Note: I'm not that good at Arabic, but can read and write the script.) Arabic names have meanings and Arabic script doesn't have anything like upper case for proper nouns like in English. The sentence I read was something very simple like "Noor, Khalid and Jameel went to the shop" I went to the dictionary with help and got something like "Light, thing that endures and beautiful went to the shop" and couldn't figure out what on earth it was supposed to mean...

Arabic names are a good example of ones that work in a totally different way to Western "First Name-(Middle Name)-Surname" ones, with their sometimes long chains of patronymics, geographical references, and cognomens. Or Roman names: they had about eight personal names for the whole empire, and used surname and nickname to tell themselves apart. There's so much diversity in naming in the real world, it would be nice to see more diverse names in fantastic fiction, and not just more in the pattern of "First Name-Surname". Or at least, a recognition that although the names might be made up (and that's fine!) they have meanings in their made-up languages.
 

neandermagnon

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Arabic names are a good example of ones that work in a totally different way to Western "First Name-(Middle Name)-Surname" ones, with their sometimes long chains of patronymics, geographical references, and cognomens.

That reminds me of an even funnier story... (haven't used my real name, have substituted for similarly gendered names so you get the idea...) I have two middle names and I lived in Saudi Arabia for a while. When I lived there, they used the name on my passport for one of my official documents:

Name on British passport: Danielle Elizabeth Daisy Smith

How they rendered it on one Saudi document:

Name: Danielle

Father's name: Elizabeth

Grandfather's name: Daisy

Family name: Smith
 

neandermagnon

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There's so much diversity in naming in the real world, it would be nice to see more diverse names in fantastic fiction, and not just more in the pattern of "First Name-Surname". Or at least, a recognition that although the names might be made up (and that's fine!) they have meanings in their made-up languages.

I agree and feel the same way.
 

frimble3

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Same, but for the reason they're not human, so it'd be bloody impossible to represent their names phonetically with the alphabet. And you can infer a lot about a culture just by giving literal translations of their names.



Arabic names are a good example of ones that work in a totally different way to Western "First Name-(Middle Name)-Surname" ones, with their sometimes long chains of patronymics, geographical references, and cognomens. Or Roman names: they had about eight personal names for the whole empire, and used surname and nickname to tell themselves apart. There's so much diversity in naming in the real world, it would be nice to see more diverse names in fantastic fiction, and not just more in the pattern of "First Name-Surname". Or at least, a recognition that although the names might be made up (and that's fine!) they have meanings in their made-up languages.

YES! It would be such a simple way to add colour to a story!
 

The Second Moon

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Okay, new question. (I've scraped the characters whose names I asked about before, BTW)

Is Barney too close to Bobbi? Barney is one of the MCs and Bobbi (a side girl characters) is his crush.

If i were to change one of their names, I would change Bobbi's names.

Thanks in advance.
 
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Ari Meermans

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There's a school of thought that you shouldn't start character names with the same letter, but as a reader, I've only taken issue with character names that sound alike or are spelled similarly even if they don't sound alike. Anything that makes your reader stop and check back to get up to speed on your story (breaks their concentration or throws them out of the story, even momentarily) should be avoided, I think.
 
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