The thing I've noticed is that in professional writing (ie published) the names feel more real, are easier to remember, and just flow better. I still believe that many of these names are made up (though I expect some are just old latin, greek, asian names no longer used). One thing I've seen consistently in amateurish pieces is names that really look like they were pecked at random on the keyboard, like the one I made up above. They often are impossible to pronounce, and therefore difficult to remember or talk about, and they sound fake.
Any thoughts on this? How do you suggest making realistic character names in a genre in which we don't want to call our main characters by commonly used names?
For that reason I can agonise for weeks over a character's name until I finally set on one that fits both him and his location. And then most of the time the name I come up with is a real one anyway that I just haven't heard before. Like Toban. I'd never heard of it and it sounded right for my character but if you do a search on google up it pops with tons of matches. Guess that's part of the reason why I picked it. It sounded plausible because it was.
Makes me appreciate all the trouble parents have to go through to choose a name for their children. If we get it wrong, we just get an unrealistic sounding character but if they get it wrong...
Incidentally, if you do a search on Seotri you actually get a match. It's on a site that says it's an Indonesian word meaning quarrel or something. So like I said, if you do come up with a plausible sounding name, the chances are that's because it's already in existence.
[This message has been edited by Gwalchmai (edited February 02, 2004).]
What's kind of funny is that I don't think Seotri is all that bad of a name. You might not like it at first, but once you read it a few times, it might seem just as normal as Zachary or Ezekiel or Frodo or Beorn.
But what I try to do is first avoid bad letter groups.
Seojju Seofpti etc
Or get a name in my head that I try to match a spelling with.
Sotira Sotiree Sotrei
Not too different from your original name, but I might prefer one of those.
A reader will more easily remember a name if it is lesser syllables, I'd imagine. So instead of Sotiriheeri I'd use Sotira or something that a reader can pretty easily pronounce and also remember. Not good to interrupt the flow of the story.
I use normal letter groups, 'ch' 'll' might wind up in Jachell or Challin. Other languages can be fun though, to incorporate other combinations. Like, you might get away with a 'Svet' beginning as opposed to a "Ztin" which is almost a dead-end right there.
One thing I do is have my character names written in a notebook as I progress in my story. I need a new characters? Which letter have I not used yet to begin a name? I don't want seven characters who share the same first letter. So I begin with the first letter, then either a consonant or a vowel and then just find the rest. This can take a little while, but if the name you come up with just doesn't seem to flow for you, back to the drawing board to change it a little until it almost rolls off your tongue )
Just a few ideas, no idea if it helps or not
Zixx
A plausible name has just this quality, it has an almost primeval connection to the roots of the culture in which the character lives. The first thing to do is to get a feel for the language of your imagined culture. And don't bother saying that you aren't working out a language, because you must if you are going to use a lot of made up names. If your imagined culture uses an existing language, then you have no real excuse for not naming the characters of that culture with names taken from that existing language.
It doesn't take a lot of feel for the language, just enough so that you know how it sounds, and have a sense of which kinds of words are considered euphonious and which seem harsh and dissonant. Then make up an archaic form of a word for something that describes some element of the parent's (or other name-giver) aspirations for the character.
Give that name a history, independent of the named character. When other characters hear that name, they think of the famous general or the wicked queen or even just how everyone on their neighborhood rocksar team seemed to have that name at one point. Make the character aware of the implications of being named Seotri or whatever.
Real names are like that, they have meanings, both the meanings they started with (Hi, I'm KNT-835, that means I was the 835th clone of the KNT varient of the caste genome) and the meanings that they accrue ("Everyone knows that fives are more adaptable than those stuck up ones").
Of course, your names should be pronounceable if they are part of a spoken language (and if you're going to use some kind of strange phonetic conventions, then that should be an integral part of the language you invent as well--if Aec' is pronounced ayEX, then it should be an important element of the language that has a meaning outside of something for your readers to say when they're reading out loud). But it is setting them in a cultural context that illuminates and suggests the history of your character and the milieu described which invests them with a sense of being 'real'.
you know, I think we just had a thread on this. Let me find it.
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/000252.html
that's not the one i was thinking of, but i cna't find the other.
Ni!
I will sometimes take current words that are used all the time and come up with phonetical equivalents for names.
I think if it isn't cumbersome to say then it usually works. Just remember, you don't want a guy name Jose living (as a native) in Sweden, or a guy named Sven living in Mexico. You have to think about goegraphics and culture when naming your character. Jose and Sven wouldn't be brothers or even neighbors, for that matter.
I think I posed the question because I've been aked to crit. some work with some abismal names. I hate to actually suggest to someone to come up with differenct character names, but somehow they just sound *wrong*.I guess in all things I should be honest.
Jakob Grimm (as in one of the Grimm brothers who collected and wrote down all those fairy tales) was a linguist as well as a folklorist, and he came up with a law that describes the way consonants shift in languages as time passes.
For example, if you have a word that starts with a hard G sound, over time, it will change to a word that starts with a K sound.
So you can take a name, like Gordon, and in time it will evolve into a name like Korthon.
The law is circular, though, so some other sound (I can't recall right off) evolves into the hard G sound, and it goes round and round.
which gave this simplified list of related sounds:
1. f>b, b>p, p>f
2. th>d, d>t, t>th
3. h>g, g>k, k>h
My stories are usually have a fantastical setting which exists along side a mundane one, so my names are everyday names that stand out to me or that I particularly like the sound of, combined with something unexpected like a noun. So for example, I might have a character called Betty Cylinder so that the whole name compliments this combination of fantasy and reality.
[This message has been edited by Nick Vend (edited February 03, 2004).]
Also, try to come up with alternate spellings of common names. Taudd instead of Todd. A major character in somethings I'm working on now is Areck, pronounced like Eric.
Ender, for example, well, I'm not going to break down his character because that'll spawn a whole new topic here(and dont think it wont), but before reading you might think of it as outlandish or whatever... and yet perhaps you'd subconsciously associate it with something. I believe in one of Card's forewords he tells of how he just made it up, and then it turned out to be Turkish(?) name for one out of a million. Anyway...
Hopefully enough of my thoughts got conveyed out of my semi-coherent post you're reading here... but I always ramble on.
However, the Grimms law has intrigued me. That'll be something I'll think of on my next creation.
-F
Example: (Taken from words used in my post)
Ombina
Evera
Orm
Bina
Tiona
Just some thoughts.
Dave
http://www.conknet.com/~mmagnus/
Example: drutzzxxct (random typing) Is much harder to say than Ziroby (a name I "mimicked")
I, just now, took the name, "Robby" and then applied it to other letters. Coming up first with Zrobby and then deciding a vowel had to seperate the "Z" and "R," hence Zirobby and then I chose to delete one of the "b"s.
And so "Ziroby," was born.
To me "Ziroby," is alien in sound and feel but not unpleasnatly so, it is easy to read and remember because the vowel/consant placement and ratio is not unlike a name/word we already recognize.
Just my two-cents
[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 17, 2004).]