is it just me or do stupid names in fantasy annoy everyone?

[Jacen]

I think it's interesting to think about how this topic falls into what we expect out of fantasy as a genre, sub-consciously. For example, I was about to say I love how Martin does it. Quasi-Medieval English type names mixed with some different spellings of more modern names, seems to fit the world perfectly....

But why does that appeal? It is because we expect all our fantasy adventures to take place in fantasy versions of England circa 1200 A.D.? Is anything outside that pattern gonna rock the boat too much?

I think the Bakker names take some getting used to at first (at least for a white bread American like myself), but after awhile they become second nature. And unlike some books that have the ridiculous names for no reason, Bakker's names at least seem to fit the culture and history of the land.

And nobody is named Drizzt yet.

The name that still bothers me is Pug from Feist's books.. I get it, the crappy simple name is supposed to be ironic, his humble origins vis a vis most bad ass wizard of all time.

Still! Pug, destroyer of worlds?

Anyway, back to the names thing. I'm pretty sure it all comes down to whether the book is shitty or not. If the book is some 3rd rate TSR novel and the main character is named Zynanka nor'Ingledronazz the IV, then I'm probably going to think the names are shit, the author sucks, has no creativity or sense of history, etc. etc.

On the other hand, if it's Bakker, Martin, or someone else of high caliber, I'm gonna think "Gee, Nersei Proyas, totally given me that Byzantine/Greek/Roman flavor, I'm so digging this series".

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Good names:

Zeddicus Zuul Zoroander

Anomander Rake

Thongor of Lemuria

Crap names:

Anasurimbor Kellhus

Tom Bombadil

Mahela Jayawardene

Simple really.

Point disqualified because you used an example from Tairyverse. :rolleyes:

Yeah but someone with an actual name like Mihaloriamniman'surriar should be called Miha, IMO. A person like that would normally have a nickname/common name they would go by in everyday life.

Maybe their formal name could be Mihaloriamniman'surriar but there's no way when they were children that their mom would yell out the window "Get back in here Mihaloriamniman'surriar!" That's just hugely unrealistic.

To use the example from the OP, Bakker thought of this - his characters' names have diminutive forms, which I thought was a nice touch. Cnaiur (accents left off because I don't remember where they go) becomes Nayu, Proyas becomes Prosha, Serwe becomes Serwaa, Achamian becomes Akka, etc.

Speaking of names in Bakkerverse:

Could any of you annoying Bakker fan-boys, between your ritual phases of genuflecting towards holy Shimeh and gang-raping neuropunctured squirrels, please rationalise for me why Achamian has a family name?

I mean, he’s a fisherman, for crying out loud! Did his father have a last name as well? Drusus Parentälabûse? Puh-leeze!

Can you give me a solid reason why a fisherman wouldn't have a family name? Medieval and Renaissance records record peasants with surnames all the time; generally these have evolved from either a place of origin or occupation (for example, I just read a Spanish Inquisition trial of a property-less, illiterate Spanish peasant in 1518 who had a surname - his name was Juan de Rabe). You can't tell me that having a surname and being lower class in a medieval-esque world is that crazy, because, frankly, it's not.

For all we know, Drusas is the name of the town whence Akka and his family come.

[Datepalm]

I kind of see the point of the OP. If you're writing in English in a culture speaking 'English', you would expect names that are obvious and easily pronouncable in English in that culture (and names from other cultures to be otherwise, but only when its clear they're speaking some other language.)

On the other hand, if you're trying to convey a setting thats not European, European styled names aren't going to help. Narrow line, I suppose.

I don't like Bakkers names, becuase they aren't obvious - I don't mind the occassional diacretic or bit of work, but theres too much of and it does distract. Kellhus is ok. Cnuir not so much - I kept stumbling over it again and again. Its not so hard to write a name that sounds un-english but isn't in doubt of pronounciation for a lot of readers.

I can't stand useless apostrophes becuase I automatically pronounce them as the hebrew letter ayin.

[Nerdanel]

I had little problems with Bakker's names, since I had to learn that totally strange and foreign language called English as a child. I suspect the people who have the most trouble with Bakker are the monolingual ones who have never really had to stretch their brains

The confusing thing for me are the diacriticals that are being used strangely. For example, it turned out that the ü in Cnaiür is pronounced like the German ü or the Finnish y. Bakker is still limited to the English framework by avoiding phonemes that doesn't appear in English.

If I write a fantasy novel someday I'd like to include a culture the language of which counts r and l as vowels like Czech and include names that take advantage of that property.

[Arbor Gold]

I'm probably one of the least tolerant people around here when it comes to names in fantasy, and I think Bakker's names are awesome. They just flow beautifully, almost lyrically, the way I pronounce them.

[Ormond]

I've only read the first of Bakker's books so far, but I don't remember having any big problems with his names.

The overuse of apostrophes is certainly a bad affectation in some fantasy authors; Diana Wynne Jones has a very funny entry about that in her Rough Guide to Fantasyland.

I do remember finding Sara Douglass's names in her Axis trilogy being very offputting, because they just seemed like a silly hodgepodge with no rhyme or reason. Her hero is called Axis, which brings up uncomfortable World War II images; Axis's mother was Rivkah, which is simply the original Hebrew form of Rebecca, but she was the sister of King Priam, and Priam is a name from the Trojan War. Then the heroine is named Faraday, which made me wonder if she was supposed to have an "electric" personality. Throwing together a silly "word name" along with an ancient Hebrew, ancient Trojan/Greek, and English surname turned into a first name together in the first few pages of a fantasy novel was just too much for me as a name expert to take. :)

I love most of GRRM's names, but as I've said before, I don't think Brandon fits in with the rest of them because it strikes to much of a "modern American" tone for me. I wish the character's name had just been Bran, period. But in a series with so many characters, there's bound to be one with a name I don't like. :)

[pika]

Anyway, back to the names thing. I'm pretty sure it all comes down to whether the book is shitty or not. If the book is some 3rd rate TSR novel and the main character is named Zynanka nor'Ingledronazz the IV, then I'm probably going to think the names are shit, the author sucks, has no creativity or sense of history, etc. etc.

On the other hand, if it's Bakker, Martin, or someone else of high caliber, I'm gonna think "Gee, Nersei Proyas, totally given me that Byzantine/Greek/Roman flavor, I'm so digging this series".

Thats a good point, Context.

[Datepalm]

If I write a fantasy novel someday I'd like to include a culture the language of which counts r and l as vowels like Czech and include names that take advantage of that property.

Well, why? How is this going to be serving your story? Not saying it can't, but tossing it in there just to make readers lives difficult and because typical monolingual english authors usually don't is exactly a definition of gratuitously difficult names. (english is my least used 3rd language and I read four alphabets, so I think i'm on safeish grounds here in claiming not to simply being afraid of those weird foreign sounds.)

One of the most annoying things in reading hebrew translation of fantasy for example, is the need to stop whenever you encounter a name and puzzle out the diacretics and the pronounciation. Arya automatically reads as "aryeh" and means lion. I have to keep reminding myself, "no, its Arya". Unless theres a point to it, I cant see replicating the phenomenon on purpose as anything other than prententious.

[Happy Ent]

The confusing thing for me are the diacriticals that are being used strangely. For example, it turned out that the ü in Cnaiür is pronounced like the German ü or the Finnish y.

Where did that “turn out”? As far as I know, the ü in Cnaiür, like all ¨s in Bakker’s names, is a diaeresis, not an umlaut. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this.

(Same convention that Tolkien uses, by the way.)

[ljkeane]

Having thought about it I don't really bother trying to work out how a name would be pronounced unless I'm going to actually say it, which I rarely do with the names of characters from books. So I'm not really concerned by exotic choices for names.

[Wastrel]

...and then you go and spoil it all.

I'm sorry? I may have a vague notion of Sri Lankan names through the medium of cricket, but I'd hardly say that Sri Lankan language was familiar to me - I don't even know whether those are Sinhala or Tamil! So of course those names are alien to me.

What's more, they're alien to English, and to ordinary English speakers. The further from English you go, both geographically and genetically*, the more alien the language - features and phonologies will have less and less in common, fewer loanwords will have entered English to create a shadow of a memory of the flavour of the language, and fewer words and names will be known to the speakers through their historical significance. These interconnections describe an indefinite limit between the familiar and the alien; for me, "Anasurimbor" feels like something I am familiar with, whereas the Tibetan names are alien to me.

I'd explain further, but I'm not sure what exactly your complaint was.

*NB, I'm using this in the sense of the genetic/familial relations between languages, not in the sense of biological genetics.

[jurble]

Bakker's names are fine, I've always been a fan of Sumerian history, so the names never struck me as odd, and I knew what Bakker was going for.

[Galactus]

I do note that I have a tendency to pronounce names that aren't obviously "english" in swedish. (which mostly means much "flatter" vowels)

[Nerdanel]

Where did that “turn out”? As far as I know, the ü in Cnaiür, like all ¨s in Bakker’s names, is a diaeresis, not an umlaut. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this.

(Same convention that Tolkien uses, by the way.)

Tolkien cleverly put the diaresis on the e, a letter that has no differently-pronounced ë counterpart. The only exception he did was when the e that the diaresis would fall on a capital letter, in which case the next letter would get the diaresis. That's how we get names like Eärendil that my brain wants to read the Finnish way instead of the Elvish way. This is doubly hard because Elvish is pronounced nearly identically to Finnish except for certain tiny exceptions. In Finnish a and ä are two independent letters as separate as a and o, and the little dots are not considered diacritical marks but part of the letter proper.

Datepalm:

I think the fictional languages of different cultures should exhibit internal consistency in their phonemes and other features and be noticeably different from the other languages in the setting to the degree that is appropriate to the linguistic distance from the other language. Even many European languages have phonemes English doesn't and/or lack phonemes English has, and so on. Since it usually isn't worth it to quote local languages without translating, that means that the names of characters and places have to demonstrate the differences and the similarities.

I think coherent and believable worldbuilding is very important and realistic linguistic differences make the fictional world a richer place. By the way, I don't find names like Vltava (a big river in the Czech Republic) hard to pronounce at all. You just need to realize that it's three syllables...

[Zoë Sumra]

I'm sorry? I may have a vague notion of Sri Lankan names through the medium of cricket, but I'd hardly say that Sri Lankan language was familiar to me - I don't even know whether those are Sinhala or Tamil! So of course those names are alien to me.

My point was that you left out the "to me" in your original post. Neither Sinhala nor Tamil are languages hailing from the unknown regions of a galaxy far far away or used by followers of the great prophet Zarquon, and describing them as "alien" in and of themselves carries unfortunate connotations of ethnocentrism.

[AverageGuy]

I didn't have a problem with them. Cnaiur specifically was actually sort of obvious to me, since I was a Classics major and I'd run across plenty of Cnaei, Pompey being the first who comes to mind (well, at least I assume Cnaiur is Nigh-er; Latin may have let me down).

I've said this before, but my brother actually had some difficulty with the names when I loaned him the first book. He's got some major problems with dyslexia, and the names ended up being prohibitive to him. I can understand when some people have trouble with the names, so while I sometimes enjoy flavor (if it's well thought-out, and Bakker did obviously put some time into his names, even if it often felt like a hodgepodge) and don't have a problem myself, as a general rule I'd say authors should try to balance said flavor with accessibility.

[Lord O' Bones]

Anyway, the one thing I cannot abide when it comes to fantasy names are gratuitous apostrophes.

Just look at this monstrosity: K'Chain Che'Malle K'ell Hunter.

This. Apostrophe names are poison to me. Unless it seems like they are being used in the sense that the name is a contraction, like D'artagnan, instead of as a weak tool to sound fantastical or alien. In other words, rarely.

[Lord Biff]

What I want more than anything else is consistency.

If I see a world like Martin's (well, I mean Westeros, really), where generally speaking everyone is a Tom, Dick, or Harry, that's fine.

But if I'm reading about a Diklotulous Asuribiqualbszvir the Conqueror, I better not fucking see that he is aided by his loyal squire Frank.

[palemantle]

The thing that annoys me the most are names that look similar on the page. They usually get me mixed up about what character I'm reading about.

I'll second this. Sauron and Saruman made my head spin a bit.

[Datepalm]

I didn't have a problem with them. Cnaiur specifically was actually sort of obvious to me, since I was a Classics major and I'd run across plenty of Cnaei, Pompey being the first who comes to mind (well, at least I assume Cnaiur is Nigh-er; Latin may have let me down).

Well, there you go. My internal pronounciation wavers between something like "Sinur" and "Kan-ner" which I doubt is what the author was going for, and its still distracting to me. I suppose I could have gone and researched the pronounciation of umlauts and diaresis and ancient Latin and Sumerian names (after i'd figured out thats what I was supposed to be looking up, ofcourse) and all would have been well, but, to say the least, that takes me out of the story just a bit when I need to do it on almost every name.

The problem isn't foreigness, its comprehension. The Sri Lankan names are actually fine - they're certainly not english looking, but theres nothing there an english speaker needs to research to get some kind of pronounciation they can flow with. It might not be an entirely correct pronounciation, but its not like you're going to be adressing these fantasy characters. (You might the Sri Lankan cricketers though, in which case it would be polite to make sure you've got the pronouciations straight.)