Nov 06 2008
The Traps of Names
Badly chosen names are practically a correllary to Murphy’s Law; if there is a way a name can get mangled, mispronounced, misinterpreted or otherwise stepped on, the audience is going to find it. Haven’t we all (okay, mostly) had experiences of the sort with our own names in elementary school? Sometimes it’s accidental; emphasis in the wrong place, using the wrong vowel, transposing a couple of syllables. Other times it can be a bit more malicious, as a syllable or two turn into the basis of an insult.
Where are our problems?
First off, long names. They’ll get you every time. The longer a name is, the more likely the person dealing with it is to forget the beginning by the time they reach the end. Or they all start blending together. Either way, in comes the apathy factor, and out goes the audience caring. This goes double when you have similar-sounding long names, as TheZomb points out here.
Consonant clusters and unusual pronunciation characters are also a trap in this regard. The harder a time people have pronouncing something, the more likely it’s going to come out wrong. And the consonants are worse, because when you have too many, “Can I please buy a vowel?” will become a common refrain.
Then there’s what happens if you have both at once. Mark my words, you’ll end up with the bane of every name-maker’s existence: the dreaded Nickname. Falflpaent’kirylisatzr, Dread Lord of the Seven Forbidden Temples, may sound impressive to you, but I give you even odds that he’ll be lucky if the nickname he receives is only Lord Fluffypants. It’s not as bad if you do it on purpose, of course; take Tsynq Yr from Pamela Service’s Stinker From Space. Really, would you not call an alien in a skunk’s body with a name like that Stinker?
Then there are noun phrases. Some people do well with them. I don’t. Yes, Shining Waters or Glorious Bear or Dark Splendor of Oblivion may sound impressive. But it’s very easy to go past these to the point where it just sounds silly and pretentious, and to some people, even the above examples may be too far. Worst is if you go over the line by accident, and you don’t know how to make a smooth recovery. But smooth recoveries are possible, usually by recognizing just how silly this might sound. One of my best GMs had this problem once—he introduced a serious antagonist, Seven Steel Viper, who promptly ran afoul of the entire group snarking on his name in character. Then, near the end of the arc, the group came up against one Bitter Death Ox and—well, in character it was a pause and choke moment. So, having realized that if you can’t lick ‘em, you join ‘em, he created an antagonist who was meant to make the entire group splutter “Where did they get these NAMES?” But honestly, if you’ve got people who can’t respect the things, and you don’t know what you’re doing, do be careful around them.
There you have it. Look at your names carefully, know what traps not to fall into, and you’ll have a far easier time avoiding the character who couldn’t be taken seriously.
justaguy: A similar gag was pulled in Bruno the Bandit, whereon one character served a Dark Master who went by the name of Bae-Shon. According to the story, he didn’t get the joke for years…
My favourite place name has to be the one from Wild Arms - Abode of Demons, Tower of Death, resting place of the Black Teardrop… Ka Dingel.
Say it aloud. Ka Dingel. It’s just not menacing. It’s funny, it’s like the sound of a bell-collared cat falling on its face. What made it worse was the scene that took place in … Ka Dingel… which went something like this:
“Nine Lives” Zeikfreid: This black teardrop will destroy all life on Filgaia! As long as no one interrupts me in the next ten minutes…
Our Heroes: Hey it’s Zeikfreid! Hi Zeikfreid!
Zeik: Crap. (Pouts)
As I recall there wasn’t even a fight, he just gave up and left.
So Ka Dingel lived up to its not-menacing name after all.
Man I LOVE creating names for characters. Here’s just a few from some of the projects I’ve written for a few novels–
Isaiah Starwise, Kaia Tsanzee, Ahna Rosewhite, Bryant Blackmantle, Xavier Everblade, Alexandra Glade, Kyan Tanaka, Nikolas Stahl, Mason Richter, Rickson Tanner, Madison Drake, Elijah Freefoot, Bryonny Highbrow, Nathaniel Krane.
That’s just naming a few.
Bonemaster: Yeah; the pronunciation’s always the kicker. Doesn’t even have to be made-up names; between ‘em, my face to face group independently came up with three different ways to pronounce “Sidereal”, and that’s a real word! (Speaking of place names–that was Tuesday.) Welcome!
Justaguy: You mean getting them to let up on him was like herding cats?
Tony: I’ll assume that was a joke. Be warned, though, we don’t look too kindly on apostrophe abuse in these here parts.
Zomb: Great examples!
Roustan: Welcome to the Exchange! If you’re looking for just straight naming practices, you might want to check out Monday’s post; this one’s more about what not to do, and it sounds from your list like you’ve managed to avoid the not-to-dos pretty well.
Well, don’t know about you, but spelling normal names in weird ways for the sake of it (e.g. Bryonny) would certainly be on *my* list of not-to-dos. Especially names that are also dictionary words. It leaves you unsure whether it’s still pronounced the same or whether the change of spelling is meant to indicate that the pronunciation is slightly different as well. It irritates the hell out of me when real-life parents do it, and it irritates me just the same when George R. R. Martin does it, much as I admire his work in other respects. But that’s just me… it’s becoming something of a trend, in real life I mean, so there must be a (scary) lot of people who see nothing wrong with it.
My own horror story is my main character’s name, which was “Ahribar” when I was too young to know better, and because I’d kind of gotten attached to it, it was very hard to get up the courage to finally change it. Worse still, a lot of people complained about the change, even though I kept pointing out that you JUST CAN’T have a word or name in the title itself that no-one will pronounce correctly. Oh well, I managed to do the right thing and pay no attention to the nay-sayers, and now the change is firmly established.
I agree on the respelling.
And this goes double–at least–when you’re taking a standard dictionary word and sticking apostrophes in it. Particularly when there’s no real difference between the thing you’re describing and the thing represented by the word. Calling a rabbit a smeerlap is bad enough, but call it a rab’bit and you’ll be measuring the flightspeed as the text leaves my hand and approaches the wall.
Please. No apostrophes. Use mnemonics, use cluebats, use holding up a sign with his name on it every time you speak, but no. Blinking. Apostrophes.
Doesn’t an apostrophe indicate a click sound in universal phonetics these days? I mean, when it’s not being used for contraction or as part of a possessive suffix… I never liked the “stumble” version for apostrophic pronunciation, where you stop making a sound and then start again.
Incidentally, did you know that apostrophe also refers to directly addressing dead people?
…
I used to use WA2-style titles for people and things just to provide some cheap characterization for them - the usual construction was Adjective-Titular Noun-name, like Bad Elf Zarian. (Of course in WA2 they were all like, Opprobrious Chastener Fibblethwaite, but whatever.)
These days I try to use short names, since the long ones (you know, Master Fencer MerryDancer Flenser the Aeromancer &c) tend to be lost on many audiences. I think Swordgleam’s advice above is good - make sure at least one part of the name is easy to remember. It may be difficult to remember the full name and title of Carsus Crimshackle, Renaissance Gnoll, but people will remember Carsus without too much trouble.
If you ever run out of inspiration there’s always My Little Pony - good fantasy feel, plus it has that creepy hint of innuendo.
The “stumble” is a glottal stop; that and omission seem to be the most common use of the apostrophe, with separation coming in not too far behind. It used to be used as a click, but hasn’t been used as such more than locally in decades, though it has found use as a diacritic for a plosive. In my experience (and I was raised by a linguist, which doesn’t say as much as it could but does say something) the most common symbol for a click is actually the exclamation point.
Here, have some apostrophes.
I don’t know what’s worse, the greengrocers’ apostrophe, or the fantasist’s apostrophe.
Well, that’s English for you… never use a phonetic affix when an unvoiced modifier will do. How else could it retain its reputation for being confusing? I mean, it’s not like even it’s own native speaker’s have trouble’s. I always like hearing people try to pronounce the trailing-s-modified ownership, such as in the sentence “This is Cassius’ coat”.
The (!) is used in many programming languages as a negating logical modifier, there being no NOT symbol in the standard character set; by convention in UNIX it is pronounced “bang”, but that’s pretty local usage (in a headspace sense of local).
Perhaps all those greengrocers in Liverpool meant something else? It’s ambiguous… it is English after all. If a sign said, “Apple’s $1″, that could be a contraction of “Apple is”.
Is hard to say. But I’ve corrected enough greengrocers’ apostrophes out of people’s sentences to know what people thought they were doing.
And programming languages are a different kettle of fish entirely; I’d rather not try to get into the phonetics of a well-written for-loop, let alone a badly-written one (do you ever stop pronouncing it?).