The current small thing that concerns me at the moment is this: when introducing a character in high fantasy, is it best to use their full name, or an abbreviated "nickname" when introducing them into the narrative?

Just because I like names like Aravinda Chakravarti or Mzia Andronikashvili doesn't mean that a reader will automatically like them, as well.

(In fact, I've been known to re-shelf a potential read after just one look at the first page. "I can't pronounce 'Gr'zniwyaksrg' for over 700 pages! Bleah!")

So what's to be done? Anglicize, abbreviate, or just hope that the readers will invest the linguistic effort?

I realize this is probably one of the most over-asked newbie fantasy writer questions, but any thoughts would be appreciated.

I think folks vary in that. I think it's fairly common to use a character's full name the first time that character is mentioned in narrative, but thereafter stick with one name for them otherwise it gets confusing. You might read OSC's "How to write Science-Fiction and Fantasy." It's an excellent resource for worldbuilding.

It's conventional to pick names that aren't too strange. For example, why make a naming convention in which names ending in "a" are male? Work, for American readers, despite "Ira."

Of the names you listed, I thought "Aravinda Chakravarti" was pretty, and "Mzia Andronikashvili" was too much work on the surname, and the thing starting with G just made me bleep over it -- which is not something I want my readers to do!

quote:

---

The common rule of thumb is to use whatever name that the POV character thinks of him/her by. But when you say "introduce" do you mean the first time the character walks on stage?

---

I meant when they first come on stage.

quote:

---

Of the names you listed, I thought "Aravinda Chakravarti" was pretty, and "Mzia Andronikashvili" was too much work on the surname, and the thing starting with G just made me bleep over it -- which is not something I want my readers to do!

---

The above names are real life names from India and Georgia; I should've mentioned one my own character's names -- Vakithera ruma Tavshan, a.k.a. Tavi. ("Gr'zniwyaksrg" was just me pressing random letters on the keyboard. )

Surnames in my story's hypothetical culture are listed first, followed by a patronymic and first name; but because Tavi has no known lineage -- "ruma" means literally "nobody" or "non-entity" -- his name is shorter than usual.

quote:

---

Oh. A pet peeve of mine, which you didn't ask about, is when the characters all come from different naming traditions. Unless your story takes place in a melting pot like the US everyone's names should be in the same linguistic family.

---

This drives me nuts, as well! That, and Welsh-like names that were made up but still require knowledge of Welsh spelling rules to pronounce them.

quote:

---

Oh. A pet peeve of mine, which you didn't ask about, is when the characters all come from different naming traditions. Unless your story takes place in a melting pot like the US everyone's names should be in the same linguistic family.

---

I would drive you completely insane then. However, my stories are ALL set in melting pot societies, so maybe you might be able to forgive me.

I do that too, with unpronouncable names when I'm reading. It is annoying, and it disengages me from the story every time I hit that bump in the text. If there are lots of unpronouncable names, I simply won't read the book. My thought is, "If the author is going to make it difficult to wade through the story, I can find a different book that isn't so much work." Maybe I'm just lazy. But I don't think I'm atypical.

I'm willing to go through the mental gymnastics to follow the writing if it's a complex PLOT, but NOT if it's something--like a character's name--that truly serves no other function to the plot.

Names are a tool to help build an 'other-worldliness' within the millieu. I might have a few names that sound familiar, but I sprinkle in other names that are not. For my part, I tend to shy away from more familiar names. Using invented names is a tool to create the feel of an alternate world.

That's always ben my approach with names. A lot of the time I use an existing linguistic group unchanged, or with minor modifications. But the main thing is to make names from the same culture SOUND as if they come from the same culture. In almost all Earth cultures, up until recently (and in some cases even today - check an Icelandic phonebook), patronymics were used almost exclusively. The form varies - -shvili, -ian, -son, mac-, -oglu - but the pattern is the same, so choose your patronymic and use it. Other surnames are descriptive, often of a physical trait (White, Brown, Grey), or else of a profession (in The Accidental Witch I chose to make this part of the milieu - at age 14, everyone is assigned to their "job" and gets an appropriate name, so ALL surnames are task-related - Smith, Potter, farmer, etc).

Certainly in SF / F one encounters societies and cultures drastically different from the standard American pattern. It would be surprising to have too many common names.

But it can get carried away, sometimes, depending on the system. I remember a fantasy series a few years ago which used a kind of Welsh / Gaelic system of pronunciation. The thing is, Welsh and / or Gaelic rules are so drastically different from those of English that I kept running into a brick wall of off-putting every few pages. (Liked the novels, hated the system.)

The names mentioned don't seem so bad to me. (Georgian, right?) If it's acceptable to you, and the story itself is acceptable, the reader should be able to handle it.

(First aside: it's hard to name a specifically American name, what with the United States being a melting pot with people who came from everywhere else and often changed or rewrote their names to suit themselves (or the guys from Immigration did so to suit themselves.))

(Second aside: only a few people have ever been able to pronounce my last name to my complete satisfaction.)

That said, I read fantasy to go somewhere different, and if people are named "Mike" or "Tiffany" I assume they're transplants from my own world, or at least have a common ancestry. There will always be names that might accidentally be the same, but more than two or three and I grow suspicious.

Oh, and as I said before, the Indian/Georgian names were an example. I was really asking which to use first, "Vakithera ruma Tavshan" or "Tavi".

That said, I frequently mix up names in near-future SF to show that my character is of mixed descent. I've got names like Scott Huang and Jared Patel. But in Fantasy, I'm much more cautious about such mixing because there is more world creation involved in Fantasy than in near-future SF.

Some naming traditions say that you can't use an existing name, others say that you have to use a name that is already in the culture, others say that it's bad luck to name a child after a living relative. Some cultures don't use patrynomics at all. In most of the western world the names that you'll run across are several thousand years old. Take Mary, for instance.

http://www.zompist.com/kit.html

And if I might revert back to the actual beginning topic of this thread:

quote:

---

I was really asking which to use first, "Vakithera ruma Tavshan" or "Tavi".

---

I have a couple of languages that I've made up over the years, but they can always use
fine tuning. (That, and I have the nagging suspicion that there are more than two major language families being spoken in my world.)

Elan -- Thanks for your help. Unfortunately, Tavi is a guy. Maybe I should just call him "Tavshan" or even "Tav"? There's another diminutive ending that's in his language, but it's usually meant for women or pets. Hmm...

In one of my societies, not only do you have the patronymic, but the grandfather, great grandfather and founding tribal origin, as well (Northtribe Bobgreatgrandson Scottgrandson Jackson Mike.)