Re: Character name advice wanted.


"Bill Swears" <wswears@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mY-dnY1gqcPo2CvXnZ2dnUVZ_hKdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Catja Pafort wrote:
Michelle Bottorff wrote:

Catja Pafort <green_knight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So why oh why do writers always have Tom, ***, Harry, and Elizabeths
on
their spaceships or in their second-world fantasies?
They do?

A lot of them _do_. Charles, Fred, Kevin (and yes: Tom, ***, Harry -
though not in the same book) - I come across plain Anglo-Saxon
Englishmen/Americans from the 20th century _all the bloody time_. And
I'm sick and tired of them - if a writer uses not just contemporary
names, but *boring* contemporary names, names that are less varied than
my white middle-class homecounties village neighbourhood - I have
absolutely no confidence in their ability to populate an interesting,
well-thought-out world.

It's even worse in space. I just cannot buy the idea that everybody who
makes it into space in two or three centuries' time comes from the same
narrow social background *and* that their parents were unimaginative to
boot. I mean, where are the Storms and Chanelles and Apples of this
world in such fiction?

It's all a trade-off, really. The U.S. audience that will identify with a
blandly named protag isn't as self limiting as the one that will identify
with Trygve Sanderson. I know a Trygve, though his Nordic last name isn't
notably uncommon. I also knew a kid in Hawaii named Ocean. They're real
enough names, but not the sort of bog standard names that a lot of readers
can use as tags without searching for deeper meanings that aren't really
there.

My theoretical audience is already being asked to believe in FTL travel
and hollow planets, or zombies, or a world with endemic magic and dragons
that was settled by technological fundamentalist Christians who wanted to
live more simply without giving up their comforts. I might lose you if I
name my male protag John Barton, but I'll certainly lose a big chunk of my
hoped for audience if I force them to identify with naming conventions
that seem alien as well. Anyway, that's my thinking.

Besides, my name is Bill, my childhood best friend is Gary. The guy
across the street is George. The next one over on the ridge line is
Stephen. Those boring, pedantic names are also sturdy and popular, for a
variety of reasons. If I cut those names out of my fiction, aren't I sort
of denying that their descendants will get into space, and presuming that
somebody else's will?

I don't think anybody's asking you to cut them out of your fiction. I think
they'd asking you to recognize that at least 25% of the names are something
a little more outre--like Dakota or Ezekial or, yes, Ocean. I know it
grates on me when I see a future world where apparently all the people with
Oriental, Hispanic, &c names have died off, &, what's more amazing, nobody
notices. No, "Oh, yeah, the great asteroid strike of 2106 wiped out eastern
and southern Asia and South America. After that, we all decided we'd be
safer with European names," or other handwaving even.


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