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Ask the Author!

This is an occasional post - prompted by a question asked by a reader which seems to deserve more than a short reply. The reader who asks such a good question will be rewarded with a share of Steem Basic Income (SBI) as a thank you.

Today’s question comes from @zizymena (both Steem and Whaleshares).
She asks:

How do you come about these names? They ain't English names

Answer:

I have over 300 named characters at this moment in time, organized into two computer files (so far) - so names are a very important part of my creative process.

Somewhat obviously, in any group of 300 people, there are going to be many repetitions of names, but so far, I’ve managed to keep this to a bare minimum – mostly to family trends or situations where the characters are obviously named after someone else.

Still, as a fantasy series, the names are often non-English and have to come from somewhere!

Ways I come up with names…

English names – As you follow my stories, you will find that I have some Earth (Other World) characters showing up from time to time – like Rachel in Brighid’s Blood – named after my best friend in England.
Corruptions of English names – Jilia instead of Julia, Jerreck instead of Derreck, Yewan instead of Ewan, Jessten instead of Jessica or Kristen.
Plant/animal names – Several of my prominent “bad guys” have names based on scientific names for various venomous snakes! (Uana Sistru and Cerástes Trodon for a start.) Terrenden /plants animals also get to be surnames as in Firthorn, Wolfkin and Hammit.
Google Maps tours – Haku Solent’s (Acting the Part) surname comes from the body of water (the Solent) between Southampton, England (where I lived for a few years) and the Isle of Wight. Terrenden places also get to be surnames such as Krijo (named after the Kri’joton River.)
Baby (or saint) name lists from other countries.
Interesting user names (corrupted) – Both real and fake. One of my Other Worlder names came from what I could imagine his screen name being… Taurian – developed from Taurus + Ian.
Fictitious names – Arya and Benjan may or may not have been inspired by a current piece of popular fiction.
Names reversed or letters transposed – Irola and Iloren are both based on my name Lori. X’lea is named after my cousin Alex.
places, occupations, nature, etc - just like on Earth, I have names that would have developed similarly. So, Firthorn (a Çtaráni tree) gets used as a surname. So do corruptions of city names such as Avicent being a family from Avicen. Carpenter, Fisher, things like that also get used. Even Terrenden product names. In English, the "hoover" named after a person... so were Winchester rifles. On Terrenden, the veleda laser weapons were named after the Veleda family.

Foreign inspiration

This deserves a separate section because my life-long love for language is a major inspiration for the spellings and special letters I use. I have specific experience with a number of (primarily) European languages from which I draw for names, spellings or even words. I do try to keep things true to the language of origin.

From Spanish, I use the ñ (“nya”) and the accent indicating the primary emphasis of a word/name.
From French, I use the ç (“ss”)
From Norwegian/Swedish, I use the vowels, especially the å and even corrupted the name of my Swedish cousin in Elíaz Kalvåg. (The å says “ah” or “oh”.)
From Finnish, I use double vowels, umlauts (such as ÿ in Skÿl) and even some their name forms such as in Mikala and Towanen.
From Icelandic, I use the ð (“th”). I also use this language as the basis of some of the spells my healer/stellas sing.
From Irish, I also use some words for stella spells as the original Stella was Gaelic.
From one of the Eastern European languages, I’ve recently grabbed their letter ŝ (“sh”) in the name Oiŝiina (oh-SHEEN-uh) the stella in Omrill, who will turn up in a future Neví story.
From the Chinook “wawa” (language), I use their method of spelling their name for the surname of my Other Worlder, Taurian Tsinúk (whom you’ll get to meet soonish.)

Basically, anything my international keyboard allows me to do (the ŝ is a notable exception) is fair game. If it’s easy for me to type, then I’ll use it!

I’m sure that’s far more detail than you were looking for, but I enjoy creating names for my characters and keep a list of potential names to use for the future. With my stories far from being completed (my intention is to write until I can write no more…), I’ll always watch out for more interesting names to use in my stories!

Anyway, I think that will be it today. I’ve registered a share of SBI for your reward @zizymena. Thanks so much for your question.

Reviews?

If you have liked any of my books, please take the time to leave me a review/rating at Goodreads

Crossposted on Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu
Please bring popcorn!
(Just for @popcornexpress...)

Previous issues of Ask the Author

(I'm going to have to go and find them now...)
No. 5 - Inspiration

Image credits

This is the cover scene from Building on Promise and features Yewan Avicent and Tirry Jelham on the beach in Loxos, Gaskarii.

Figures posed in Daz 3D studio using Genesis and other free bits of clothing and hair.
Background image taken with my Samsung NX11 in Seaside, Oregon.
Editing done in Gimp and Photoscape.
All image work done by the author.

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
blogging on: Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu, Hyperspace, Publish0x

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Ask the Author issue #6 - A'mara Books