Character Names

For me, one of the harder part about setting a nano in another world is names. There's a balance between too normal and needing a pronunciation guide that needs to be reached, so after going through a couple of baby names books (and most importantly, one organized by country) I'm going with a combination of more odd/obscureish American, English and French names. I'd tried to avoid this, wanting something with a not-english base as the MCs are from north america but there's enough odd names to be had that it should work.

The three sources likely share enough of the same cognates to work and also fit the idea of the world as a refugee vs. my idea of giving each major centre a different country as a naming basis. The nobility travel, as do merchants, so names and naming would spread, ditto with naming children after the king, heirs to the real, important nobles and such. That's old  magic, naming your child after someone famous to deflect harm from them.

Tannis, Tandie. Wray. Artita.Tailleffer. Sorel. Eloi. Cyprien. The names will sound odd and unusual without being all that unusual in many respects, which should be half the fun. I'll likely end up reserving names like Cyprien (derived from Cyprus) for the nobility as a general rule of thumb. A naming system has been set up for the other two major species in the novel so this is at least sorted as a major impediment to, say, making a bevvy of secondary characters and writing out a plot.

The latter of which I must give more thought to. I know how one of the major antagonists dies. I have the scene in mind where the novel begins. And that is it.