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What are the rules of Naming?

TheokinsJ

Troubadour
I know what you're thinking from reading the title, "There are no rules for naming", and I know that there are no right or wrong ways or any rules/guides to follow when naming things, but I just thought it would be curious to hear what people would suggest to avoid when naming places, people and creatures.

I'm currently writing fantasy and I've named a fair few cities and people and places, usually just through scribbling random sounds in a notebook and manipulating words from other languages ect. I've seen so many people post on these forums that they have trouble with naming things, and so I was wondering what things should you avoid (In your opinion, remember there's no right or wrong way) when naming things.
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
Things to avoid (in my opinion):

1. Something that is hard to pronounce, either with too many consonants (Xthaklethsha) or too many vowels (Aieea'laaieyo)
2. Something that is too close to the sound of a real place: Americo, Japon, North Dokata, etc.
3. Something that is too silly (if you're writing serious fiction) such as Bingoland or Lalabiggledoodle.
4. Typically, in fantasy, names like Bob, Joe, Bill, etc. only sound good if you're doing it for comedic effect or if the story is contemporary.

Those are my general things I avoid. If others like doing that, more power to them. But I'll purposefully skip over names that I don't know how to pronounce in my head or I'll just make up some way to pronounce myself.
 

DSCroxford

Scribe
Not meaning to fall off track here and I have no advice on such a question as Phil has answered as well (probably better) I could. But I would not say no to living in Lalabiggledoodle!
 
Well, according to the Fantasy Writer's Quiz thread you posted, names which have apostrophes or dashes or have more than 4 syllables are to be avoided.

Plus, names which are far too fairytalesque, or too whimsical or too familiar to us (like John Smith, the Doctor paid for that didn't he?) off the top of my head.

Try not to make them sound too epic, because it might come off wrong and rather than sounding epic, it will sound like the writer's trying to make it sound epic, paraphrasing (extremely) BW Foster in another thread.

Well, that's all I can come up with now. If I get another idea, I'll post it.
 

Chilari

Staff
Moderator
My general approach (on top of what Phil has already said) is to avoid names that are too long. No, what constitutes too long depends also on how letters are used. If it's obvious, it's fine, if not, best cut things don. But in general anything longer than 10 letters probably needs looking at. Something like Churchington for a place would be fine, because it comprises components that are familiar and is easy to pronounce. But if the spelling meant it was ambiguous ho it was meant to be pronounced, I'd avoid it.

Generally for my character names, they're either of 7 or fewer letters, or have a nickname or title which is.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Looking at it logically, most writers try to immerse the reader in their worlds. As such, the author wants to avoid anything that will pull the reader out.

If a word is hard to pronounce, a lot of readers will kind of skip over it in their mind. Then, when they encounter the word again, they don't remember what it referred to since they skipped over it the first time.

Likewise, any name that is too "epic" (as advait98 said) or too silly or too common can break a reader from the world you're trying to create.

You also need to understand the reason for a name - it's a shortcut. Instead of having to refer to "the town where my protagonist grew up" every time, I name that town and refer to it by that name. For this to work, however, I need for my reader to make a connection between the town name and the fact that it is where my protagonist grew up. To do so:

As stated before, make it pronounceable.
Don't make it too similar to another name (ideally, don't start multiple places/things/people with the same letter)
Ideally refer to it enough after introducing it that it will stick in their minds.
 

Graylorne

Archmage
You can di two things, use easily understandable names, eg Milltown, Riverburg, Threefords, or you can make up your own. In the latter case, remember the principle of language. Placenames, familynames, local words al sound more or less the same in country A, and quite different again in country B. You can't mix those things up, unless both countries have the same tongues.
 
First of all, names need to actually sound and look like names. It's easy to fall into the trap of just writing random made-up words - you shouldn't commit a name to a character unless it A) it actually sounds like a name when spoken and B) is spelled in a way that is easy to read. (Because names are sounds, more often than not they can be spelled in various ways.) Keep in mind that the name is something that will be used over and over, so this matters in the long run.

Second, I like to make sure all names within a certain culture share some kind of common sound or style. This culture has names that sound vagualy germanic, this other sounds more middle eastern, a third sounds more Italian, etc. That sort of consistency goes a long way to make the names believable, I think.
 
All of which comes back to:

A) the name should contribute to the mood

B) the name shouldn't distract from the mood (too familiar, overdone, silly, bulky, etc) just by the smell test

C) bonus points for worldbuilding logic
 
I know what you're thinking from reading the title, "There are no rules for naming", and I know that there are no right or wrong ways or any rules/guides to follow when naming things, but I just thought it would be curious to hear what people would suggest to avoid when naming places, people and creatures.

I'm currently writing fantasy and I've named a fair few cities and people and places, usually just through scribbling random sounds in a notebook and manipulating words from other languages ect. I've seen so many people post on these forums that they have trouble with naming things, and so I was wondering what things should you avoid (In your opinion, remember there's no right or wrong way) when naming things.

Things i find to be avoided are extremely long, hard to pronounce names, basic names, names that relate to any known city in fantasy already, or something with "New" in it.
 

Janga

Minstrel
I agree with everything that has been said so far concerning naming. I will add that a names should be believable as a name. What I mean is that it is very easy to pick out a name that is just a made up word. It's always bothered me when I have come across a name of a character or a place in a story that has this kind of effect. If I had more time I would look up some examples of this and list them here.

One example of an author that employs excellent naming is George RR Martin in his Song of Ice and Fire series. Say what you want about the book themselves, but most, if not all of the names in the story seem perfect for that world. The names make the characters seem more real than if they had names that were just made up of random sounds.

Just my 2 cents!

Cheers.
 

Addison

Auror
Most of the time the name appears first, but then it's a problem because the character doesn't fit the name. So after I finish the first draft I read it again. I make a character profile, read it again and the name changes either completely or just a consonant.
For example, Hailey became Hannah, Rick became Rian. Most of the time I'll get the tone or a few letters of the name when the character pops in my head. Strong consonants, high vowels.
 

SeverinR

Vala
I believe you can have long names, but as in the real world, they will get shortened or they will get a nickname.
Towns/cities with difficult names will get shortened to make it easier to speak of.
So throw in an occasional long "formal" name, but give them a reasonable short name for everyday use.

Sedonatian De' Trevalonge could be Sed.

You might consider offering a pronunciation guide to names also. To me my names were obvious, but to my proof reader she wasn't sure. Serana(Sir-anna), Tannan(Tan-ann).
These are short enough, and would be sounded out by the reader, but some aren't so obvoius, as is names in real life.

Examples of shortened names: My real name is William, I am Bill or Will, and my SCA name was Severin Rheinfelser, I was called Sev. and my login is SeverinR.
 
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BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Sorry to revive a dormant thread, but I came across two new rules recently:

1. Don't create a situation that leads to repitition. A guy in my writing group named one of the horses in his WIP Thunder. Good name for a horse, right? It was until the storm scene. The name led him to overuse the word "thunder" because he used it both to refer to the horse's reactions and to the weather event.

2. Be careful of words that can lead to misunderstanding. I have a minor character named Will. I ran into the problem where a beta reader had to reread a sentence because she thought I wrote a sentence of dialogue as a question when, in reality, I was referring back to this character.

Admittedly, both these considerations are minor, but there they are nonetheless.
 
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