A Seminar on Writing Prose: Names

7.5 Names

Character names are tricky in all fiction, but especially in science fiction and fantasy. Stories in our genre can take place on worlds that have little or no connection to our own...and mundane names like George or Alice don't fit in when you're writing about aliens or elves. Even when you're writing about Homo sapiens, mundane names won't be appropriate a million years in the future or for mighty warriors and sorcerers.

My usual approach to creating unusual names is to lay a few ground rules, then just wing it. For example:

In my book Vigilant, I created a race named the Ooloms. Early on, I decided that all Oolom names would have two or three syllables; male names would end in "r" as in "Chappalar," and female names would end in "f" as in "Zillif." After that, I just made up names that I liked the sound of.
In my book Hunted, I had a race called the Mandasars that was split into castes like bees. I decided all queens were named after virtues (Queen Verity, Queen Honor, Queen Innocence); workers had single-syllable names (Hib, Pib, Nib); warriors had pompous-sounding multi- syllabic names (Zeeleepull); and the "gentle" caste never revealed their true names, choosing instead to go by simple titles like Counselor or Doctor. Not only did these guidelines make it easier to come up with appropriate character names, I think they also conveyed something about the nature of Mandasar culture.
In a group of fantasy stories centered around a city called Cardis, I created different factions within the city by using names that sounded like different human ethnic groups. The upper class citizens of Cardis all had names I thought sounded like Sanskrit (Vasudheva, Bhismu, Niravati). A group called Northerners had names reminiscent of Native North Americans (Hakkoia, Tehawni). A group called Westerners had names reminiscent of Hungarian (Sztam, Isabel, Raghamazj). I hoped the different types of names would suggest different cultures, as well as different levels of wealth and influence.

These examples should give you ideas for creating names of your own. To a great extent, you just have to choose names that please your ear. It's also nice if they suggest something of the underlying culture. (A culture that prefers long names like Halluwallamai is probably different than a culture that uses short names like Chug and Lodd.)

One interesting name source is National Geographic. For example, if they run an article on Nepal, you’ll find a lot of Nepalese names, which are likely different than anything you’ve seen in conventional SF&F.

When you choose a name, make sure there's a reasonably obvious way to pronounce it. Many readers speak names "aloud" in their heads—keep these readers in mind when you make up names. (You'll notice that even though I use strange names, it should be obvious how to pronounce them. Zeeleepull. Tehawni. Sztam.)

Avoid names that are easy to confuse with each other. For example, if you have a pair of men named Richard and Robert, I guarantee many readers won't remember which is which. The names are just too similar. (Shakespeare actually uses this effect deliberately in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He names two women Helena and Hermia because he wants to suggest that they're basically interchangeable.)

Whenever I start a book or story, I make a computer file that has a line for each letter of the alphabet. Then if I give a character a name beginning with A, I list that name on the A line; if I give a character a name beginning with B, I list that name on the B line; and so on. Whenever I need to come up with a new character name, I go to the file and see what beginning letters I haven't used. For example, if I don't have any names starting with L, I might make an effort to give the new character an L name. This avoids having two characters whose names start with the same letter.

If I have to double up because there are more than 26 characters, I make sure the doubled-up names are significantly different from each other, or that the doubled-up characters are in different parts of the story so the reader won't get confused.

I was originally taken aback by the idea that readers couldn’t identify with certain characters just because the characters had non-standard names. However, my wife pointed out that I love making fun of names in romance novels: Slade Grayson...Marie Claire Saint-Ange...Coquette Winspear...Lisaveta Lazaroff. (I’m not making these up.) Since I can’t take such characters seriously, I suppose I have no right to chastise readers who feel the same about names like Graal, Felgerpeek and Tishlan Harkavor.

One last point about names. Someone in SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) did a survey of non-sf readers and found that their biggest reason for not reading our genre was all the weird names. I'm not kidding. These people said they just couldn't sympathize or identify with a character whose name wasn't "real." Rather than ranting about how ignorant that attitude is, I recommend you keep it in mind. If you can call a character by a familiar name—if you're writing about a milieu where it would be reasonable to have names like John and Elizabeth—maybe you'll get more readers by using conventional names. At least, it's something to think about.

<Previous | Top | Table of Contents | Next>