Names and Transliterations

My attempt to make a multicultural future is kind of teaching me why people don't always do that. And it's not just being lazy. It's because it's really a lot of learnings to even get some names right.

Names you're familiar with carry connotations, a probable family history to match or contrast with, maybe social class, probably literary classics references. Names you're not familiar with? How do you know you haven't just named your guy Oliver Twist? Did you give them a surname from one religion and a personal name from another? Do they in fact have surnames in that language, or are they family names of a different sort, or some big long list of before people? I keep looking, and I keep finding new depths of ignorance to plumb.

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So... do I (a) make something up with no knowings behind it (b) do a lot more studyings (c) find someone some variety of particular other language background to make up a characters names list for me and hope they don't have a twisted sense of humor or (d) give up and go back to English.

I don't want to give up, but I'm left with the knowing that if I just do it myself it'll still be rubbish after I've tried a lot.


One woman and her son from an Arabic speaking Islamic space station.
One family, including a lady Captain, from some variety of probably Chinese, flying a merchanter spaceship.
One family of mostly men probably starting with Mc, buying and selling for the merchanter spaceship.

After I've named them I can go back to making them do things.

... Maybe I can just use alphabets placeholders...

The Mc and P-C families...