Names and Transliterations
Mar. 3rd, 2011 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethMy 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.
The real bugger though is transliteration. I can only type in English. I have English keys to play with. I can cut and paste in all sorts, but if I'm writing in English I'd be being mean to readers to expect them to read a character named *complicated squiggle*. So, okay, English has been having this problem for long times, there's lots of ways to turn *complicated squiggle* into English.
Except, and this is important, there's lots of ways to turn *complicated squiggle* into English.
From my reading about Arabic names it seems there's no generally agreed on way to turn Arabic into English letters. So the same person's same name can turn into very many names indeed once it is in English letters. This is not so much a problem for a writer, on account of we can just decide on one. Unless we name everyone the same on accident I guess.
Some languages have standard versions. Plural. So Chinese, which happens in more than one version and I know none of, turns into English in a number of standardised, conventional, non standard and colloquial forms. Wiki has a table for the top 100 names. Some of them involve numbers. I'm tempted to use the numbers ones solely on the grounds it's very Sci Fi. But that would also be the reason not to use them.
So say you pick one and stick with it. Okay. One column, 100 most common surnames, plenty of characters right there.
Except then you can't tell the difference between Chow and Chow. At 9 and 70 on the table, they have quite different squiggles, but they're both Chow. (Someone I know was reading some of the classics of Chinese literature and he reckoned they were impossible to follow cause everyone's got the same names. I wonder if they had the same names when they were still their proper shapes?)
... I cannot name a character Chow anyway. Not with a straight face. I realize there's bound to be a lot of English that has the same problem in other languages, but I'm the one that has to sit here typing it. Choo and Woo have odd connotations too. Chin, Chong, Wing, Wong, if it has been used in bad jokes is it going to import that? She has some obvious problems as a surname. And as for Chan and Poon...
So not quite so many useable names then.
And then I look at myself going through the list like this and *facepalm* at my cultural flexibility here.
So I'm wondering now how to build a name. Random name generators? Not culturally specific enough. Stick to the top ten names? See 'Chow'... but does it matter which one it were or what it might mean?
I spend ages with English names poking them for meanings and lining up who they sound like with who they are. I can't do that with other languages. (I can't do that well with English, but that's a whole seperate point.)
And then, of course, there's personal names. I don't even know where to begin with personal names.
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...
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.
The real bugger though is transliteration. I can only type in English. I have English keys to play with. I can cut and paste in all sorts, but if I'm writing in English I'd be being mean to readers to expect them to read a character named *complicated squiggle*. So, okay, English has been having this problem for long times, there's lots of ways to turn *complicated squiggle* into English.
Except, and this is important, there's lots of ways to turn *complicated squiggle* into English.
From my reading about Arabic names it seems there's no generally agreed on way to turn Arabic into English letters. So the same person's same name can turn into very many names indeed once it is in English letters. This is not so much a problem for a writer, on account of we can just decide on one. Unless we name everyone the same on accident I guess.
Some languages have standard versions. Plural. So Chinese, which happens in more than one version and I know none of, turns into English in a number of standardised, conventional, non standard and colloquial forms. Wiki has a table for the top 100 names. Some of them involve numbers. I'm tempted to use the numbers ones solely on the grounds it's very Sci Fi. But that would also be the reason not to use them.
So say you pick one and stick with it. Okay. One column, 100 most common surnames, plenty of characters right there.
Except then you can't tell the difference between Chow and Chow. At 9 and 70 on the table, they have quite different squiggles, but they're both Chow. (Someone I know was reading some of the classics of Chinese literature and he reckoned they were impossible to follow cause everyone's got the same names. I wonder if they had the same names when they were still their proper shapes?)
... I cannot name a character Chow anyway. Not with a straight face. I realize there's bound to be a lot of English that has the same problem in other languages, but I'm the one that has to sit here typing it. Choo and Woo have odd connotations too. Chin, Chong, Wing, Wong, if it has been used in bad jokes is it going to import that? She has some obvious problems as a surname. And as for Chan and Poon...
So not quite so many useable names then.
And then I look at myself going through the list like this and *facepalm* at my cultural flexibility here.
So I'm wondering now how to build a name. Random name generators? Not culturally specific enough. Stick to the top ten names? See 'Chow'... but does it matter which one it were or what it might mean?
I spend ages with English names poking them for meanings and lining up who they sound like with who they are. I can't do that with other languages. (I can't do that well with English, but that's a whole seperate point.)
And then, of course, there's personal names. I don't even know where to begin with personal names.
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...
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-05 03:51 am (UTC)Remember that if you're trying to portray a culture foreign to you, your unfamiliarity with it will tend to show. And that's okay. You can work from more or less familiarity, or you can just make something up & call it fantasy. It may be better to get the names slightly wrong, because culture evolves, than to try to portray the cultural attitudes in a major way & get them wrong (though those evolve & vary as well, rather a lot).
Muslim names include a lot of traditional names going back to the Prophet & his contemporaries, & some that have religious significance. You could pick something off a list, & then Google to see if it means something cultural (it may) & just hope it isn't too daft. You might be able to name the space stations like cities & have part of their names reflect that (like al-Khwarismi from the ancient land of Khwarism, or al-Tikriti from the town of Tikrit).
no subject
Date: 2011-03-05 06:24 pm (UTC)Using goggle translate with the phonetic keyboard turned on I got
Minaa
ميناء
Port
Melaz Amun or Malaz Amon or Mlaz Amn
ملاذ أمن
Safe Haven
So space ports are called Minaa somethingorother, or possibly somethingorother Minaa
and the one in the story is Melaz Amon or Melaz Amun or Mlaz Amn depending how foreign I want it to sound.
melath or malath also gets the same word as melaz or malaz
which I would not have guessed, th for z
no subject
Date: 2011-03-05 06:29 pm (UTC)saw this & thought of you
Date: 2011-03-06 04:41 am (UTC)http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorProvincialism
Of course, this is often a case of global realism being sacrificed for local realism. It might seem unlikely for one place to be the focus of so much activity, but setting it in a place the author is familiar with can help to make the setting appear more full-bodied and believable. It can mean the difference between a realistic environment and The Theme Park Version.
That said, I still like the attempt to show a broader world, even if it's imperfect. Don't feel too bad if you get things a bit "off."
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 02:26 am (UTC)There's a good page about Mandiran names here: http://www.jiawen.net/Chinesenames.html
But I wanted to try, so here is my attempt. I chose the Chinese merchchanter family. For my sanity, I decided that they were of the Han ethnic group.
Family Name: Chéng( 程 ) Journey/Trip
Captain: Shouren ( 守仁 ) "Protects Humaness" Though everyone is more likely to call her Captain / Duì Zhǎng ( 隊長 ). And since you could get away without mentioning anyone else's names unless they talk to someone outside of their family just by making sure everyone is always using First Daughter, Third Son...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 03:26 pm (UTC)I like Cheng, nice and appropriate for journeys. Also Cui was high and towering or steep on one list.
That's a useful names list, I can get lots of names off that list.
I looked up Captain and Google told me a lot of different versions. Ship Captain was chuan zhang, and Dui Zhang was sports captain or team leader.
language is hard.
Multilingual is a good place but it feels kind of trivial asking for names. ...trivial or wrong, I should try going with trivial.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 07:00 am (UTC)Seriously, though, I wonder if one solution to your particular problem might be to find a list of names, not ranked by popularity but grouped in some other way. National sports teams or athletes might be one place start - they are easy to find in Wikipedia, and easy to differentiate.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 02:45 pm (UTC)that's a good idea, teams and like that. Better to be recogniseable than horribly wrong.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 09:11 am (UTC)There are always interviews with "local shopkeepers" so steal their names.
xx
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 02:42 pm (UTC)okay, there's bound to be English language pages too. Then I just have to figure out which part of what was which name.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 03:07 pm (UTC)al jazeera have english language sites / channels now.
As for first and second name confusion - you could always give every one a nickname for now and come back to it when you have plot etc.
xx
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 03:27 pm (UTC)"come back to it when you have plot etc"
... yes, but that would require actual writing to get done. clearly this is the fun part...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 04:25 pm (UTC)World building s clearly your thing, let them do the getting down on paper and you'd be a millionaire haha!
xx