And His Name Was...Steve?

No one ever asks me what the hardest part of writing is. That’s because no one knows I’m a writer. But if someone did ask such a question, the answer would be naming characters.

I suck at naming. My characters have random names that don’t really mean anything. I looked in a baby name book and found names that I liked. There’s no rhyme or reason, no attempt to make characters from the same general region have regional-sounding names.

But that’s how it is in real life. Or was, before cultures started to blend. Think of all those Irish, German, or Chinese names that you don’t hear anywhere else. You don’t find a lot of Yu Chin’s in Ireland, or anyone named Hans in Korea.

Some authors seem to spend a lot of their time on character naming. Stephen R. Donaldson (bias warning: he’s my favorite author) keeps close tabs on the names of the characters in the Covenant books. Stonedowners have different sounding names than Woodhelvenin (not sure of the spelling of that word). The Bloodguard have strong, usually single-syllable names. Giants have long names that fit their characteristics (although how their parents would know what they would be like in order to name them is unclear).

Tolkien, of course, is the ultimate example. Perhaps it’s not fair to use Tolkien as a standard – he was a philologist, after all, and he was meticulous about finding the right name for all of his characters – but every time I read his books I’m struck by the way the names fit the species. Dwarves have dwarven names. Elves have elven names. And humans have…well, cool names.

That’s one thing all sf/f books seem to have in common – cool sounding human names. Very rare is the hero named Joe or Steve. It’s always Aragorn or Dubric or Fflewddur Fllam. I guess I’m not the only one who goes out of his way to find unique names for characters.