Tag: …
Something that’s almost never covered in fantasy mediums is common names.
Like we all know fantasy names are unusual, but any name to a foreign culture is considered unusual English names to Indian people are very unusual for example. But naturally, given that it’s an entire culture, there will be some common names, it’d be refreshing to at one point here this exchange.
“So I was talking to Vicnae and-”
“Wait which Vicnae? You can’t just say Vicnae. There are ten Vicnae’s in my village alone.”
This has 100 notes yesterday and 300 this morning what the fuck happened.
People understand the truly important things.
DSA (a German fantasy P&P RPG) actually has the name Alrik, which is hugely popular in the universe. Everyone is Alrik.
This is also a great excuse to use “X the Y” or “X of Y” type names without being pretentious. Calling someone “Thognor The Stout” goes from pomposity to practicality if he lives down the road from Thognor The Small.
It’s like that old joke about a KGB man trying to make contact with his agent in Wales: he knows the agent is called Evans, but so far he’s only found Evans the Milk, Evans the Post and Evans the Bread. Finally the pub landlord tells him to knock on the door of No. 27 and ask for Evans the Spy…
The “X the Y” works with modern names: John (the) Thatcher, Hugh (the) Smith; William (the) Carpenter etc. Other trades-as-names are Archer, Fletcher, Hedges, Fisher, Plowman, Farmer, Taylor and so on; the list is enormous.
French Kings called Louis (there were XVIII of them) tended to pick up descriptions rather than trades – Louis the Pious, the Stammerer, the Fat, the Prudent (also The Spider…) and so on, so there’s plenty of precedent for calling characters …the Fair, the Truculent, the Rich, the Well-Beloved etc.
Different translations can show what people think of a character: there were two medieval Dukes of Burgundy known as “…the Bold”, but while one was Phillipe le Hardi (daring, tough, hardy) the other was Charles
le Téméraire(rash, reckless, foolhardy).
Tweaking previous names is another method: compare Edward “the Confessor”, from his dubious reputation as an early 10th century god-botherer, and Edward VII “the Caresser”, from his definite reputation as an early 20th century skirt-chaser.
With “X of Y”, Y usually means somewhere big where all the Xs need told apart: John of Gaunt (Ghent), Hugh of Lincoln or Richard of York. Villages and hamlets were small enough that everyone knew who people were, so you’d seldom find
Henry of Barton-in-the-Beans,
or Matthew of Bagthorpe-with-Barmer, or Edward of Little Hautbois – they pronounce it “Hobbis”, but it’s also the name of an early oboe and that’s pronounced “Hoboy”. Whatever. Those are all real places, BTW. English hamlet names are amazing.“X son of Y” might be used (also the Nordic X Ysson or simply X Y‘s son – See “Wolves Beyond The Border” by Robert E. Howard) while father and son with the same name might be tagged “the Younger” and “the Elder”. School pupils at a certain class of school used to be Watson Senior or Junior, or Watson Major, Watson Minor and Watson Minimus, or Molesworth One and Molesworth Two. There’s also the US custom of e.g. John Henry Doe III for when the same name(s) keep popping up in a family.
TVTropes (of course) has an entry called “One Steve Limit”, about how fiction avoids having two characters with the same or even similar names, and like the Welsh joke it makes sense in context. Read the “Real Life” section and boggle. It mentions, among many other examples, the Wars of the Roses when England was overrun by Richards and Edwards, Elizabeths and Henrys, as if there was some sort of penalty for choosing a different name. Since George of Clarence and Edmund of Rutland both died by violence, you have to wonder. (Though various Richards, Edwards and Henrys went out the same way, so maybe not.)
In my own family there was an “eldest son” name on both sides for as far back as I can go, almost two centuries – Robert on Dad’s side, Peter on Mum’s –
differenced with a second name from one or another uncle. There seemed to be no obligation to use the “difference” name – my Dad did, I didn’t – so for a time in the early 1960s there were often three Peters in my Gran’s house simultaneously.Since one was late 80s, one was mid-60s and one was about 7, there wasn’t much confusion – unless someone didn’t look before they shouted “Peter, are you there…?”
Big Jock, Medium Jock, Wee Jock, No-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock Jock…
another thing to have fun with: how nicknames can change context across language lines. my fantasy protagonist kastor is occasionally referred to, wherever mercenaries and for-hire bodyguards gossip, as ‘the wolf’ or ‘the hound’, and it sounds very badass. but his actual nickname back home was chehe, which translates to ‘the stray’ or ‘the mutt’.
House Of Crows 