names, where when and why
Apr. 4th, 2010 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliBaby name books can be tricky.
They have their uses for the writer, I own several of them myself, but their origins for names are not exactly of the highest quality. And even if they've gotten the location right, they don't give you any clues about the era. Name a character Holly in medieval England, or even a pseudo-medieval pseudo-England, and the name's being English and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee. (Nickname, maybe, but you will need an explanation for that.) Not, of course, that your troubles are over when you have names for the right era, either the one you put your story in or the one you want to suggest an analogue to by your name choices. Some, perfectly authentic, don't sound old. Like, say, Tiffany. Sometimes they don't even convince me; "Alice" is a fine old name but had Victorian connotations to me -- well, up until I used a different spelling and set out with my heroine "Alys". And authentic combinations of old stand-bys and names that have fallen out of use since that era may have readers complaining about the mix of real and made-up names. (sigh.)
And there's the other danger of baby names books: they list meanings. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, but in either case there's the temptation to give the characters a Meaningful Name. Except that unless it's seriously iconic, like Rose or Faith (in which case the characters had better comment ont it), odds are that your readers will not know the meaning. So it can, at most, be a fillip that selected readers, those who know the meaning, can see; the story can't really use it. Probably just as well. Meaningful Names have a tendency to be comic, since they are such wild coincidences.
They have their uses for the writer, I own several of them myself, but their origins for names are not exactly of the highest quality. And even if they've gotten the location right, they don't give you any clues about the era. Name a character Holly in medieval England, or even a pseudo-medieval pseudo-England, and the name's being English and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee. (Nickname, maybe, but you will need an explanation for that.) Not, of course, that your troubles are over when you have names for the right era, either the one you put your story in or the one you want to suggest an analogue to by your name choices. Some, perfectly authentic, don't sound old. Like, say, Tiffany. Sometimes they don't even convince me; "Alice" is a fine old name but had Victorian connotations to me -- well, up until I used a different spelling and set out with my heroine "Alys". And authentic combinations of old stand-bys and names that have fallen out of use since that era may have readers complaining about the mix of real and made-up names. (sigh.)
And there's the other danger of baby names books: they list meanings. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, but in either case there's the temptation to give the characters a Meaningful Name. Except that unless it's seriously iconic, like Rose or Faith (in which case the characters had better comment ont it), odds are that your readers will not know the meaning. So it can, at most, be a fillip that selected readers, those who know the meaning, can see; the story can't really use it. Probably just as well. Meaningful Names have a tendency to be comic, since they are such wild coincidences.
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Date: 2010-04-05 11:59 am (UTC)Then I had to stop reading Potter and pull out my book of Greek Myths and read them *that* story. :)
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Date: 2010-04-05 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 02:39 pm (UTC)Sadly, I know Latin speakers are becoming more and more rare.
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Date: 2010-04-05 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 01:00 pm (UTC)If I'm looking for names in a specific culture, they're helpful, but beyond that I usually go for names that look good on paper or 'feel right' to me...
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Date: 2010-04-05 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:29 pm (UTC)I've been kinda trying to figure out how to generate names like that. These were all of them, somehow, nature oriented-- trees, plants, bodies of water, weather, geographical features, seasonal references, and spiritual references, mixed with random names, either as first or last names!
But here's a whole lot of internet names resources that some friends of mine have collected...
http://probablepossible.com/story/index.php/topic,7.0.html
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Date: 2010-04-05 06:00 pm (UTC)Neat thread.
names with meaning
Date: 2010-04-05 06:02 pm (UTC).... I wouldn't do that now :-)
Re: names with meaning
Date: 2010-04-05 06:21 pm (UTC)Re: names with meaning
Date: 2010-04-05 06:27 pm (UTC)(I did burn that juvenilia!)
Re: names with meaning
Date: 2010-04-05 06:49 pm (UTC)Re: names with meaning
Date: 2010-04-05 07:08 pm (UTC)And in a recent novel I had a character with the name Ara, short for Arabesque, so--I'm still not quite over strange names.
Re: names with meaning
Date: 2010-04-05 07:55 pm (UTC)