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

[Lord Mord]

Ran,

I wish I was named Blo Bzang Grags Pa. That's awesome.

I say go for it. Who's to say you no?

[Shryke]

Yes :)

So: real or not real? It is an invented language, after all, and it carries meaning the same way tolkien-elf does

Whether a language is "real" or not is irrelevant though.

The point is, almost no one is gonna look at a line of Elvish and immediately recognize that it's a fully developed language and not just a random collection of letters that sound cool.

Fantasy names should "fit" in that names are or should be from the same language should sound like they come from the same language.

[Happy Ent]

As a native English speaker reading a book in written in English, by an English speaker I find them highly annoying.

Well, you’re wrong.

Eleäzaras is the English way of writing that name. The funny dots “do” the same thing as in the perfectly English spellings naïve and Zoë (or, archaically, coöperation and reënter.)

The German spelling of Eleäzaras would just be “Eleasaras”, because no German speaker would ever dream of pronouncing the -ea- as /iː/ (as in “dream”). So a strange habit of native English speakers reading books written in English by an English speaker forces Bakker to tell you (no me) that the second syllable of Eleazaras does not rhyme with “dream”. Hence the diaeresis.

Similarly, Eärwa is not a prefix of “ear wax”.

So Bakker’s spelling conventions, like it or not, are exactly pitched to you, the native English speaker, and not to me, the native speaker of German. To me, the ä in Eleäzaras signifies something completely different and unintended by Bakker, because I read ä as an umlaut, which it isn’t. So my familiarity with umlauts makes it harder for me to read Bakker’s names.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

The point is, almost no one is gonna look at a line of Elvish and immediately recognize that it's a fully developed language and not just a random collection of letters that sound cool.

Well, I certainly did. When I have first read LotR at the age of 15, it was immediately obvious to me that lines in Elvish come from fully developed artificial language in a way names used by, say, Salvatore - to name one of the bigger offenders - do not. I suspect the same is true of manyTolkien fans, as it was, in fact, main reason why I fell in love with Tolkien's work in the first place.

[Shryke]

Well, I certainly did. When I have first read LotR at the age of 15, it was immediately obvious to me that lines in Elvish come from fully developed artificial language in a way names used by, say, Salvatore - to name one of the bigger offenders - do not. I suspect the same is true of manyTolkien fans, as it was, in fact, main reason why I fell in love with Tolkien's work in the first place.

What was it, your spider sense?

[Poobah]

Well, you’re wrong.

Eleäzaras is the English way of writing that name. The funny dots “do” the same thing as in the perfectly English spellings naïve and Zoë (or, archaically, coöperation and reënter.)

The German spelling of Eleäzaras would just be “Eleasaras”, because no German speaker would ever dream of pronouncing the -ea- as /iː/ (as in “dream”). So a strange habit of native English speakers reading books written in English by an English speaker forces Bakker to tell you (no me) that the second syllable of Eleazaras does not rhyme with “dream”. Hence the diaeresis.

Similarly, Eärwa is not a prefix of “ear wax”.

So Bakker’s spelling conventions, like it or not, are exactly pitched to you, the native English speaker, and not to me, the native speaker of German. To me, the ä in Eleäzaras signifies something completely different and unintended by Bakker, because I read ä as an umlaut, which it isn’t. So my familiarity with umlauts makes it harder for me to read Bakker’s names.

Because we use diaeresis in everyday English all the time. So much so that as a quite well educated native English speaker I had absolutely no idea what they were. As your second examples point out, it's an archaic and rather esoteric piece of punctuation, I wouldn't think that your average Joe Bloggs Englishman would have any more idea than me what a diaeresis was. Language evolves, and it's evolved away from that piece of punctuation.

[Borque]

Well, you’re wrong.

Well, he is mostly wrong anyway. Apart from the diacritics, Bakker uses the circumflex ("^") liberally. This doesn't help English speakers. AFAIK there is no relevant convention for how the circumflex affects any vowel in written English.

[Poobah]

Well, he is mostly wrong anyway. Apart from the diacritics, Bakker uses the circumflex ("^") liberally. This doesn't help English speakers. AFAIK there is no relevant convention for how the circumflex affects any vowel in written English.

Yes. I'd pronounce Anasûrimbor as "Anas-"u with a chevron"-rimbor" just out of contrariness.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

What was it, your spider sense?

No, just having rudimentary ear for languages.

Well, he is mostly wrong anyway. Apart from the diacritics, Bakker uses the circumflex ("^") liberally. This doesn't help English speakers. AFAIK there is no relevant convention for how the circumflex affects any vowel in written English.

U with a circumflex just mean "oo", that is a long u sound. It is relatively recent invention, though, and Anasoorimbor would look too obviously modern English for the setting IMHOides I would then pronounce it Anasoörimbor, just to be contrary ;)

[Shryke]

No, just having rudimentary ear for languages.

So ... spider sense. Gotcha.

[Nerdanel]

Well, I think it's possible to fake a fully developed artificial language in a book without actually developing one fully. However, in order to successfully fake one beyond very brief glimpses you need to develop one partially. This means giving thought to phonology, grammar, some common words, etc.

From explicit translations and other clues in the text the reader can then start figuring out your language. Given an observant reader and sufficient source material, there are three possible results:

1) The "language" is nonsense. This sucks. I hear Klingon was originally just random sounds said by actors and when the actual language was developed based on it, the original source material was so jumbled that not all of it could be made to fit into sense.

2) The "language" is just English with a different vocabulary. This sucks too, unless you are very easily pleased and unaware that different languages work differently. I hear Christopher Paolini does this.

3. The language stands on its own. This is when you can figure out grammatical patterns and see that it's indeed a different language with a different grammar. This is what Tolkien did and it gives a lot of extra depth to his work.

[Happy Ent]

Because we use diaeresis in everyday English all the time.

Even I, whose third language is English, know why the “naive of a ship” and a “naïve child” are spelt the way they are. I find it helpful. You may not care, and you may not even know. Fine. But you cannot fault Bakker for this.

You argument specifically attacked Bakker for using punctuation that was meaningless to English speakers, as if it made more sense to a German speaker, for example. I’m pointing out that Bakker uses English conventions to signify that two letters are a sequence, not a digraph. His conventions are a lot more meaningless to German speakers. (They do make sense to speakers of French and Dutch, for that matter.) Conventions that may be unknown to you, but which remain completely English. It is not your Englishness that prevents you from understanding the pronunciations hints, but your lack of familiarity with admittedly archaic English spelling conventions. (Conventions however, that are also used by Tolkien, in Eärendil and Manwë. Thus, Bakker follows a well-established tradition of transliterating in epic fantasy.)

You also described the diacritics as “random”. Again, I’m pointing out to you that they are not random, and I repeat my challenge to find a better way of communicating, to an English speaker, the words Eärwa or Eärendil. Or Serwë and Manwë, for that matter.

[Shryke]

Well, I think it's possible to fake a fully developed artificial language in a book without actually developing one fully. However, in order to successfully fake one beyond very brief glimpses you need to develop one partially. This means giving thought to phonology, grammar, some common words, etc.

From explicit translations and other clues in the text the reader can then start figuring out your language. Given an observant reader and sufficient source material, there are three possible results:

1) The "language" is nonsense. This sucks. I hear Klingon was originally just random sounds said by actors and when the actual language was developed based on it, the original source material was so jumbled that not all of it could be made to fit into sense.

2) The "language" is just English with a different vocabulary. This sucks too, unless you are very easily pleased and unaware that different languages work differently. I hear Christopher Paolini does this.

3. The language stands on its own. This is when you can figure out grammatical patterns and see that it's indeed a different language with a different grammar. This is what Tolkien did and it gives a lot of extra depth to his work.

You forgot #4: "Faked enough to throw around some phrases every now and then but the language in no way stands on it's own". Like the Old Tongue from WOT.

Regardless, grammar, synthax and such are only necessary when your starting to throw around a bunch of sentences in the language in question. When it comes to the names of people/place/etc (the point of the thread after all), none of that is necessary. You just need enough to make all the names sound like they come from a set of languages. And this is mostly about how they "sound".

[Happy Ent]

“naive of a ship”

That should be “nave”, of course.

[MinDonner]

** Granted, I only wanted to learn Esperanto from reading a lot of Harry Harrison.

:lol:

When he wasn't busy plotting interplanetary heists and whatnot, Slippery Jim DiGriz did spend a disproportionate amount of time pimping his favourite language.

I have to say, much as I love Donaldson, some of his names are truly sucktacular (particularly in the Covenant Chronicles). Jheherrin? Bhrathairain? Elemesnedene? You're just making it up!

[Nerdanel]

You forgot #4: "Faked enough to throw around some phrases every now and then but the language in no way stands on it's own". Like the Old Tongue from WOT.

Regardless, grammar, synthax and such are only necessary when your starting to throw around a bunch of sentences in the language in question. When it comes to the names of people/place/etc (the point of the thread after all), none of that is necessary. You just need enough to make all the names sound like they come from a set of languages. And this is mostly about how they "sound".

#4 is not a separate case. Either you have enough information to plug a language into one of the three or you don't.

Even with Tolkien's names you can figure out some things of the language. You can figure out that "minas" is tower, "mor" is black, "dor" is land, and so on. You can figure out that "orod" is a mountain while "eryd" is the plural form of the same. You can observe how base words change shape in different compounds like "ithil", moon, in Minas Ithil and Ithilien and "anor", sun, in Minas Anor and Anórien You can compare cognates like "ithil" and "isil" in Sindar and Quenya and see how the languages were separated by regular sound changes.

Tolkien was really good at what he did.

[jurble]

Calling something "Sumerian/Akkadian" is kind of like calling something "basque/spanish". The languages aren't related. (akkadian is a semitic language, related to hebrew and arabic, sumerian is one of those funky isolate languages)

Nothing wrong with saying basque/spanish if the setting were based on Spain, the / signifies "or", also, Sumerian is full of a shit-ton of Akkadian loanwords, and the Akkadians used Sumerian as the prestige tongue of their nation.

[jurble]

Because we use diaeresis in everyday English all the time. So much so that as a quite well educated native English speaker I had absolutely no idea what they were. As your second examples point out, it's an archaic and rather esoteric piece of punctuation, I wouldn't think that your average Joe Bloggs Englishman would have any more idea than me what a diaeresis was. Language evolves, and it's evolved away from that piece of punctuation.

Never read Beowulf or Canterbury Tales in HS? There's diaeresis everywhere.

[Zoë Sumra]

Because we use diaeresis in everyday English all the time.

Yes, actually, we do.

~Zoë Parkinson

[elmis]

Each to their own I guess.

I'll restate that I personally think some of these names are written the way they are, because the author has a sense that it's more "fantasyish" that way.

The occational use is OK, the "over use" is annoying.

EDIT:

Eloisa, see if you had been a character in a fantasy book, your name would be: Z'oë Parkïnsôn. ;)