One of the perennial questions I get from people, especially those who want to be writers, is “how do you come up with the names?”-meaning, usually, the “weird fantasy names” in settings that bear no resemblance to the “real world,” rather than the more ordinary names like James and Cecelia I use in other books. I usually just say something along the lines of “I make them up” with variations: some are typos of real names or words, some are real names from the phone book with one or two letters changes or the syllables swapped, some are the result of playing around with Scrabble tiles. And there are name-generator web sites and programs online now.
But it’s really a bit more complicated than that.
Because one of the longstanding traditions in magic and fantasy is that names have power, and when you’re writing a book, they really do. Even real-life names are like that-they’ve done surveys of “likeable” and “unlikeable” names, and found that whether people trust you right off the bat can depend quite a bit on what your name is. Also, names in real life tend to have regional or ethnic similarities – you can tell a French name from a Russian or Chinese one at a glance.
Place names can be even more complex, especially when different languages are involved. In the northern part of my state is Lake Mille Lacs-“Lake Thousand Lakes” – and I live near the Mississippi River – “Big River River.” There are places where the history of conquest and migration has piled up in the names, like Torpenhow Hill (Hill Hill Hill Hill) and Río Guadix (River River River).
Trying to keep all this in mind when one is making up names can be really difficult for anyone who isn’t a linguist or language historian. It’s especially difficult for authors who don’t do a lot of advance worldbuilding, because without knowing at least some of the history, it’s easy to throw in names that imply more (or less) than you wanted.
One of the things I have occasionally done is to decide on the sound or feel of the names for a particular country or group (for instance, the dragons in the Enchanted Forest books have lots of w’s and g’s and l’s and x’s in their names, but not any s’s or double letters). Then I make up a list of ten or fifteen names that fit the sound. When a character in the book pops up who’s from that country or group, I have my own “name your baby” list to pick from. Doesn’t work for everything all the time, but when it does, it’s been very useful.
Nothing throws me out of a story like a second world fantasy with Tom, Colin, and Kevin, or any other profusion of short English names that do not even prevail in my current home counties village neighbourhood. When the palace guard in a dragon-infested world told the hero “I’m called Fred, sir,” I ended up collapsing in laughter – which was not, I assume, the author’s intention.
I can take the occasional familiar sounding name, particularly when they’ve been derived in a different manner. I’ve got a Val, (who is male) and a Kira and a Darrin – the last two were my own inventions, though I’ve now come across them in the real world. (I’ve also come across an Undine… there’s no accounting for parents.)
I like pulling names from King Aurthor. In my opinion it’s tough to beat a name like Griflet or Lyonese. I worry about the logic of old English names in what’s supposed to be a completely different world, though.
`Fred the palace guard’ Lol. Could work in a parody story, though. `As the heroic Sir Fred rode out to meet his foe…’
I agree completely! I mean, Fred the palace guard. Fred? Despite the fact that some fantasy names are hard to pronounce, they’re needed for the story. If you had named Cimorene Jessica, that would just be plain weird.
Fred does work as a name in Discworld, but that’s because Terry Pratchett is so brilliant he can make ANYTHING work. (No one else could’ve gotten away with a name like Moist von Lipwig, either.)
I agree that a fantasy world needs names that fit, or you run the risk of taking people out of the story.