Character Names: Which do you prefer?

[jasperjheart]

Hello and good tidings to all young scribes. I have a question about character names. Which do you prefer, the original names of high fantasy/DnD? Or names based on historical accuracy, a la A Song of Ice and Fire, with a little added twist on spelling? Or perhaps, a mixture of both?

I'm having a hard time with my main character, for the longest time I have had the name Iduan Parr for my lead protagonist. And now I'm having a conflict with how difficult it is to pronounce made up, original fantasy names, and enjoy the more George R.R. Martin approach to naming characters.

Anyways I had the name Iduan Parr for so long, but ended up switching it to Edwin Parr instead. Does this make my character less original, or less appealing?

I'm pretty conflicted, as you can see.

 

[thecoldembrace]

I have a mountain of fantasy novels and your name is not very hard to pronounce, and people have a habit of glossing over a name after they've read it several dozen times and making it their own. So I would personally say keep it, it gives your guy flavor.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We go with as easy to pronounce, as easy to remember as the environment and culture will let us get away with. And when that fails, we translate long tongue-twisters into English. For example Itzpapalotl would be Clawed Butterfly.

 

[Jabrosky]

I usually rip off real-world cultures when it comes to names.

Occasionally I will make up a name by combining words from a real-world language. For example, after drawing an elephant character from an Egyptian-based culture, I named him Kemyebu using the Egyptian words kem (black) and yebu (elephant). Thus Kemyebu means "black elephant" and refers to his melanistic coloring (which his keepers regard as sacred and symbolic just as albino elephants were venerated in Southeast Asia).

 

[Ireth]

I typically write stories with characters who either come from/live in the real world or are standard in real-world mythology, so I name them as such. I do have one story in the back of my mind that's set in an entirely fictional world with fictional languages, and for that I started with a fitting words in a foreign language (Hungarian, to be exact) to name my hero, tweaked it a bit, then made more words and names to start a naming system and a conlang of sorts.

 

[stephenspower]

You might also consider: What would your character's friends call him? For instance, if his name is Sullivan, even if you fantasify it as Sulyven, his friends will all still call him Sully or, once the monsters attack, Sul. In your example, Iduan Parr is totally going to be called Parr. Or, by his siblings, Dewey.

 

[Ireth]

You might also consider: What would your character's friends call him? For instance, if his name is Sullivan, even if you fantasify it as Sulyven, his friends will all still call him Sully or, once the monsters attack, Sul. In your example, Iduan Parr is totally going to be called Parr. Or, by his siblings, Dewey.

They could call him Id as well. That could be interesting if he's part of a trio of characters, each thematically representing a part of the mind. Id, Ego, Superego.

 

[Julian S Bartz]

I think we are lucky enough to be in a genre where the majority of our audience like fantastical names. But as has been mentioned don't forget that most people skim over names or create their own internal version.

Quite often people who have read my books talk to me about them and start referring to characters that I have never heard of. It's only after some probing that I realise that they have pronounced a name so differently to my original intent as to confuse me.

I think as long as you are consistent there is no right or wrong. Consistent with your world/culture etc. So don't have Nilphea Luwethin and her brother William.

I often ask a handful of people to say out loud a name that I have used to judge whether I like the way people are reading it.

 

[Hainted]

I use a mixture of real names, interesting words, and name generators. My MC in my WIP is named Boyce Oddkin. Boyce is an actual name that I've picked up from a branch of the family tree(along with some others like Roby), but Oddkin was just something I stumbled across in one of my weird word books.

If you want a really good reference guide for names, and the conventions behind them I recommend People's Names by Holly Ingraham. Bit pricey at around 40 bucks, but definitely worth it.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Actually in my last work I went to baby names. For my humans I went for old English baby names and for my elves old French. It wasn't that they are particularly of either culture. It was that the names sounded better. So for elves I wanted more soft, flowing, almost musical sounds with lots of "L's" and "V's", while for the humans I wanted harsher / stronger sounding names.

And also just changing the spelling can add a whole new layer to a character. So Edward becomes plain old Ed in the reader's thoughts. But Edouard sounds a little more alien even though it's the same name spelled a little older.

Cheers, Greg.