Without looking up the source (bad scholar, but it’s that kind of day)\u00a0 I think it was Owen Barfield in an essay about language, corporations, and legal fictions who suggested that language itself is rooted\u00a0 in the ability to abstract and name a concept, and that is itself a form of fiction (or lie, if you prefer.)\u00a0\u00a0 The word is a symbol for, not the reality of, the thing.\u00a0 That seems obvious, but it’s the kind of obvious that’s a tangled web of fractal philosophy when you dig into it.\u00a0 And naming things–especially things that are *already* fictions, not existing in the real world except the mind of the writer and the mind of the reader who interprets\u00a0 what the writer wrote–is especially fraught with opportunities for unintended complications.<\/p>\n
But also with opportunities for intentional (and mostly secret) wit.\u00a0\u00a0 Those of you who like both fantasy and science fiction, and also read more conventional fiction, will have noticed that the SFF type of writing involves a lot more invention of names than other genres.\u00a0 Historical novels already have names of people and places (real people, real places, real weapons, real food, etc.) handed to them.\u00a0\u00a0 Contemporary novels usually involve familiar places on this planet and names that suggest contemporary cultures, classes, occupations.\u00a0\u00a0 The transportation, housing, technology are all a given.<\/p>\n
SFF, though…we can<\/em> stay within familiar bounds, but why?\u00a0\u00a0 Why would the name for an unidentified corpse on a distant planet a thousand years in the future be called a John or Jane Doe?\u00a0\u00a0 Aren’t we past naming new places for old places with “New” tacked on?\u00a0 At least sometimes?\u00a0 Sure, there will be some New Iberias and\u00a0 New Kenyas\u00a0 and New Indonesias (in whatever language is chosen then) but\u00a0 why not more interesting names, names that carry a feel just by the sound?\u00a0\u00a0 Why not characters with all sorts of exotic names from every corner of a large metropolitan telephone directory, or from the lists of authors of scientific papers, or from the news?\u00a0\u00a0 Mix & match.\u00a0 Turn them inside out.\u00a0\u00a0 (And if you’re unwise, pepper them with apostrophes, suggesting that the spelling is NOT a hint to the pronunciation…)\u00a0 Name them for pets or famous racehorses or a failed invention from fifty years ago.<\/p>\n But one important thing:\u00a0 make sure the average reader can see the word and imagine how to say it easily.\u00a0\u00a0 In my experience, from asking people who don’t read SFF what about it puts them off…it’s the names.\u00a0 (Some of them also won’t read contemporary fiction if the names look hard to say.)\u00a0\u00a0 They can’t remember the characters if they can’t say the names–hear them in their heads.\u00a0\u00a0 Important (but less so than having pronounceable names) is not having very similar names for different characters.\u00a0 If they must start with the same letter, have them different lengths, with different vowels in them.\u00a0\u00a0 If they must be the same for some story-reason, give one of them a nickname: Tall Bill, Red Tom, Sally and Sal, Kentucky Joe (known often as “Tucky” or “Kentuck.”)\u00a0 I should’ve learned this in fourth grade, when our teacher, faced with five little girls named Susan, insisted we had to have different names in her class…but I didn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I have.<\/p>\n A more subtle consideration:\u00a0 every invented name in a story should help create the ambiance of that story.\u00a0\u00a0 A fantasy tale, where the entire fabric is made up, is particularly likely to suffer from a mismatch of name to story-verse.\u00a0\u00a0 (Tolkein’s choosing to name a pony “Bill” was dangerously near the edge, but redeemed by having some low-life humans with more mundane names.)\u00a0\u00a0 Terry Pratchett was a master at naming (and many other things, but this is about naming.)\u00a0 The Discworld geography, races, tribes, cities, towns…all of it, wonderfully named to create its particular feel.<\/p>\n So, dragging this into the present, what kind of little secrets might lurk in the Vatta universe, with regard to the names handed out so far?\u00a0\u00a0 Well…I sometimes name characters for horses I’ve had (or those horses’ barn names.)\u00a0 Ky, for instance, the first horse I ever owned.\u00a0 Mac, for instance, a horse I own now.\u00a0\u00a0 Kuincey (who became Quincy, the elderly engineer in the first Vatta book.)\u00a0\u00a0 (Some horses’ names are unhandy for characters and are unlikely to show up, except possibly as ship names or something like that:\u00a0 Illusion, Cricket, Jezz.) \u00a0 Names of characters need to fit the character if not in obvious opposition, a name the character fights against) and fit not only in the expectations it raises about personality, but in culture.\u00a0\u00a0 In a multi-cultural story, each culture needs a grab-bag of names that will then help create that culture’s sound identity in the story.<\/p>\n For instance, in this story, there’s a person named Bernard Greyhaus, a military officer–not a POV character, existing mostly via the journal he kept.\u00a0 That name already suggests a certain kind of military officer.\u00a0 The spelling of his last name suggests a mix of linguistic input; his first name suggests another possible input, and–in an SF story set far in the future–suggests a predominantly north European Terran ancestry.\u00a0\u00a0 Vatta is not a north European name…Ky’s ancestry includes inputs from, predominantly, the long trade routes from Greece\/Turkey to India.\u00a0 Ky has a flag captain, last name Pordre, and an aide, last name Bentik, neither from Slotter Key.\u00a0\u00a0 Early in the book she meets the pilot and co-pilot of the shuttle she’s on:\u00a0 Hansen and Sunyavarta.\u00a0 Already the last names are cueing the reader that there’s a complexity to the culture.<\/p>\n Two people in the book are using aliases.\u00a0 Why would someone pick a name like Hilarion Bancroft for an alias?\u00a0\u00a0 Or Edvard Simeon Teague?\u00a0\u00a0 Why not commoner names (whatever those might be) that wouldn’t call attention to themselves.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, because an unusual name doesn’t look as though you’re trying to hide from attention.\u00a0\u00a0 (And also because one of those is rhyming slang for a composer if you ignore the middle name, which I threw in to make it less likely.\u00a0 I could not resist.)<\/p>\n What about land masses?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Slotter Key was settled by humans less than a thousand years ago, under a corporate license agreement: the stakeholders, all from one culture, named the larger land masses they were entitled to for some version (or shortened version) of their name, plus “land.”\u00a0 Hence Arland, Forland, Voruksland, etc.\u00a0 Other place names were contributed by later immigrants, and some are descriptive while others are banal at best.\u00a0 Luckily, the story doesn’t drag you around too much.\u00a0\u00a0 Slotter Key has smallish continents and lots and lots of islands of various types.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Oh–you’re wondering about Slotter Key’s own name?\u00a0 That’s…interesting, actually.\u00a0 Key because of all the reefs and islands.\u00a0 Slotter’s argued about.\u00a0\u00a0 It might originally have been Slaughter, and that might originally have involved a massacre OR simply the last name Slaughter.\u00a0 I knew people named Slaughter way back when.\u00a0 Lots of names on this planet are obscure in origin unless you know someone who was there at the start.\u00a0 Weslaco, Texas, for instance.\u00a0 W.E. Stewart Land Company…yup, that’s where its name came from.\u00a0 Sounded good, was unique, so…there it is.)<\/p>\n The Vatta family, as mentioned, are an amalgam of Turkish, Syrian, Afghan, Iranian, Pakistani, and Indian background, plus additions of others here and there.\u00a0\u00a0 In some centuries and places, they tried assimilating at least a little.\u00a0 But their history is largely one of family closeness in trade, buying and selling, with more or less brief periods of owning land and cultivating it, often for exotic crops they can sell at a higher profit than basic foodstuffs.\u00a0\u00a0 E.g., the tik plantations on Corleigh, where Ky grew up.<\/p>\n And now it’s time to take a break and try to get the exercise requirement done before the next round of storms hits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Without looking up the source (bad scholar, but it’s that kind of day)\u00a0 I think it was Owen Barfield in an essay about language, corporations, and legal fictions who suggested that language itself is rooted\u00a0 in the ability to abstract and name a concept, and that is itself a form of fiction (or lie, if Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,25],"tags":[7,26],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","category-writers-toolkit","tag-the-writing-life","tag-tools-for-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}