1LShelby
I have managed to write 120K of words of a story without a single character being properly named.
I'm kind of infamous already for writing first drafts where all the minor characters are named ???? but this time I have taken the tendency to new and terrifying lengths. Even my four main characters are currently referred to in text as A1, Hd, Sh and O1.
This is because I didn't want to stop writing to invent so many words in the language that the characters are named in, and even if I did come up with all that foreign vocabulary, I wasn't sure what exactly I should do with it.
This story is set in a country that appears in one of my published books, so I have already established that the people here have three syllable names with the family name coming first. But in that book the narrator didn't speak the language, so for her the names were just meaningless syllables, and only a few characters from there had their names show up in text.
This time I am writing a story that is entirely set in that culture, and so the meanings of the names are known, and there are going to be dozens of named characters.
The first syllable in the name will probably be an animal. For most of them, the same animal as their clan's name, because that's how the clans got their names. So A1, for example, is a member of the Great Bear Clan, and so his family name is a word meaning Bear. The second syllable is a descriptive adjective which also tells people a bit about their birthorder. So, since my hero is the oldest son, the second syllable means 'wise', because that is the adjective assigned to oldest boys. The last syllable is the individual name, a noun, (but probably not an animal, since those are used for family names).
So my male lead has a name that means "Bear Wise Sword."
But readers won't actually want to read about people called Bear Wise Sword, or Eagle Radiant Lily, will they? It feels more than a little clunky to me. But I worry that if everyone has names like Noh Ti Tir and Fah Bian Mi I will get umpty-ump complaints about how nobody can keep the names straight. (I get them already, from all my previous books, actually, none of which seemed nearly as problematic as this one.)
So what do I do? Anyone have any advice?
I'm kind of infamous already for writing first drafts where all the minor characters are named ???? but this time I have taken the tendency to new and terrifying lengths. Even my four main characters are currently referred to in text as A1, Hd, Sh and O1.
This is because I didn't want to stop writing to invent so many words in the language that the characters are named in, and even if I did come up with all that foreign vocabulary, I wasn't sure what exactly I should do with it.
This story is set in a country that appears in one of my published books, so I have already established that the people here have three syllable names with the family name coming first. But in that book the narrator didn't speak the language, so for her the names were just meaningless syllables, and only a few characters from there had their names show up in text.
This time I am writing a story that is entirely set in that culture, and so the meanings of the names are known, and there are going to be dozens of named characters.
The first syllable in the name will probably be an animal. For most of them, the same animal as their clan's name, because that's how the clans got their names. So A1, for example, is a member of the Great Bear Clan, and so his family name is a word meaning Bear. The second syllable is a descriptive adjective which also tells people a bit about their birthorder. So, since my hero is the oldest son, the second syllable means 'wise', because that is the adjective assigned to oldest boys. The last syllable is the individual name, a noun, (but probably not an animal, since those are used for family names).
So my male lead has a name that means "Bear Wise Sword."
But readers won't actually want to read about people called Bear Wise Sword, or Eagle Radiant Lily, will they? It feels more than a little clunky to me. But I worry that if everyone has names like Noh Ti Tir and Fah Bian Mi I will get umpty-ump complaints about how nobody can keep the names straight. (I get them already, from all my previous books, actually, none of which seemed nearly as problematic as this one.)
So what do I do? Anyone have any advice?
2LShelby
Nobody wanted to help me with this one, but I have been thinking about it, and I believe I may be coming to grips with the issue.
I quite successfully enjoy watching foreign tv shows where all the names are strange and difficult to remember. I can enjoy the show anyway is because it really isn't sorting out the names that is important, its sorting out the people belonging to the names that is important. As long as I recognize the faces, I'm good.
So, since the culture I'm writing in already has a strong tradition of referring to people by relationship or by title, I capitalize on that, and make the actual names an optional accessory to the title. If a character is introduced as My Lord Bear, and constantly referred to as 'Lord of the Bears', or 'the Bear' (when his brothers aren't calling him 'Eldest' or 'First Brother'), then when the time arrives to spell out his actual legal full name of Noh Ti Tir, Clanlord of the Great Bears, the reader will already know know that a person's actual name is extraneous information, and hopefully won't panic over having to remember it. They can read on confident that the Bear is still the Bear, and that they will always know who I'm talking about.
Or would this only work for me?
I quite successfully enjoy watching foreign tv shows where all the names are strange and difficult to remember. I can enjoy the show anyway is because it really isn't sorting out the names that is important, its sorting out the people belonging to the names that is important. As long as I recognize the faces, I'm good.
So, since the culture I'm writing in already has a strong tradition of referring to people by relationship or by title, I capitalize on that, and make the actual names an optional accessory to the title. If a character is introduced as My Lord Bear, and constantly referred to as 'Lord of the Bears', or 'the Bear' (when his brothers aren't calling him 'Eldest' or 'First Brother'), then when the time arrives to spell out his actual legal full name of Noh Ti Tir, Clanlord of the Great Bears, the reader will already know know that a person's actual name is extraneous information, and hopefully won't panic over having to remember it. They can read on confident that the Bear is still the Bear, and that they will always know who I'm talking about.
Or would this only work for me?
3paradoxosalpha
I think it could work fine. An interesting case for naming via role (having nothing to do with odd or obscure proper names) is VanderMeer's Annihilation. In that book, there is a rationale that the agents of the Southern Reach need to be depersonalized to armor them against the psychic stresses of Area X. But in any case, there's no readability issue with a novel that calls its protagonist the Biologist, and likewise for supporting characters the Surveyor, etc.
4reading_fox
Missed this the first time around...
I'm really bad at names. Really really bad. In real life but even worse in books. Please don't have several different ways of referring to the same character unless it's all just some variant of Bear, but how you'd easily tell that difference between him and the brothers I'm not sure.
I don't mind seeing long or complex names. Providing that the initial letters are really distinct. So Bearwisesword is fine, and obviously not the same person as EagleradiantLilly. But I'll probably miss the difference between the first one and Beaversolidwine because at a quick glance as I'm reading a sentence they look similar.
Likewise I can just accept Noh Ti Tir and Fah Bian Mi because the Noh and Fah are sufficiently clear. Just don't have a Hah in there too.
(there's always voyager in the night where all the non-human characters are {{{000}} etc. It's incredibly weird, but works once you get the hang of what's happened).
I'm really bad at names. Really really bad. In real life but even worse in books. Please don't have several different ways of referring to the same character unless it's all just some variant of Bear, but how you'd easily tell that difference between him and the brothers I'm not sure.
I don't mind seeing long or complex names. Providing that the initial letters are really distinct. So Bearwisesword is fine, and obviously not the same person as EagleradiantLilly. But I'll probably miss the difference between the first one and Beaversolidwine because at a quick glance as I'm reading a sentence they look similar.
Likewise I can just accept Noh Ti Tir and Fah Bian Mi because the Noh and Fah are sufficiently clear. Just don't have a Hah in there too.
(there's always voyager in the night where all the non-human characters are {{{000}} etc. It's incredibly weird, but works once you get the hang of what's happened).
5LShelby
>3 paradoxosalpha:
Depersonalization is not my intent, but its a relief to know that someone else has done the nickname/title thing successfully. :)
>4 reading_fox:
When coming up with the actual names I will try to remember to make them as distinctive as I can.
But I think the Bear's brothers will get called Second, Third, Forth and Fifth? That's what they call each other. If a character called {{{000}} works, I'm pretty sure a character called Second can be made to work. And if I tried to go by either names or by translated names, all the brothers would start exactly the same. This way they are distinctive.
It does bring up the question of what all the other second sons in the book will be called, except that calling them just by the numbers like that is a military family trait, and the other military families in the story don't have second sons appearing, so I should be good.
I think the non-military second sons will be called by their actual names. But by the time we've whittled the cast list down to younger siblings, there would only be a few random-syllable type names to keep track of, and they would contrast nicely with all the translated titles, to help keep everyone sorted.
I hope.
::crosses fingers::
Depersonalization is not my intent, but its a relief to know that someone else has done the nickname/title thing successfully. :)
>4 reading_fox:
When coming up with the actual names I will try to remember to make them as distinctive as I can.
But I think the Bear's brothers will get called Second, Third, Forth and Fifth? That's what they call each other. If a character called {{{000}} works, I'm pretty sure a character called Second can be made to work. And if I tried to go by either names or by translated names, all the brothers would start exactly the same. This way they are distinctive.
It does bring up the question of what all the other second sons in the book will be called, except that calling them just by the numbers like that is a military family trait, and the other military families in the story don't have second sons appearing, so I should be good.
I think the non-military second sons will be called by their actual names. But by the time we've whittled the cast list down to younger siblings, there would only be a few random-syllable type names to keep track of, and they would contrast nicely with all the translated titles, to help keep everyone sorted.
I hope.
::crosses fingers::
