A lot of fantasy books have a thing about characters’ names. They are often the most obscure thing you could find, featuring random combinations of letters that would score high at a Scrabble game but that seem impossible to pronounce or remember.
Unfortunately, this is often the curse of the fantasy world. Erase the rules, and writers go wild. Naturally, these weird characters’ names come with a hefty price to pay.
You Can’t Remember Meaningless Characters’ Names
Honestly, we tried. It just doesn’t work.
Now, this could be a confusing statement. Should a character have a meaningful name? It entirely depends on what you understand by meaningful. There may be a hidden description in the name, of course. But in this instance, by meaningful, I refer to the ability to make sense of the name both visually and orally.
Call a character Susan, and everyone will read her name and remember it without any issue.
Call her Swhydthyxhyuxiume, and absolutely no reader will be able to read her anime aloud, let alone remember her. On the other hand, it looks like a fairly decent password, so perhaps, some readers may find a purpose to her name.
Swap a few letters with digits or symbols, and Bob’s your uncle, there’s a solid password for your online banking. Not that I would recommend using something I’ve just invented and written in plain text on the Internet, but who am I to stop you?
There’s an interesting caveat here, and this relates to names that are originally written in a different alphabet and transposed into our Roman alphabet (ABC). Transposing into a different alphabet means, for a start, that you are losing the subtleties of the native sounds. But you are also creating confusion because a specific letter or combination of letters can turn into something that feels deeply unpalatable once romanised.
Imagine you’re reading a Korean novel.
Yun-cheol and Hyun-jun are best friends. But after a few pages, you may get confused between the two, even though these are two very different names and different letters. The romanised version makes the characters’ names look almost interchangeable. I might argue that learning Korean could be the perfect solution, but I doubt anybody would follow me along the treacherous path of adding yet another foreign language to my list of hyperfixations.
You Can’t Read Complex Characters’ Names Aloud
Do you really need to read them aloud? You don’t, but your brain needs to visualise the shape of words and nouns to commit them to memory.
Coming back to our girl Swhydthyxhyuxiume (FYI, I’ve literally copied and pasted the name so the spelling is the same, even though I still can’t figure out what it sounds like), there are ways your brain is going to associate a vague shape of the name with a character. She’ll likely become Swhy girl while you read, and each time your eyes come across the same letters at the start and the same length, you’ll know it’s her.
Naturally, this can be problematic if the writer decides to give her a brother called Swhydthyxhyozioune, who is never seen without cousin Swhydthyzhyewiode. Chances are, you are going to get them mixed up regularly.
It’s going to be even more difficult if you decide to tell friends about the book you’re reading, and suddenly you realise that you can’t recall the story because you don’t know what any of the characters’ names sound like. Your brain constantly substitutes another sound for it while you’re reading, which enables you to still read the book and know what happens. But telling others about it? Forget it. You don’t have a solid enough grasp of those characters’ names to spread the word.
On the plus side, you do have a fantastic list of new passwords at your disposal. Always look at the bright side of life, right?
How Did We Handle Characters’ Names in The Dead Shadow?
All our characters’ names are directly inspired by ancient Greek. Some of these names have survived time, and we’ve actually found a reader who’s also called Alexis, like one of our characters. Fun coincidence.
More to the point, because these names are real, they are also easier to remember, even if you’ve never come across them before. They follow clear pronunciation rules, even though Paul and I sometimes differ on whether to read them according to the Greek influence or to the English influence. It doesn’t really matter whether you read the names in English or in Greek; we’ve agreed that both versions are fine.
Additionally, because all the names share a common cultural background, they ensure some level of coherence. You may not be sure how to pronounce some names, but they do feel at home among the other characters’ names.
By the way, if you are uncertain how to pronounce them, let me invite you to watch our chaotic little video on how to say our characters’ names. This could make things easier!
We also chose names that carry a specific meaning, as you will discover from the video.
Anyway, characters’ names colour your story. There’s no denying that sometimes, the urge to choose a completely unique colour can take over the narrative altogether.