This week: In a Name Edited by: Waltz in the Lonesome October  
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If I'm gonna tell a real story, I'm gonna start with my name.
—Kendrick Lamar
My mother grew up during the sunset of British colonialism and attended English schools, where she was not allowed to be called Tin Swe Thant, but was instead required to have a Western 'school name.'
—Alex Wagner
I wish my name was Brian because maybe sometimes people would misspell my name and call me Brain. That's like a free compliment and you don't even gotta be smart to notice it.
—Mitch Hedberg |
One important decision fiction writers make is deciding on names for their characters and settings.
This can be especially complicated in Fantasy, if the overall setting involves another world and/or time. Many Fantasy writers seem to just throw syllables together that make a name-like sound. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; I don't think any humans were named Bilbo before The Hobbit was written.
Tolkien was, however, a linguist, so I'm sure he had some reason for his naming conventions. Maybe he wrote it down at some point, and I'm just not enough of a Tolkien geek to have heard it.
The thing to remember about names in the real world, though, is that most of them have a plain meaning in some language. A lot of names common to Anglophone countries today aren't English words, as they were inherited from other languages. Some few are indeed English words; for example, Hope or Prudence. Others resemble English words, but are etymologically unrelated, such as Frank or Jack.
The majority of names in English-speaking countries originated in other languages. Perhaps the most common of those languages is Hebrew, as many Western names have Biblical origins, such as Michael or Elizabeth. There's also a significant influence from Greek, Latin and the Germanic peoples.
Names usually don't translate, though. That is, if you're from the UK and your name is Peter, and you visit Spain, you don't usually become Pedro. If you take a trip to France, you don't suddenly become known as Pierre. And as far as I'm aware, in no case does your name change to Rock. (Though admittedly, that would be badass.)
Similarly, it would be weird to name a kid WhoislikeGod. But that's the (sort of) literal translation of Michael from Hebrew.
How does this relate to Fantasy writing? Well, unless you're writing modern-day urban fantasy or something similar, you may be writing in English, but it's generally understood that the characters speak some other language. All your dialogue is in English, descriptions are in English, etc. And yet you also make up names for people, cities, rivers, etc., and those names rarely get translated like everything else does.
But, in their native language, even if you didn't bother making one up the way Tolkien did, they might very well have a plain meaning.
Or maybe, like a lot of English names, they got passed along from some other, ancient language.
Just something to think about next time you're coming up with a name in Fantasy writing. Of course, you can always just string syllables together and call it good. |
These might or might not have made-up names in them:
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Last time, in "Pain" , I wrote about pain.
Quick-Quill  : Robert. I am in total agreement. 1-10 means nothing. There needs to be a universal description. Bee sting, 2-3 bees, a whole hive. When I describe pain, it is hard to do. A man feels pain differently from a woman. Has the woman had a baby? Kidney stones are described as a pain equal to childbirth. I concur, having experienced both. Give the degree of pain in a way the general reader can relate.
Yes, it is difficult to describe pain, but we sometimes have to try.
Annette  : Most people will attempt to avoid pain. That is true. However, in our modern world of constant stimuli, pain appears to be preferable to sitting still.
A group of people in their twenties were put in a room with no distractions. They were told to either just sit still, or, if they wanted to, they could give themselves electric shocks. Every single one of them ended up shocking themselves before the 20 minutes of sitting still were over. Source: the physiological psychology class I took a couple of years ago.
I don't doubt that physical pain can be preferable to the mental pain of boredom, but I do question the methodology there. Once you realize that a certain stimulus causes pain but not any real damage, it's possible that you can overcome the aversion to pain for the novelty or distraction of it. In other words, would they have done the same thing if it meant losing skin or worse? Of course, such an experiment would have serious ethical problems.
So that's it for me for October! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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Fantasy: October 15, 2025 Issue [#13396]
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