"Shout outs?"

[Androxine Vortex]

In some of my novels, there are certain words that have a more in depth meaning behind them. For instance, I am a very huge Warhammer 40K fan so I named a city in my world, Spieltyr, which is Priestley (Rick Priestley : founder) mixed up. I have a few others including one which is a name for an orc character. His name is Gorlab which is Balrog (LOTR) backwards.

I don't do this for every name I create, I only have about five as of right now. Would this be legal to publish a story involving names which aren't directly copying something that another author invented but derived from it?

 

[Chilari]

I can't see why it wouldn't be legal. You're not trading on someone else's creation, you're just nodding to it. Even if you used a name someone else used, as long as your character is sufficiently different from the existing one I don't imagine you'd have any problems, with a few exceptions like very recognisable names. I wouldn't try using Frodo or Harry Potter as names, but I don't think you'll find many complaints about calling someone Odorf or Hermione, particularly since Hermione is a real name and a very ancient one at that (think Greek legends) - just don't use the surname Granger. Readers might accuse you of "stealing" a name like Hermione if they're ignorant of the same's real usage and antiquity, but I shouldn't imagine you'll be recieving lawsuits from Rowling's laywers - as long as the character isn't the daughter of two dentists and incredibly brainy. For non-real names you might have to add a letter or swap some around or something.

On the topic of shout-outs, I once named a character Rosetta Stone because a classmate thought this was a person not an object. To give that the full weight of meaning, this classmate was at uni and had been studying ancient history and archaeology with me for a year at this point, and he was 43. I have used a variety of fantasy names on the theme of Luke (Lucon, Lukan, Elok, Lukinus etc) because of a favourite character from a TV show.

 

[Androxine Vortex]

I can't see why it wouldn't be legal. You're not trading on someone else's creation, you're just nodding to it. Even if you used a name someone else used, as long as your character is sufficiently different from the existing one I don't imagine you'd have any problems, with a few exceptions like very recognisable names. I wouldn't try using Frodo or Harry Potter as names, but I don't think you'll find many complaints about calling someone Odorf or Hermione, particularly since Hermione is a real name and a very ancient one at that (think Greek legends) - just don't use the surname Granger. Readers might accuse you of "stealing" a name like Hermione if they're ignorant of the same's real usage and antiquity, but I shouldn't imagine you'll be recieving lawsuits from Rowling's laywers - as long as the character isn't the daughter of two dentists and incredibly brainy. For non-real names you might have to add a letter or swap some around or something.

On the topic of shout-outs, I once named a character Rosetta Stone because a classmate thought this was a person not an object. To give that the full weight of meaning, this classmate was at uni and had been studying ancient history and archaeology with me for a year at this point, and he was 43. I have used a variety of fantasy names on the theme of Luke (Lucon, Lukan, Elok, Lukinus etc) because of a favourite character from a TV show.

I was pretty sur it wasn't going to be a problem, just checking. And the names I use aren't even of that great importance. The city name is only mentioned once in a random mention. I just wanted it to be one of those things that a reader might notice and go, "Ha! i get it it."

 

[ShortHair]

Would this be legal to publish a story involving names which aren't directly copying something that another author invented but derived from it?

I don't see how anyone could have a legal problem with that. You could probably argue that the similarity is only a coincidence (although the backward spelling is a bit obvious).

You might remember the urban legend about Stanley Kubrick and how the name HAL in 2001 is one letter away from IBM. IBM didn't sue over that (as far as I know), so you should be okay.

 

[johnsonjoshuak]

Many authors do this, there's a thread over on Westeros.org that goes into the various ways that George RR Martin gives a tip of the hat to various other authors.

So it's not something that's out of bounds.