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. 

nanowrimo 2009

There were plans this year for it. I have forgotten what they were. (One of them turned into an abortive novel in several drafts.) What it shall be now is thanks to a prompt on a writing forum I'm a member of: YA fantasy dealing with separation & divorce. Which led me to think about Thomas The Rhymer, his missing seven years from the world and what that would do to his wife and kids left behind -- along with the fae child he fathers in his 3 nights in Elfland.

I don't know much about it yet -- I have no clue who the antagonist shall be (I'm half-certain there won't be one per se), but I have the cosmology done and 5 characters named in 2 days.

Janet & Thomas were easy, sine I lifted them from the poem. The demon girl Roh came about in the shower this morning and Pam, an older daughter of Janet's, popped into my head yesterday. Roh is odd, not a female name and simple, basic. Like demons in a lot of ways: she is one thing, a single note of a song. Pam can be short for Pamela and struck me as a very sensible name, which will be at odds with what she has done.

For the two male MCs, I knew one has to be Irish-ish (the fae) and be able to have a nickname. Thomas's son, no nickname and preferably English. Beyond that I went for the low end of the alphabet, random letters to start the names and emerged with Declan and Harris. Both work, so shall work on setting and plot at some point too...

On the naming of characters

Character names tend to come to me from no discernible place. In some cases, they have meaning (for example, I did one novel (well, half-done it at present) where African names were used for everything, from people to nations, and most of the names told you something about the character (Ayo means joy, which tells someone how he views the world). This is the only time I did something like that, and it was fun. It also got me thinking about the actual process, and what process other people use.

For the current novel (Gloaming) I did my usual method of making up the character in my head and going through bits of plot, fragments of dialog and such until a name came to me that just 'fit'. For example: the one MC came into my head as Katie, and fairly feisty at that. Which seemed all well and good, so I decided I really should know her last name, even if it never comes up in the novel. I picked the last name of some neighbours we had, for something that sounds a little off-normal (Holmes). Then, something about the name Katie Holmes bugged me, and I googled it.

So now her last name must change, unless a YA horror is derailed by people thinking about Xenu. The other MC, however, I ended up going with Mike Smith for, due to how common the names are -- as if his parents tried to ensure he'd be average. The only problem was michael just didn't fit, but somehow Kevin did. Then I googled Kevin Smith, and thereafter banged my head into the desk. So I went with Jaylen (a randomly found name via a generator) but it's not working, so it's back to Kevin. And I'm changing their last names.

I just found it funny that, entirely by accident, I managed to inadvertently name two characters after celebrities. It luckily didn't hold true with the third MC,Duncan Hoyle, whose name came from Duncan popping into my head as nice and solid and Hoyle referring, obliquely, to card games and chance. Which means I still end up using names that provide hints, even when I don't plan to...