What Kind of Name Is That? How to Name Fictional Characters

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/02/08/what-kind-of-name-is-that/

by samclemens • 10 years ago

82 53 10 years ago

JackFr• 10 years ago

Despite its great reputation, I found "The Day of the Locust" unreadable because I couldn't move beyond a major character named Homer Simpson.

ry_ry2• 10 years ago

I had the same problem with Family Guy.

kbenson2• 10 years ago

That's sort of the point of satire. Family guy isn't just making fun of current events and society, it's also making fun of it's source material and the way it makes fun of current events. Peter is Homer taken to the extreme, such that when you question why Lois would stay with such an ass, you're forced to consider the lesser, but still relevant case of Marge staying with Homer (which to its credit the Simpsons have addressed a few times).

That said, Family guy really just used the template as a springboard, it's more about the absurdity of life and our culture than the Simpsons, which relies heavier on social commentary.

charlieegan3• 10 years ago

I have a friend that's writing a book and has this very problem!

RodericDay2• 10 years ago

I read Brandon Sanderson's "Stormlight Archive" and "Mistborn" series, and I couldn't stop thinking about how awkward the names sounded, from Kaladin to Kelsier. It repeatedly took me out of the scene.

Meanwhile, the team behind Morrowind seemed to have an uncanny ability to produce names that just felt completely right. Somebody responded to my random thoughts on the topic with this very sound summary:

Morrowind's names are a pretty remarkable achievement. I don't know who was responsible for it but whoever it was did a really good job of ripping off name "templates" from disparate languages, tweaking them enough to retain their associations but not their meanings, and then sticking with those templates across the board. Modeling the Ashlander names on Assyrian was a stroke of world-building genius.
Mistborn's names, in contrast, never seem to have much purpose behind them. The templates are inconsistent and arbitrary, and convey no information to the reader. You have fantastical gibberish like vin/reen/camon, standard anglo names like dockson/hammond, bizarre nicknamey nouns like breeze/clubs/spook, and cod-french like valette renoux. It's a mess and it makes it difficult to figure out what this world is when there doesn't seem to be any natural way those names could have emerged in one culture. It's fucking weird.
That being said the only names I never liked in Morrowind were the Redguard names. I could never figure out what they were supposed to be doing.

emddudley• 10 years ago

I am nearly finished with The Way of Kings. At first the names struck me as odd, but then again lots of stuff did. Giant crustaceans? People with foot-long eyebrows? Gem spheres used as both currency and lamps? Over time I got used to the names.

Actually, I remember one part where Sanderson describes how in the Vorinism religion symmetry is very important, and that the best names are symmetrical or almost symmetrical, like Shallan and Urithiru. I thought that was super creative!

noxToken• 10 years ago

I think The Stormlight Archive should get a slight pass on the oddities of people, creatures and cultures. The Stormlight Archive is aiming to be an epic that is established in a world of disparate cultures and fantastic creatures.

The idea is that culture is very centric to an area and its peoples. Once you leave that area, even if it's only 2 or 3 days by carriage, you transition to a distinct cultural shift. It's as if England and Japan were only separated by 100 miles, but you hit Egypt, Germany, Nigeria, Romania and Mexico along the way. Thus you get a large homogeneous population with their status quo and beliefs alongside markedly different people intermixed.

Kalium• 10 years ago

I think this person managed to both hit upon and miss a key point.

It's a mess and it makes it difficult to figure out what this world is when there doesn't seem to be any natural way those names could have emerged in one culture. It's fucking weird.

I think that's the point. There's nothing natural about that culture. It's very much artificially imposed over what had been a set of distinct and different cultures. The apparently nonsensical naming is traces of that showing.

fredleblanc• 10 years ago

Huh, I love the Mistborn books specifically because I found all of the names so easy to pronounce and remember. There are cultures and different species in there, and those names all felt pretty similar in structure to me. (Kandra being the most obvious example.)

To me, the different feeling backgrounds of the names of normal people were something I attributed to the world being a big place, and although we were viewing people stuck within a class system, the naming was so "all over the place" because they're an assimilation of the entire planet.

Fast-forward to the newer Mistborn series and the names have seemed to align pretty well to names similar to the nobles of the earlier books. (Which may be attributed to the fact that many of the characters you follow are directly from that lineage.)

In contrast, I've had a harder time with the Stormlight series because of the number of characters, as well as the names of things and places and people. However, I've never been great at epic fantasy either. Maybe that's why the Mistborn books feel so different to me. Books with me in mind?

Terr_2• 10 years ago

I remember the introduction to Nightfall by Isaac Asimov, which explains (or perhaps defends) the familiar names of not just alien characters, but their measures and objects:

Kalgash is an alien world and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand, and using terms that are familiar to you. Those words should be understood as mere equivalents of alien terms-that is, a conventional set of equivalents of the same sort that a writer of novels uses when he has foreign characters speaking with each other in their own language but nevertheless transcribes their words in the language of the reader. So when the people of Kalgash speak of "miles," or "hands," or "cars," or "computers," they mean their own units of distance, their own grasping-organs, their own ground-transportation devices, their own information-processing machines, etc. The computers used on Kalgash are not necessarily compatible with the ones used in New York or London or Stockholm, and the "mile" that we use in this book is not necessarily the American unit of 5,280 feet. But it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms in describing events on this wholly alien world than it would have been to invent a long series of wholly Kalgashian terms.
In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quonglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main gleebish of his native znoob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying, and that did not seem useful. The essence of this story doesn't lie in the quantity of bizarre terms we might have invented; it lies, rather, in the reaction of a group of people somewhat like ourselves, living on a world that is somewhat like ours in all but one highly significant detail, as they react to a challenging situation that is completely different from anything the people of Earth have ever had to deal with. Under the circumstances, it seemed to us better to tell you that someone put on his hiking boots before setting out on a seven-mile walk than to clutter the book with quonglishes, vorks, and gleebishes.
If you prefer, you can imagine that the text reads "vorks" wherever it says "miles," "gliizbiiz" wherever it says "hours," and "sleshtraps" where it says "eyes." Or you can make up your own terms. Vorks or miles, it will make no difference when the Stars come out.

... Granted, this only works because they never meet other characters whose "miles" or "gliizbiiz" need to be disambiguated.

ishigami• 10 years ago

I thought the "problem" with Nightfall is not that Asimov used "human" words instead of "Alien words", rather that there seemed to be almost one-to-one correspondence between the Earthly things and Kalgash. Kalgashians act exactly the same as humans on Earth(or rather 50s Earth) and have a concept of newspaper :)

If you prefer, you can imagine that the text reads "vorks" wherever it says "miles," "gliizbiiz" wherever it says "hours," and "sleshtraps" where it says "eyes." Or you can make up your own terms. Vorks or miles, it will make no difference when the Stars come out.

That reminds me of "How Things Are Made" from Rick and Morty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMJk4y9NGvE

Terr_2• 10 years ago

I thought it was a wonderful parody of the How It's Made videos.

tlb2• 10 years ago

'Absurdonym' is my favorite new word. It will come in handy when discussing startup names.

cgh2• 10 years ago

Thomas Pynchon is a great inventor of names. From "The Crying of Lot 49" alone, we have:

Oedipa Maas

Wendell "Mucho" Maas

John Nefastis

Stanley Koteks

Mike Fallopian

...and so forth. Granted, the humour in "Lot 49" is a little more juvenile than, say, "Against the Day".

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

I loved the names in Bleeding Edge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Edge

happy4crazy• 10 years ago

My favorite Pynchon name is Carmine "Two-Ton" Torpidini, from Vineland.

cafard• 10 years ago

A couple of years ago, I happened to think about the baseball player Al Kaline, and it struck me that I would have rolled my eyes had I seen his name in one of Pynchon's novels.

dang3• 10 years ago

He is indeed a brilliant namer. I love Reverend Cherrycoke from Mason & Dixon. It's so perfectly 18th century a name.

But if we're talking about The Crying of Lot 49 let's not forget Genghis Cohen, subject of a public spat at the time!

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/thomas_pynchon_punctures_...

While Pynchon's smackdown is devastating, I can't help but feel that he would have written a better one in later years. Actually it would be better if he had simply stopped at "that is another problem entirely". "Perhaps more psychiatric than literary" is clever, but at that point he's bludgeoning.

cgh2• 10 years ago

Thanks for posting this. I had no idea this even happened. As you're surely aware, in 1966, Pynchon was still only 29 (an incredible fact, at least to me), so that might explain the lack of subtlety.

Another great namer was Mervyn Peake, author of the fabulous "Gormenghast" series. From it, we have:

Lord Sepulchrave Groan

Fuschia Groan

Titus Groan

Steerpike

Swelter, the enormous chef

Dr. Alfred Prunesquallor

Mr. Flay

...and too many more to mention. Any lovers of literary, surrealist grotesquerie should read this series.

tlb2• 10 years ago

In "Inherent Vice", the VC firm is Voorhees-Krueger (think 80s horror movie characters).

progressive_dad• 10 years ago

I was reading a reddit post the other day that looked like it was produced by a markov chain using martin amis and michel houellebecq as source material. Unexceptional except they used the name, "Gortibole Blubbet" for a fat old prostitute. My immediate thought was, "That MUST be from a Pynchon novel."

kough• 10 years ago

If you're looking for realistic names, try the names of people you vaguely remember from highschool. Or ask your friends for the names they remember from their own highschool. Only works up to a poont, but something about each of these names is perfect. Often they're too silly to seem made up. Here's one: Chris DiJacklin. (If you're reading this, hi Chris!)

munificent2• 10 years ago

There is a practical consideration worth keeping in mind with names: they distinguish characters from each other.

I found One Hundred Years of Solitude virtually incomprehensible because it features an enormous cast of characters whose names are all similar.

There is José Arcadio Buendía, José Arcadio, Arcadio, Aureliano José, 17 (!) other characters named Aureliano, José Arcadio Segundo and José Arcadio (II) (who is not Segundo).

Aureliano Buendía, Aureliano Segundo and Aureliano Babilonia (Aureliano II) (again, different dude from Segundo), and Aureliano (III).

Úrsula Iguarán, Amaranta Úrsula, and Amaranta.

Remedios Moscote, Remedios the Beauty, and Renata Remedios.

soperj• 10 years ago

I absolutely loved that book. I think the key is to not put it down... If you read it in a very short period of time, it's easier not to get mixed up.

munificent2• 10 years ago

I did burn through it pretty quickly, but I still didn't get much out of it. I really like magical realism, but that book just didn't click with me for some reason. It's a bummer because—given how many people love it—I was really looking for ward to it.

danielvf• 10 years ago

Try Hiwaiian history some time. With only twelve letters in the alphabet, and every important persons name starting with a K....

monk_e_boy• 10 years ago

Oh God, you just reminded me. The first time I read Lord of the Rings (when I was a wee kiddie) I got Sauron and Saruman mixed up and for 90% of the book thought they were the same guy. It wasn't until they met I had that 'mind blown' moment.

Eerie2• 10 years ago

Dude. Sauron and Saruman never met.

douche• 10 years ago

Flying Spaghetti Monster help anyone writing Roman fiction. The romans only used about a dozen or two dozen first names[1], and not too many more variant nomen. Keeping who is who straight when studying Republican Rome is hard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praenomen

dghf• 10 years ago

Indeed. The men known to history as Julius Caesar, Octavian and Caligula all had the name Gaius Julius Caesar.

mkehrt• 10 years ago

That's kind of the point of the names in that book! They increase the dreamlike atmosphere.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Reading on paper: use post its to mark a page every time a new character is introduced.

searine• 10 years ago

As a writer, I live and die by this site : http://www.behindthename.com/random/

Pick an ethnicity and just hit random until something fits the character.

I usually don't use the exact name, but it puts me in the right neighborhood of what I want. After that I can tweak it.

livingparadox• 10 years ago

I started out generating names out of whole cloth, but eventually, it just got easier to designate certain groups as using a certain ethnic set of names and roll away. I run through the list instead of picking random, though, because I like to imagine the people naming their children with intent.

Eerie2• 10 years ago

Try this: http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/

filoeleven• 10 years ago

One of the things I like about Gene Wolfe's writing is that he doesn't make up words, and I believe that this extends to names as well. Severian, Vodalus, Palaemon, Thecla, Dorcas are all names used in Book of the New Sun that already exist in the historical record.

In Book of the Long Sun, at least in the city where the story takes place, the men are named for animals or animal products (Silk, Horn, Musk, Remora), the women for plants or plant products (Mint, Rose, Hyacinth, Mucor), and the androids for minerals or other non-living things (Marble, Hammerstone).

vdnkh• 10 years ago

I read a lot of scifi and have generally been impressed by the naming. I dislike Cratylic names when they're trite but authors like Phillip K. Dick and Gene Wolfe manage to pull them off. Neal Stephenson uses them humorously in Snowcrash (the protagonist's name is 'Hiro Protagonist'). I can't say I'm a fan of Asimov's names in the Foundation series - not Cratylic, just a bit off sounding. "Bayta Darrell" doesn't give the same brain-feeling as "Severian" or "Paul Atreides".

dsr_• 10 years ago

Whenever Asimov was stuck, he would make a play on meaning in his names:

Preem Palver => Prime (First) Palaver (Speaker).

Hari Seldon takes the name "Chetter Hummin" => Cheater Human.

Dors Venabili => Gift of the Venerable

Bel Riose is simply Belisarius.

Ebling Mis has bad health (it ebbs) and then he misses the right answer.

StephanTLavavej• 10 years ago

R. Daneel Olivaw was Chetter Hummin (and Eto Demerzel).

xioxox• 10 years ago

Some of my favourite are the ship names in Ian Banks' culture series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Cult...

They're all great, but here are some examples

  * Only Slightly Bent
  * God Told Me To Do It
  * Ethics Gradient
  * I Blame My Mother
  * I Blame Your Mother
  * Poke It With A Stick
  * Don't Try This At Home
  * Contents May Differ

vollmond• 10 years ago

And on the other end of the spectrum, his drone and human names can be impenetrable. I can never keep them straight, even within a given book.

edgesrazor• 10 years ago

I can relate. I spent half of Player of Games just trying to internalize the pronunciation of Jernau Morat Gurgeh. That aside, great book.

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

When writing fiction, way back when, I'd just flip open a phone book, point, and run with it.

Apocryphon• 10 years ago

Is this the right comment thread to talk about how bad names are in Star Wars, at least ever since... Episode II came out? And the names in the new trilogy so far sound worse than even in the prequels.

gavinpc• 10 years ago

It was good enough for Shakespeare. There's "Malvolio," the discontent from Twelfth Night. "Horatio," the even-tempered observer in Hamlet. "Elbow," the drunken constable in Measure for Measure, and "Dull," the slow-witted constable from Love's Labors Lost (which also features the empty-headed schoolmaster "Holofernes"). "Prospero," the artist-magician who makes all right in the end of The Tempest. "Hotspur," the (actual) nickname of the irascible warrior from Henry IV Part I who could think of nothing but riding his horse into battle. (Of course, that was a real historical name, but it's no wonder Shakespeare latched onto it.) And who can forget "Mercutio," another hothead, the short-lived hyperglot from Romeo and Juilet? Not to mention "Posthumus," who all but dies to set right his folly at the beginning of Cymbeline. And then of course, "Falstaff," also from Henry IV, that great monument to the art of deception.

Does anyone need to guess the profession of Mistress Overdone, Mistress Quickly, or Doll Tearsheet?

Lesser characters: Shallow and Slender.

Not as sure what to make of Touchstone, Caliban (an anagram for "cannibal"?), and Bottom.

Dickens was just imitating, and in many ways bettering, his master.

Semiapies• 10 years ago

Bottom...was an ass.

dang3• 10 years ago

Completely off topic, but the phrase "always an amusing resource for complex issues" contains the wittiest act of hyperlinking I've seen in a while.

dredmorbius• 10 years ago

Please stay on to... Oh. Well, carry on.

/me goes off to explore hyperlinking.

Why yes indeed, that is to ... um, um, something for.

nataliam511• 10 years ago

I'm curious as to whether or not parents put as much thought into naming their own children as authors do with their characters. I suppose not, because parents start with somewhat of a blank slate. Authors have to find a name that encompasses a fully developed character, even if they are fictional and will end up being less complex than a real person. It might be an interesting exercise to name yourself and your friends now, and see if you can think of a better name to suit them.

What Kind of Name Is That? How to Name Fictional Characters

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