Fantasy names!

We see a lot of fantasy and science fiction authors choosing names for characters that are literally out of this world. Sometimes they’re just weird made-up names and sometimes they’re attempting to reflect nature/symbolism and sometimes they’re “futuristic” or something. Sometimes I see folks online–usually people who don’t like to read SF/F–mocking or rolling their eyes at fantastical names and laughing at the authors for the choices they make. Some of them seem to think the far-outness of the names indicates immaturity or silliness or wish-fulfillment author fantasies–like we name our characters weird things to make them mysterious, majestic, exotic, and cool. And that’s kind of irritating to me.

I write a lot of SF/F. About half the time, I give the characters unusual names. I don’t do it just because. I do it if it makes sense. Basically, if you have characters on another world or in another dimension who have never met people from our world and don’t speak our language, they’re not going to use the same names, but then of course critics might say “well, if you’re translating their moon language into an Earth language, why not translate their names to the equivalent? In other words, if you have a character whose name is common in their language, what’s wrong with naming them Bob?”

Indeed. What’s wrong with naming your alien characters Bob?

Here’s what I think. Unlike most words, names are specific labels for individual people. They almost always have a history–very few names are just an island of cool-sounding noises–and giving a name to a person (or, in fact, a place) indicates a connection to that history. Bob isn’t just Bob. He’s Robert, whose name has Germanic roots. If you don’t have a Germany in your fantasy land, Robert doesn’t really come from anywhere. And while it’s fine to base a fantasy world on ours and therefore have some shared names, it’s also fine NOT to.

I considered this a lot while naming characters in my fantasy worlds. In Bad Fairy, there’s a fair amount of crossover between my made-up world and our world, but they’re not the same world. It’s kind of a mish-mash, and they have some of the same gods and goddesses from our mythology, but others are completely made up (or, rather, they’re maybe recognizable deities that have been renamed). Similarly, there are plenty of names we’d recognize in the story–nearly everyone has a name that would work in our world–but a few are made up but still digestible by our aesthetic standards. There’s the protagonist Delia and her mother Gena, her friends Fiona and Drake, and her rivals Chloe, Livia, and Beatrice–but there are also a few people in her class with names like Leahan, Kagen, and Briony. I think it kind of gives you a reminder that it’s a slightly different culture in a slightly different time, even though they aren’t important characters.

In a short story I sold last year (which still hasn’t been published), my characters have symbolic names. There aren’t many named characters and names have a really important meaning in the culture of the fantasy characters because when they partner with others their partners give them new names. My protagonist, oddly enough, does not have a name. Her daughter, the focus of the story, is named Iris; I picked a flower. A boy in the story is named Briar. New names for people in the story after partnering include Grace and Laurel. Nature names made sense for the world.

And in a story that I just got an offer for (yay!), everyone, without exception, basically has a nonsense made-up name. And their names aren’t even particularly intuitive to pronounce by English standards. So why did I do that?

Yes, there was a reason. I had created a culture that’s strongly gender segregated, and the protagonist is transgender (though I don’t use the word “gender” anywhere in the story). Now, you spend the entire story in the protagonist’s head understanding her as a girl, but her culture understands her to be a boy and reads her given name, Lihill, as a boy’s name. She also wants to do things girls do in their culture and has to deal with a LOT of pushback, but we don’t have the same “NO THAT IS NOT FOR BOYS” attitude toward the things she wants to do. I thought the whole thing would acquire a more sympathetic vibe from the reader if we had no knee-jerk feeling that this is a boy’s name and those are a boy’s things. I have to wonder if the average person would be as willing to set aside preconceived notions about her gender if I’d named her Bob.

Probably not.

Names are way more than a jumble of sounds. And as writers, we’re supposed to be word artists. We make choices about how we use names, and though most of the time when I set a story in the real world my characters have pretty ordinary names, there are times when ordinary names would be way weirder in context.

Stephen King has a couple quotes about being a writer that I see tossed around fairly often. And to some extent, I agree with him. At least in spirit.

Both of these sentiments target the reluctant writer–the people who don’t treat writing like something they have to do, and may be making excuses for why they “can’t.” Now, I really hate excuses. I have definitely met people who think writing is this sacred thing that they completely cannot be expected to do unless they’re in a rare, delicate frame of mind completely unburdened by other cares and free of restrictions on their time, isolated from distractions and inspired besides. But these folks have probably been told some lies about writing, and don’t understand that they do have more power than they think they do. Sitting down to write when you don’t feel like it isn’t the same as forcing inspiration, and it isn’t a guarantee that you’re going to write garbage; you sometimes have no idea what’s going to pour out if you sit down and transport yourself.

That said, I didn’t want to write this week, so I didn’t. And it wasn’t because I was “waiting for inspiration” or not taking my writing seriously (rendering me an amateur). I’m not a big fan of the narrative that creative jobs are jobs that we can/should always be able to suck it up and perform, the way you might drag yourself to the office when you’re feeling under the weather or push through writing your term paper when you’re sleep deprived. There are also jobs you shouldn’t try to do when performing them poorly can have consequences to your health and the quality of the product, possibly leading to more work for you in the long run or damage to your ability to perform it in the future. There are some kinds of “I don’t want to/feel like I can’t” people can push through, and there are others that you can’t or shouldn’t. You might still play in the basketball championship with a cold, but not with a broken leg. You might still work on your novel when you’re not inspired, but not when doing so requires mental health sacrifices that lower your functionality throughout other aspects of your life.

Not to mention that building up guilt over not being able to write can be damaging by itself. If everyone tells you there’s no excuse for not sucking it up and pushing through it, you might end up even more stymied. Sometimes it really is okay to not produce. Especially if you don’t have a deadline and/or your deadlines/goals are set by you.

We can learn to determine our own limits and figure out what we can realistically push through. I am very, very serious about my writing and I don’t think anyone doubts that, but sometimes I don’t feel like making time for it/dredging up the energy for it. I simply wasn’t in the frame of mind this week that I felt was conducive to continuing on the project I’m currently writing, and there are a number of reasons for that. I’ve been preparing for a talk I have to give next week in Minnesota. I’ve been editing a friend’s book. And I’ve been thinking that the next chapter I intended to write isn’t actually ready to come out yet; I think there’s something missing. I might need to reread the book and figure out what else to tie up before I dive in and write that gigantic, catastrophic chapter that will bring the book crashing to its conclusion.

Those things are not excuses, and they’re not reasons I “can’t” (or reasons I think I can’t). They represent choices I made, and priorities I set in my life. There are legitimate situations when people “don’t have time” for something–some lives are indeed incredibly busy, especially those that involve caring for others–but a lot of “don’t have time” is actually “didn’t choose to make time.” I don’t want to feel like I have to apologize for not making time to write sometimes, and I absolutely don’t believe that I am rendered an amateur if writing is not my top priority every single day.

But yeah. If you’re waiting for inspiration or won’t write unless you “feel like it” . . . you might consider seeing what happens when you write anyway. Provided it will not hurt you in an unacceptable way. Do it because you love it, and do it because you can, and do it because sometimes it just feels good, but don’t do it because other people say you have to or else your authenticity as a writer is in question.