LogFAQs > #904600089

ParanoidObsessive posted...

There's the occasional name that crops up that seems like someone just smashed sounds together to make a name (though even then, it might just be a case of not knowing the original derivation), but most names we can sort of puzzle out if we try.

Are name mash-ups much used in fantasy? I mean, excluding somebody tweaking the name of a fantasy monster or something to reflect what they changed about the fantasy creature (ie, if somebody said "Ursataur" to make people think of a man-bear hybrid, particularly since people overlook that the "Mino" in minotaur referred to a king, not a bull). Because that seems like a pretty safe naming convention.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The real problem is that a lot of fantasy novels are trying to ape Tolkien, where all of his characters had weird fantasy names. The difference is, Tolkien was insane about language, and literally every name every character in every story he's ever written has is based on a language he came up with. So Aragorn means "noble warrior" and Galadriel is "crowned maiden" and Gandalf is "man with staff", and so on. But shittier hack fantasy writers who try to copy his aesthetic without understanding it or caring about those sorts of things just use elaborate fancy names that sound similar, but don't really mean anything.

How should fantasy handle the topic of derived names? Should they just go with words with very distant roots (where the name is a derivation of a derivation of a derivation across multiple languages and cultures, some of which wouldn't necessarily make sense), stay on the shallower side with things taken specifically from one or two cultures where the meaning has been lost over time (ie, Hebrew names), just go with a smorgasbord of derivations commonly used irl, or not touch derivations at all in favor of things with readily understood meanings (ie, flower names, tree names, etc, although... technically those were probably derived from something originally as well)?

For the purposes of world-building, language has to play a role which influences naming conventions. However, is it reasonable to think that you'd have as many different cultural impacts as our modern society or even as, say, medieval Europe?

Personally, I've never been big on fantasy languages -- and I seem to recall you being the same (or, perhaps, you only dislike the poorly done ones) -- so I've always had mixed feelings on words derived from fantasy languages. (Doubly so when so many other culturally rich languages already exist with their fair share of cool words. Granted, some of so lesser-used that the names feel like an author's clumsy invention -- like many Celtic words, for instance.)
---

(\/)(\/)|-|
There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.