family trees, naming conventions and genetic disease

[buyjupiter]

I was wondering if anyone else had run into issues with naming a vast quantity of unimportant and irrelevant (for now) characters, just to have the back end stuff sorted so that you can pull from it as needed?

I have a world in which magicians operate pretty much separately from the rest of society (think monks with wives and kids), and their names are different from the rest of the society. My MC and her buddies have normalish names and nicknames, but the magicians don't.

I discovered the Everchanging Book of Names thingie, which is kinda useful, but limited in naming enough characters to make up family trees. (My magicians are like our world's royalty in that they intermarry exclusively with their own kind and thus having everyone have similar sounding names doesn't quite work.)

Are using sites like Behind the Name and etymology sites useful for y'all in general?

In case it matters for suggestions: the world is a blend of Egypt/Venice/Louisiana--so marshy, wet, humid, etc.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

I use baby naming sites and choose a nationality to draw from. If the characters are unimportant I will sometimes use the name of someone I have known that fits the style. The less important the character the less time I think about their name.

 

[ThinkerX]

I have lists of names of differing nationalities from various sources (ok, mostly some old AD&D 'historical earth' handbooks). Apart from that, I try to follow the 'short and simple' rule when it comes to names, especially those of the principle characters - no point in making the reader stumble over the five syllable name of a character - unless it can be shortened. Longer names, where possible, are for one offs and distant figures of authority.

Genealogies: Yes, I've had to do a couple. The stories are fairly straightforward, but there is a history behind those stories that needs to be taken into account: imperial lines that bifurcated, past exiles and massacres of prominent families, plus some very large families. So, to keep things straight as a writer, I had to make up some genealogies.

 

[buyjupiter]

I have lists of names of differing nationalities from various sources (ok, mostly some old AD&D 'historical earth' handbooks). Apart from that, I try to follow the 'short and simple' rule when it comes to names, especially those of the principle characters - no point in making the reader stumble over the five syllable name of a character - unless it can be shortened. Longer names, where possible, are for one offs and distant figures of authority.

Genealogies: Yes, I've had to do a couple. The stories are fairly straightforward, but there is a history behind those stories that needs to be taken into account: imperial lines that bifurcated, past exiles and massacres of prominent families, plus some very large families. So, to keep things straight as a writer, I had to make up some genealogies.

For my main characters I keep names really short. But one of my primary secondary characters (who's disappeared so is mentioned but not present) is a longer name that I have shortened.

-anos seems to be a common suffix for the male magicians in my world, so I suppose I could just trawl through various sources and add the -anos at the end for the guys...but not all my magicians are men. And I suppose I could continue the theme as developed (since it developed from the naming of the two gods I have right now) for the women. I suppose I could go even further and say that the endings "-anos" and "u" (for the women folks) mean something like "wizard". If I wanted to delve that deep into the world building. Which I swear I'm trying *not* to do. I promise.

How difficult were the lineages to construct? I'm trying to think of a simple way to organize the family lines so I can go "ok Cousin Ted had the marker for the disease and he married Cousin Elvira who didn't they had 16 kids, but Ted had an affair with the Countess of Bawk who did have the marker and they had a child, etc etc". Because I have the feeling this is going to become rather story important later on.

I suppose what I'm asking is: is there a convenient and visual way that you've designed the family tree so that you can quickly see who was related to whom, without having to purchase additional software?

 

[Graylorne]

I've done some medieval family tree-collecting, years ago, and the system I use for my books is a left-over;

1. Albert (borm-died), count

1.1. Balderic (born-died), married to Betty
1.2. Boadicca (born-died), married to Zachary
1.3. Bert (born-died), married to (a) Barbarella (born-died), (b) Bethany (born-died)

1.1.1. Charley (born-died) dies without issue

1.3a.1. Cholmondeley (born-died)
1.3b.2. Cyrus (born-died)

1.3.1.1. David, etc,

Daughters go to husband's tree (this is a patriarchal line. For matriarchal lines, use the women.)

 

[ThinkerX]

-anos seems to be a common suffix for the male magicians in my world, so I suppose I could just trawl through various sources and add the -anos at the end for the guys...but not all my magicians are men. And I suppose I could continue the theme as developed (since it developed from the naming of the two gods I have right now) for the women. I suppose I could go even further and say that the endings "-anos" and "u" (for the women folks) mean something like "wizard". If I wanted to delve that deep into the world building. Which I swear I'm trying *not* to do. I promise.

This is similar to how it worked in ancient Egypt. The upper castes often had the name of a deity worked into their own, hence 'Ptahmoses' (son of/servant of Ptah). After the conquests by Greeks and Romans, the former priesthoods became independent magicians of formidable repute.

How difficult were the lineages to construct? I'm trying to think of a simple way to organize the family lines so I can go "ok Cousin Ted had the marker for the disease and he married Cousin Elvira who didn't they had 16 kids, but Ted had an affair with the Countess of Bawk who did have the marker and they had a child, etc etc". Because I have the feeling this is going to become rather story important later on.

In my case, I have a few principle families with defined events in their pasts.

With the ruling DuSwaimair clan, I started with a list of emperors, what their accomplishments were, and their attitudes towards family, allies, and enemies. The big issue was the third of these emperors, Franklin, who was a sort of populist dictator who arranged for the murder of his real and imagined enemies. This was 70-100 years prior to the time my tales are set in. After Franklins death, the throne passed to his nephew, while Franklin's son, an even worse character, slunk off into obscurity. I had to account for the nephews survival - and the fate of Franklin's direct grandchildren.

At the time of my tales all this becomes important because the current Emperor is crippled, his kid is nothing much, and there are other heirs powerful factions would like to see take the top spot - like the Maximus.

The Maximus have sat the imperial throne more than once in the past, and made two major efforts to reclaim it from the DuSwaimair's. Both times they got swatted hard - which I had to account for in their genealogy - but were too important to be gotten rid of completely. At the time of my tales, they have a new scheme: a member of their family who has enough DuSwaimair blood in his veins to count as a legitimate candidate. I had to account for that in both genealogy's.

Or to put it another way: start with the situation at the time of your story. Then go back and identify key events leading to that situation. If a lot of people died...then why? Who lived? If so and so had a dozen kids fifty years ago, then why aren't there more of them now? Pick out key characters associated with those events. Did they have brothers/sisters? Lots of offspring? No offspring? Controversial marriage to a utterly foreign mage clan or mundane noble family? Skipping a bunch of generations is fine - I did that with the Maximus, who have a family history going back a thousand years. I just hit the highlights.

 

[Hainted]

I'd look up naming conventions in different cultures and time periods and find one you like. Maybe they only have a small pool of names and recycle one when someone dies. (Well, Uncle Shadrax is dead so hope you have a boy before your cousin does) Or maybe they have a "theme" to their naming based on the family. A family of wizards who focus on weather could have names like Hedwynn, Tellwynn, Norwynn, etc...