Naming issues

I follow basically the same process as Allen, and I've had to a few times. Apparently I'm really damn good at coming up with names that George R R Martin already has published, because when I started reading his stuff I had to get rid of quite a few names. Off the top of my head I had a place called Miir (close to his Myr), a man named Rikkon (close to his Rickon), and a man named Varamyr. He also has the names Selyse and Tristifer, and so do I, but I don't want to give those up.

I also had to get rid of a kingdom called Valencia when I learned it was a real historical kingdom and a city in Spain.

Those are just a few examples, it's happened so many times I forget most of them and it no longer phases me too long.

 

I have a race of "quantum" teleporters in one of my worlds (okay universe, but who cares). Suffice to say they used to share a name with a video game that has just come out on xbox 360.

I was annoyed sure, but I'm second fiddle to the already out there products so I changed it. I took out a few letters, conjugated it differently, found synonyms.. eventually I found something I liked better in fact.

The way I see it that game did me a favour. And yet the only way I could know I was sharing a name with something was to find it, and therefore we all need to read, and consume what ever media necessary in genre fiction in order to discover these things.

 

I agree with Steerpike in much of his points. Valencia is originally from Spain (who owned California at one point), and we use copied names all the time truth be told; Rome, New York or Springfield in every state pretty much. I think for stories, if it is a minor place or character I wouldn't worry about it too much as I don't think readers will be like "OMG HE/SHE STOLE THAT FROM SUCH AND SUCH AUTHOR!".

Even main place or person names can be "copied" from someone else in a pinch; since many of those ideas you have may have been used at some point in the history of literature. I think that as long as the character or place is decidedly different from the other writer's depiction readers won't really take it as copying.

For my main work in progress, I checked my main place names and nothing popped up on Google, so I guess I am okay for originality with their names. Not everyone is good at naming places and I noticed that many authors use a "placeholder" name when writing until such time as they can think of something suitable.

 

Depends on how fantastical your world is. I wrote a short story about a little girl and a faery once that purposely used the city Omaha. I wanted it to have a gritty yet familiar feel. I use many near-common words, arcane definitions of words, similar structures and conjugation, etc. If you are using a completely made up word that wound up being a duplicate or a word that has major precedence in the genre, like Kender, I'd steer clear. All in all a word like Hobbledehoy is probably okay, but a word like Hobbit probably isn't.

 

I think a name needs to be believable so if it has some element of something that already exists that can be helpful because people can latch onto it. But in a lot of cases it needs to be different enough that the reader won't automatically associate with the other name.

 

So long as it's not too obvious I think it's ok to use existing names providing they fit in with your world of course. For example I recently wanted to use the name Alastor which was a very badly known Ancient Greek spirit. I however found out later that Alastor is a character from Harry Potter so I changed it to Alator but made Alastor his father. Since the Alastor in my book is tottaly different and it's not a particualy well known name I don't think I'll have any problems.

 

I would change the spelling or pronunciation.

 

That could easily work as a "quick fix" especially if the place or person is different enough from the original.

 

I was initially a bit put out when I discovered Corona, a name of a province I'm using, was also the name of the kingdom in Disney's Tangled. However I decided to leave it because a) the name never appears in the film only in supplementary material and b) they didn't invent the name either.

 

We've all been there at some point I think. It really comes down to three questions:

-How similar is their use of the name to yours?
-Is their work famous or obscure?
-Can you, without too much arrogance, consider your ideas better than theirs, or at least in a different niche?

If two out of three answers are, respectively:
-not all that similar
-pretty obscure
-yes

Then you're probably in good shape. Otherwise, it might be good to make a minor change. Just make sure to stay true to your core idea when making those changes.

 

I'm gonna guess... Future Soldiers?

 

Darksider... That may not quite be the title of it, but I'm vaguely aware of "this thing" you know? Plus I believe Roddenberry tried it at least a decade ago too.

I'd rather mine be different anyway its a pretty naff name in context with the rest of my stuff and the new one makes more sense. phonologically, as a media nickname, as a descriptor... so many ways.

 

I get super paranoid and Google all of my names. Evidently one of my characters is a subspecies or something of Cherry, which was kind of neat. Most of the time I just find gibberish though, which is good enough for me.