The naming of names...

[anghara]

There's been another go-round on the subject of the Naming of Names on my home newsgroup recently. We hold to the "nine and sixty ways" rule in that place, which is a quote from Kipling: "There are nine and sixty ways/of constructing tribal lays/and every one of them is right" (or something close to that - I haven't gone on Google to dig up the precise quote, people are free to correct me in comments if they so wish. The sentiment, though, is what's important. Every writer writes differently, writes in their own way. And that's okay.

But I have to admit my constant and consistent bafflement with those writers who appear to be able to write entire novels with characters who boast only "placeholder" names, or, worse, are referred to only as X or Y. How, *HOW*, are you supposed to have REAL people in a REAL story if they're no more than cyphers? In one of my comments on the names thread, I said -

>> True Names Have Power...

And this is something that an entire canon of Faerie lore has been built on, after all. You do not give your true name to people unless you trust them absolutely, or you give them power over you. Sometimes you don't even give you true name to people you trust completely, in order not to lead them into temptation. In other connected lore, if you summon a demon to your side you'd better know his name, precisely, or you will neither be able to control him while he's here nor un-summon him when you think you're done with him. And sometimes you have to actually find OUT something's true name before it will honour a bargain (remember Rumpelstiltskin?)

Sometimes a name will nail a culture - for example, when Chinese people living in the Western world actually have two names, the one which they turn to the outside world of their everyday existence (an ordinary Western name like Joy or Sam) and a traditional Chinese name which, in its original form, few Western tongues could even pronounce properly and which non-speakers of the original language would utterly fail to appreciate anyway because it has a meaning beyond the actual name itself and defines the person and the personality of its bearer to a degree that is incomprehensible outside the culture.

Even T S Eliot knew this truth. Go read the poem about the cat contemplating its third name its secret name -

The name
that no human research can discover--
But The Cat Himself Knows,
and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

I could not even contemplate, in my own work, writing a story about a character whose name is just stuffed into the narrative because I have to call the thing something *for the time being*, or about someone called X or Y. If I tried the latter, I'd start weaving daydreams about what kind of names start with X - Xavier? Xander? Xerxes? Xena" (there aren't THAT many!) or with Y - Yseult? Yvonne? Yelisaveta?... What kind of culture am I in - Greek? Persian? Pseudo..? (one of my favourite EVER quotes overheard on the Web was someone's comment that she liked things to be, you know, *real*, like in Xena...) Already, you see, I'm off at a worldbuilding tangent, figuring out where my people fit, how they live, what they want, what will hurt them and what will make them happy. With placeholder names, I cannot possibly write the same character if I call her Tiffany or if I call her Sophia or if I call her Eleanor or if I call her Mary, or Lessa, or Ash, or Jane Eyre (Tiffany Eyre? Really? The same?...) My characters don't get begun unless I know them well enough to call them by name - their real name - their TRUE name. The name of their spirit. The name that allows them to come alive and sometimes put their own hand on their story, guiding it, making it better by helping ME, who is writing it, understand it from within.

True Names Matter.

And yet, if you put this truth to a group of writers who believe in the nine-and-sixty-ways rule, you get responses like this:

>> "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

(which, peace be unto Shakespeare, was used as a justification even when HE used it - because Juliet was trying to convince herself that Romeo's identity did not matter in the least when both of them knew that it did, immeasurably)

and the riposte:

>"The grubslobs are beautiful at this time of year. And the scent, my dear, the grubslob scent is unmatched."

(proves my point, that. The grubslobs may be utterly beautiful in their own context, but calling something a grubslob, unless it is accompanied by a certain amount of context and worldbuilding, is just the author trying to be funny and smart.And, for my money, failing.)

Names signify things, and identify things. Could you possibly imagine an Orc called Legolas or Luthien? What kind of people do the Rohirrim names put you in mind of? Can you honestly say that if you hear the word "halfling", never mind "hobbit", you don't instantly thing of hairy feet and walking stomachs...?

Can you imagine a King on the throne of Great Britain called Chuck - although that's something that "Charles" is traditionally mushed into in America? Could American fathom how a King Henry was once known as a Prince Hal? Even the contractions are regional, vivid, place-nailing, worldbuilding.

True Names Matter.

Name your people well.

Comments

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I told careswen during a recent conversation that it was no accident my protag's name was Maeve.

[wrathchylde.livejournal.com]

Great post. Ironically, I saw this while taking a break from naming minor characters. I keep a stack of 'baby names' books on hand, and have bookmarked several name sites for the purpose, and hold no qualms about making up my own either. But even for the little guys that only pop up once or twice, the names have to resonate. I find it interesting how the meaning of some names resonate, and 'fit', even before you find the original meaning of a name.

A character is not real to me until he/she has a name that fits.

There have been times when story comes to me before character, and in those cases I've used 'temporary' placeholder type names for a while, but this is done knowing that in time the true name will come as the character develops.

[slrose.livejournal.com]

Due to the law of perversity, I predict that a character with a penchant for lying and assuming aliases will show up and insist that you write his or her story.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Oh, but aliases are real names too! Context-sensitive, true, but still. I have several online handles, as well as the name I use in daily life and a legal name that nobody except authorities ever calls me by, so I'm not inclined to think that only one's "real" name is valid.

a couple quick thoughtless responses...

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

...not completely in disagreement:

1. True Names Have Power...
My characters aren't real in the same sense that you and I are, so that doesn't really apply. And I don't take Faerie lore as particularly useful for my reality.

2. Could you possibly imagine an Orc called Legolas or Luthien?
Boy, would he have gotten teased at orc school!

3. My characters don't get begun unless I know them well enough to call them by name - their real name - their TRUE name.
My characters don't become real to me until I've been writing them for a while, and to write them for that long and not confuse myself, I have to refer to them somehow. I have to know the character before I can pick a good name for them.

If it's a minor character, one who's barely worthy of a name, it doesn't really matter what I call them as long as it fits the society.

The characters on paper aren't always the same as the characters in my head, so they can have different names.

4. Once I have a name on a character for a long time, it's hard to change it. But I can change it - in the end, these are only pixels on a screen.

5. Changing Polly to Jessa in a very late draft was very helpful in getting rid of Polly's unwanted character traits because it was easier for me to think of her as a new character instead of a revised old one.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree -- the only placeholders I can handle are the tertiary characters -- the people that fill up the background, are always off-screen, that sort of thing. Once I find the 'right' name for a character, there I go.

Except that I found two character names that were just 'right', and had them separated in my mind (and it was before I wised up and started listing these things). So now I have Marcus, who always gets called Mark... and Etsuko, who always get called... Spark.

Mark, and Spark. A supporting character (but of great emotional value to the main protags), and Spark, a main character.

Desk, meet head.

I've been absolutely unable to change either. Changing Spark is out of the question; a great deal hinges not only on her nickname but on the metaphor/history behind it. Changing Mark might be possible, but I've yet to come up with anything that fits because he's, well, a Mark.

Sigh. I'm hoping no one finds that really confusing, or tells me I *must* change it.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

You DO know that the British retail icon Marks&Spencer has always been colloquially known as Marks and Sparks, don't you...?

(sorry! Sorry! But IS, and that's been around forever, and it would WRECK those two characters in the same scene for me!!!)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Uhm.

No.

I didn't.

*stares*

Err... you are joking... right?

Would it help that Mark always refers to Spark as Etsuko in speech & thought? ...and Spark mostly calls him "my brother's best friend" -- sees him one step removed?

*looks pitiful*

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I wish I were, my friend, but if you don't believe me go type "marks and sparks" into google and see the first entry that comes up...

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but, um, there it is...

Could you have ANY variant on "spark"? At all?Flash? Shimmer? Even Sparkle? Jsut to break the rhythm...?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

She's the sort of character, for various reasons in the first book, ends up with a variety of names. One character simply calls her 'girly' (as he does to all young women), her brother and Mark always call her Etsuko; her foster-aunt calls her Iskra. Spark's actual name is Jenny, but she thinks of herself as Spark.

Mark and Spark, incidentally, are not a couple. Ever. Does that help? Because changing Spark to anything but Spark is quite simply completely out of the question. It would, as you mentioned in your original post, potentially necessitate rewriting entire scenes; it's such a fundamental aspect not only of her personality but also how any character reacts. I mean, if you met someone introduced as Jenny, you'd think one thing, but if she were introduced as Spark, you'd be thinking (and reacting) an entirely different way, now, wouldn't you.

That's pretty much the problem I have when it comes to finishing a story and then seeing the conflicts. At least with some -- like Alex (whose name was an integral part of the story as well) and Allie -- it's simpler; Allie was unimportant enough that she could get a name change and it wasn't anything more than global find/replace.

But I just haven't come across any replacement name for Mark, especially since his name is bound by the same as his cousins; the setup for that class of non-humans is that young people of a certain age, out in the human world, don't take names but a title. This means all of the family within an age-group have taken names with a meaning equivalent to that title. That limits me further on replacing his name, above and beyond the association I have between 'Mark' as a name versus 'Mark' as a character -- it'd require breaking a big chunk of my worldbuilding.

*cries*

Unless, of course, I have Mark point out that the colloquial nickname exists. Hmph.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound like a major problem to me as a reader, if your characters are not likely to be in a position where you're actually referring to Mark & Sparks. It's quite possible to have linguistic reasons in a world for why names end up similar - like F'lar and F'nor. (In which world, BTW, are also unlrelated characters called T'ron and N'ton, and the rhyme's never an issue there.)

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

[Nodding in agreement} And in real life, some of us are misnamed. I am really an Elizabeth, not what it says on my birth certificate.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Having different names: It's customary for American Jews to have both a "Jewish Name" (in Yiddish or Hebrew; the latter more often as time goes by) and a name in English. And they're supposed to be forms of the same word, though "starts with the same letter" is often considered close enough.

On soc.genealogy.jewish, one recurring question is "What Jewish name corresponds to this first name in English?" This isn't as easily answerable as "What will editors be buying ten years from now?" I have three relatives with the Jewish name Aaron: Aaron, Richard, and Arthur.

Another recurring question is whether a particular surname is Jewish. Heh. Seems there are people with the German equivalents of Cohen and Levine whose names don't come from Jewish ancestors. (Must have made life interesting during the Nazi era.) And there are a fair number of non-Jewish Cohens in the British Isles. (I suspect in most cases it's an alternate spelling of Cohan.)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

When I'm dealing with tertiary characters, this problem gives me fits. The chatelaine of the palace, who is a good chatelaine and cares about every single person who works for her, knows the name of the lowliest laundress and the youngest, clumsiest sous-chef. The sea captain knows the name of every person on his ship, and the guildsman who's serving as journeyman's advocate this year knows the name of every journeyman printer in the city. The political incendiary knows the name of every reliable graffitti artist in her neighborhood. And to make these major characters believable, I constantly have to risk confusing the reader about which names are important enough to be worth remembering, when the cast of primary and secondary characters is already large. Mostly, I give the tertiary characters placeholders when I'm in the heat of the rough draft so that, when I'm in a revision phase, I can go to my master Dramatis Personae list and make sure their names aren't confusingly similar to names of more important characters.

But then, when I do get around to naming them, they get the same care for social specificity as the protagonists, because otherwise the world breaks.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

I need a master Dramatis Personae list. Thanks for the tip!

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

It's a *very* useful tool.

Mine has two Name columns - Name and Old Name. Some Old Names have (formerly ...) entries in them as well. When I change a name, I think of the characters by their old names for a long long time.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who does, with some regularity, begin writing stories about characters signified by placeholders, I can tell you how it works for me. You see, names are important to me ... which means that when I get whapped upside the head with a story, or even just a vivid scene that might grow into a story, I can't afford to put off writing it until I've had a chance to get the characters' names down right. (Particularly as, for me, this often means coming up with a significant amount of grammar, morphology, and historic phonology for the language the names are in.) If I waited, I'd lose the scene. Just as I'd lose it if I waited until I'd mapped out the immediate geography, figured out what the primary economic forces are, and worked out how those two items plus the prevailing weather patterns affected the local cuisine. Stories come to me as vivid little movies in my head. The characters often aren't using each others' names in the scene -- I only need them to keep track of the action. And for that purpose, letter labels are actually better than placeholder names because the latter start to bleed over into the characters whereas the letter labels don't.

I tend to write like crystaline growth in a supersaturated solution: a few random crystals start to grow in scattered locations; they grow and new seed crystals appear; eventually they all merge together into an opalescent whole. But in the mean time, there are a lot of empty spaces in the on-paper narrative, and sometimes they're where names are going to go. Names are important to me, but they aren't more important than all the other interstices that are still waiting to be filled.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I understand this, I do... but I could not get "whapped upside down the head" by a scene without knowing who the people in it are... It's JUST as organic, trust me, and the crystals are as chaotic as you might want - but the scene is part of a world, and the world is not a limbo, and, well, perhaps I just get whapped later in a scene's development. I don't know, I'm sure *grin* - writing remains an unholy alchemical process for me, often utterly impenetrable.

Wouldn't do anything else for the world, though...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

but I could not get "whapped upside down the head" by a scene without knowing who the people in it are

But I do know who they are -- I just don't necessarily know their names yet. Just as it often takes a while to figure out what my viewpoint character looks like, because when the scenes start coming to me, I'm inside her head looking out.

Here's an example. The initial seed-scene that evolved into the novel-in-languishment Iultig's Dreams was a scene with my viewpoint character, just on the cusp of womanhood, kneeling before a noblewoman in a farmyard -- there were attendents and horses in the background -- being claimed as a bondservant. The noblewoman placed her hand on the veiwpoint character's head and said, "What I take under my hand, I will hold as mine," and I knew that it wasn't only a standard legal formula, but was a major revelation of her personality. And I knew that despite surface appearances my viewpoint character saw this event not as a problem, but as the door opening to endless possibilities -- and that although she was naive and vastly mistaken about many things, all of the dreams she had at that moment were going to be fulfilled in the oddest ways. What I didn't know at that moment, was what any of their names were. But that doesn't mean I didn' t know who they were.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I think we're defining "know who they are" in slightly different ways. *grin*

I too have had scenes like that. In point of fact, there is a scene in the "Hidden Queen"/"Changer of Days" books which was the seed and the kernel of the entire story - a young woman who has been robbed of her gift of Sight and just "sprung" from a dictator's dungeon, trying desperately to see the army that's been sent after her and her three companions - two of them twins and both her cousins and her foster-brothers, children of the house where she had been sent to foster when she had been very young, and the third a young man who had also fostered there - there is a definite "something more" between these two, this last young man and my protagonist, although this particular scene doesn't get into it at all.

Their personalities are SHARP. They are all completely real characters who react in completely real ways, according to their personalities. Their names were Anghara, Kieran, Adamo and Charo. And I could not have have written that scene, however sharp the personalities were in my head, without knowing that about them, without knowing that if I walked up to one of them and tapped him or her on the shoulder and asked, "who are you?", they would be able to tell me their name. INSTANTLY.

(By the way, it took me nearly three quarters of my damned story to GET to that scene...)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Just because there are nine and sixty correct ways to construct tribal lays, or a hundred or a thousand, doesn't mean there aren't a million other ways that are completely wrong.

What I see in the comments here is that names are an important definer of characters, and that there's not much disagreement on that - but there is on when exactly those characters are known well enough for their names to emerge. But I take the point about not always knowing a character's name in the first moment you're in his/her head, because not everyone identifies as strongly with the name they're known by. I'll turn instantly if someone hollers "Paula!", but in my head I'm not Paula, I'm most often "I" - and yes, that's a descriptor rather than a name.

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

For me, it's always been a case of it simply Fitting.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's any doubt that names matter in a story.They have to fit the context you've created and if possible enhance it - often the process is iterative - names can help a writer to world build. That said
they don't matter that much to me in real life - I am big on visuals -
I remember faces not names. In a book in progress all that matters is that a name denotes the character in my mind. I can change the name without it in any way affecting my perception of that character. It matters far more
that I get it right for readers in the end than that it works for me from
the beginning
I don't use X and Y for protags, but I often use them for minor characters
whose names I've forgotten.
I have changed the names of all the main characters before submission before now. They weren't working, and while that didn't get in the way
for me while writing it - it would work against the finished story.
Some sentences are obviously screwed up if you change initial sounds syllable lengths etc so the end name tends to resemble the working name
and I hope to catch any subsequent infelicities in post sub edit.
Getting things right frst time is lovely, but it doesn't always happen.
I think most writers live with that.