beccaelizabeth | Entries tagged with names

Today I got distracted by shaolin monk naming conventions
and I don't even remember how.

( Read more... )

I did learn that it is possible to become a Shaolin monk named Miao right now.

So that's a thing I didn't know this morning.

( Read more... )

Okay, I am never going to learn how to translate a poem by clicking around, and I logically have no use for monk names, even interesting ones with a dating element built in, so I'll go do something else.

By the numbers in the Magical Medieval City Guide my made up city has
377 taverns, 110 inns, and 9 restaurants
So, I started trying to name them.

I used a random names generator but there are few enough components they get repetitive inside of 100, and that's 400 short. Also they don't sound much like real pubs.
So I went to lists of real pubs. Except they aren't just a huge long list with only the names - unless someone knows a link like that - they're pubs and reviews and stars and stuff I don't want to copy paste. So I have copied, by typing, about a hundred pub names.
And that's still 300 short.
( Read more... )

Anyways. I'm only still awake because I forgot to sleep
and the cleaner is here
(I need bin bags for the big bin and also bleach and can't find the right notepad, I write it in the middle of this and I'm sure I'll remember.)
no, wait, the cleaner just left
so I can stop being strange with namings and maybe sleep now.

Or not. the big lorry is extremely screechy.

and I should probably stay awake until evening to try and get right way up again.

(but I should quit it with the names. too many names. too many.)

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2529583.html

I saw a link to this article about character names you really can't use any more
http://ca.io9.com/5977781/these-character-names-should-be-banned-forever

The starting hypothesis is that some names have been used so much for particular stories that you give the whole plot away as soon as you give someone's name.

Sounds reasonable.

But the specific example is a problem:

You can't have a character named Cain, Kane, or Kayne (or, for that matter, Khan), hanging around in the background of a story and act like the fact that they are bad has been sprung on the reader.

Khan... I at least really hope Khan does not belong on that list. Because yes, there is a stereotype, there's Genghis Khan, there's Wrath of Khan, there are a lot of storied Khans out there.

But there are a lot of Khans, just in general.

( Read more... )

Khan is not bad.

And if that is a surprise we need to use the name more, not less.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2522805.html

I was poking the internet for a map maker to make a fantasy city in and found some random generators that make the map for you instead. Also one that tells you what's in all the buildings. And a table for making random English-ish city names.
http://inkwellideas.com/worldbuilding/random-or-not-city-name-charts/englishunited-kingdom-cities/

I don't think it's quite right though. It splits up -er to be an ending on its own, instead of being part of caster cester chester. That's like writing cas in one column and tle in another.
... wait, they actually did that too...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place_names_in_the_United_Kingdom_and_Ireland
has a bunch of parts of places names, tagged as prefix or suffix, and also by language group, so if your fantasy world has no romans you can leave the roman parts out.
So now I want to make another table out of those parts instead.

( Read more... )

... except that is a very long table and wouldn't random roll well even if you had enough dice. Plus you'd end up with weird combinations of parts from different geography. Drawing board time...

Also, since it's made of common parts, it's easy to make places that actually exist.
Though you'd get Lowtoft instead of Lowestoft.
And sometimes you'd need to tweak repeated letters out of the way.

No random generator will give you Wymondham though. Maybe Windam, which is what it sounds like. ... not this one though, there's only Winham.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2499856.html

We can't all be Tolkien. I haven't studied any language sufficiently well to go lalala constructed language! Another constructed language! And one over here! Tada, worldbuilding! I mean, I could try, but it would be awful. That doesn't put enough people off. But I think made up words detract from most worlds rather than add to them.

So, naming gets to be a bit of a bugger. Because any name, for anything or anyone, carries a whole history of language around with it. ( Read more... )

Every name has a history and a geography and a set of connotations, unless I throw syllables at a page and pick what I can pronounce.

Some people just use the first name that comes into their heads.

How?

Also, my first occurring name would invariably reveal my sources, and unless I mark it as AU fic (where it would always be BAD AU fic) I probably don't want to do that.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2456432.html

You know this morning I decided to have a character be from a muslim space station?
So I spent the day poking websites and getting a better feeling for the depths of my extreme ignorance.
Then I thought, hey, I skip all this, I go name the character and get on with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_name

... yeah, that's... not so simple. Makes complete sense in its way, but inventing one of those names? Oh, that would take some doing.

Names: Not just first and last, around the world

... I should have realised this earlier cause I know what Alexander Siddig was called before he simplified for an audience and made it Alexander Siddig. He was Siddig El Fadil on credits for a while, but his official site says:
Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig El Abderahman El Mohammed Ahmed El Abdel Karim El Mahdi (he goes by “Sid”)

funnily enough none of his characters on wiki have that much name.

so does a new made up character only need the one name? the one syllable? out of all that all?

And all naming convention massively complicated by the way there isn't a standard transliteration for Arabic so the exact same person's exact same name can have a huge great list of ways of writing it.
... apparently this has been screwing up US intelligence databases something awful for years...

I can make up a name simples, but it's a worldbuilding choice. If I make the names that sound easy to my British ears then I've made Arabic-via-Britain at best. If the migration didn't go through Britain then it sounds different.

( Read more... )

Naming and language has so much history tied up in it.

( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2125866.html

I solved the murder mystery component of a plot I've been attempting to wrangle.
It's a bit frustrating, the time between knowing what the murder scene looks like and only as much as your detective knows, and figuring it out. It's a bit difficult to write so much as the next scene, with only those parts. Now I know.
... I feel all accomplished and stuff, yet I've not set pen to paper for the actual writing of this.

Also, when I say 'solved', I mean I know the how and why of things. I haven't named the characters or described them or anything useful like that.

Poll #5828 The naming of things

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

View Respondents

If I name a character Captain Jack, is that

View Answers

obviously a rip off of Torchwood AND Pirates of the Caribbean AND Master and Commander AND many folktales and songs all at once
2 (28.6%)

Pretty generic, since all those others have already used it
5 (71.4%)

If that Captain Jack has a flexible relationship to mortality, does that change things?

View Answers

Yes, he's clearly Torchwood AND Pirates
4 (57.1%)

No, there's still several of them, it's still just a fairytale name
3 (42.9%)

If that Captain Jack has multiple copies, does that change things?

View Answers

See, now you're just down to Pirates, that's cheeky
2 (28.6%)

Nothing wrong with ripping the good bits from Pirates to completely new contexts
3 (42.9%)

Don't worry, nobody will notice
2 (28.6%)

If I have a mix of characters from various fandoms yet am not writing a fanfic crossover, do I need to rename them all to file the serial numbers off?

View Answers

Yes, people are going to notice if you have one from Star Trek, one from SG1, some Doctor Who, a splash of B5, and...
5 (71.4%)

No, they're stirred together so much nobody will notice
0 (0.0%)

As long as the surnames change they're not the same anyway
2 (28.6%)

The way I figure it is, if I take a bunch of characters from fandoms that would never meet, throw them at each other, in a setting that is a whole new 'verse (even if it do use familiar tropes like stargates and psi, it remixes those too), and don't worry about keeping them 'in character' compared to the television versions but just let them be the people in my head, I'm not in fact writing fanfic. I wouldn't call it original, but there's a grand shortage of originality in a great many stories and they worked out okay. (I am not Shakespeare. But Shakespeare was a bold one for ripping and remixing sources.)

The only part I'm at all concerned about is if I'm going to have to rename people once I'm done. Already it would be difficult to rename Captain Jack. I'd have to rename the Ground Assault Command as well. And I still need a name for the sort of pilots that go from planets to Fleet ships in deep space and zoom around doing dogfights. They're not the air force on account of not always being in air. If I start trying to work in Vacuum and Ground I can get some really unfortunate acronyms.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2116233.html

Crafty Screenwriting blog Complications Ensue mentioned an incredibly useful naming resource, a name tree based on 100 million Facebook users. Says "This comes in handy if you want normative names for a script."

And yes... but no.

I poked it and found flaws for that purpose. Because this is everyone's Facebook name. So I tried putting in the last name 'Elizabeth' and found that every first name to go with it was feminine. That seems unlikely, especially since Elizabeth is a very rare surname, yet there's a ton of us on Facebook.
Flip side, I looked up a random name - it landed on Knecht - and there's only 11 first names to go with it, 9 masculine.
Two names is waaaay too small a sample to go drawing conclusions from, but if, when you look up a last name, you're 81% likely to be a guy, that's a bit of a problem for using it for screenwriting purposes.
And it suggests to me there's something going on where maybe guys use their last names and women don't, but I get to that conclusion pretty much from jumping from what I do, so it's not like it's science.

Also? I looked up the last name Day, and 175 people are listed with the first name Dre. Google for Dre Day suggests that's a likely pop culture skewing effect, rather than a naming trend.

This niggles particularly because the blog suggests using it for normative names from unfamiliar ethnicities. I've got a hint of a chance of noticing that naming patterns in 'day' are being a bit peculiar, but go outside my little corner of culture and it's all much of a muchness to me. If a scriptwriter picks something that sounds nice and ends up with the Indian equivalent of Dre Day, how to tell?
Well, research from more places, obviously.

So it's handy, but there's unknown biases in the data set.

PS 97 "Day Day"s? Really? I'm thinking not so much.
OTOH it's entirely possible there's 80 Rainy Day and 79 May Day, or 68 Summer Days or Happy Days, because sometimes humans are like that. The 57 Holly Days I'll happily believe are stuck with that as a birth name. 42 Dooms Day? Not so much. 41 Sun Days? Hrm.

And for a really messy one, try the 'surname' JR.
Your most likely first name is Jr, and on the rest of the list there's Robert, Robery, Robert and Robert. And also Robert, Robert and Robert. Possibly more Robert after that, I lost count. I don't know why their way of counting think those are different names, but there's quite a lot of all of them.

Crossposts: http://beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com/2026338.html

Was looking up names on websites. Found ones that let you browse by girl name or boy name, but not so far ones that deliberately let you look for names that could be for either. This irritates. I mean, I suppose most parents are figuring they'll get one or the other, but in the absence of knowing why not pick a name that will work either way?

Mind you, there's always a vast pool of girl names that seem to be boy-name-plus-ina or -ietta or -e. The whole 'oops it isn't a boy' pool, I think of it as. Probably a bit unfair.
Why do I dislike the oops names but rather like the either names?
Huh.

Also weird: how many girl names mean father. I mean, you'd think there wouldn't be any, but no. Many.

Name meaning sites seem very dodgy to me anyway. Not agreeing with each other, no references, no sources, just a bunch of names with a couple of words about what they 'mean'. Meh.

Also it says Ace is a boy name only. Not!

Have decided that Ambrose and Ambrosia would be good names except for the thing where people have to go to school and wear them.
Quite a lot of names are except for in that way.

I like names that mean nice solid particular things. Except usually they don't. Even if you call someone "Ally" or "Aim" people will think they mean things that are not words.

"Visit the unbelievers with explanatory pamphlets" is probably a name that one could live without.

I'm kind of really really bored.

I'm sure I had a bunch of names research around here once upon a time. Wonder where it all went.

Seems like if I rule out all the names that mean father and all the names that mean god and all the names that are gods and all the names from languages I don't speak and rather think the website writers don't speak either then there are... zero names.

Or place names. And those always sound a bit 'found in', or possibly 'started in'.

Names of characters would be weird to name a baby after and unhelpful to name a different character after. Therefore an ever expanding pool of names is sort of ruled out. Specially if you include actors as well.

I think I see why people keep recycling family names. Makes things an awful lot simpler. Except then you either end up with a lot of living people with roughly the same name or some very old names coming up for use again.

Thing with being a writer is you end up having to name an awful lot more new people than your average family ever acquires.

Carys doesn't have the usual look for that kind of part. ( Read more... )
Carys means 'love'. Surprisingly enough.
But there's also 'Carries' in it.

So, name game on the regular characters.

Toshiko Sato ( Read more... )

Ianto Jones ( Read more... )

Owen Harper ( Read more... )

Gwen Cooper ( Read more... )

Captain Jack Harkness ( Read more... )

Fun - all of them have dictionary words in their names.

I added a bunch more stuff when I woke up.
Several of the names are local variations on John Smith, which vaguely suggests a certain lack of deep and meaningful put into them.

Probably other people have done this better. But I like fiddling with name meanings. Names are chosen to stick the rest of the symbols to, along with actors in a TV show. Naming and being named implies power relations. See who gets a title, who gets an abbreviation, who chooses their own name or refuses one someone tries to hang on them. And names have a ton of connotations built in. Sometimes, figure out the name, figure out the character.

Of course sometimes somebody hit the random name generator, but you never know until you look.

Story just had Connor, post NFA, think of Angel as "his real father"

and that bugs me.

I guess because in my head its important that "biological father" is not "real father" (the one that does the fathering job is)

When he first appears, he's all "Hi Dad."

Buffyverse Dialog Database reckons
Connor called Angel:
a *thing* that kills and drinks blood -- (A New World)
a self-righteous bastard -- (Spin The Bottle)
the prince of lies -- (Tomorrow)

but does not collect the Dad or Father references.

He refers to Angel as his father and the other guy as his Dad in the ep he gets his memories back, Origin.

Aha! Here's why it bugs!

Google for
Angel transcript Connor "real father"
gets Connor referring to *Angelus* that way.

CONNOR
You think I care what you say? Angel told me how you’ll
try to hurt me. How you weren’t my real dad, just some
animal in a cage. Angel’s my dad.
ANGELUS
I’m gonna cry.
CONNOR
That’s what he told me… and he thought I believed him.
The truth is… Angel’s just something that you’re forced to
wear. You’re my real father

Same ep he starts saying 'father' and corrects himself to Holtz.

A quick search of transcripts finds only Soulless for Connor saying "real father" - but also Somnambulist for someone saying it about Angelus (Penn)(another dude with serious father issues).

so, using it as the way Connor thinks of Angel calls up Angelus... which I don't think was intended. Not sure yet, of course.

I'd still call him biological or blood father, not real.

/random

I should probably go sleep.

John Wyndham (July 10, 1903 – March 11, 1969) was the pen name used by the often post-apocalyptic British science fiction writer John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris.

Wyndham and Harris
huh

There is an author I found a bunch of books by, all only second hand, couldn't find any new ones. Jonathan Wylie. Turns out the new ones are by another author I've been buying and liking, Julia Gray. Because JW is actually 'Mark and Julia Smith' and uses pen names.

First reaction - cool, more books!
Second reaction, oh, I already have the more books.
Third - why do people do that? I mean, if the books are by M&JS, why doesn't it say M&JS on the cover? It would be rather easier to figure out they were by the same peoples.
Possibly because theres a lot of Smiths in the world?
But then why change names?
Is confusing.

Still, there are actually a few more books I don't have, so, coolness.

odd names in Britain

apparently someone actually named their child
Faithful Cock

someone elses offspring was called Offspring Gurney.

Levi Jeans was married in Padstow, Cornwall, in 1797.

and there are a whole bunch more fun ones

slash fic, fun
slash fic where one of the characters turns out to have the same name as my dad, unfun
ick

am thinking of doing a find/replace all through the story so I can actually finish reading it...

Name research of the day

Wyndam looks like 'win damn', which kind of suits the trouble Wesley gets into by winning. But the surname probably comes from Wymondham, the Norfolk town. Which is just down the road from me. I've only heard the word said, so that seemed pretty obvious to me, since it is said just the same. You can see a satellite photo on Google Maps if you look at Wymondham, Norfolk, NR18.
It probably either means 'Wymund's home' (Why world, or Why man) or home on the winding path. Or alternatively the town "might take its name from its pleasant situation, for 'win' signifies a chosen or beloved place so the 'win-munde-ham' is a village 'on the pleasant mount' and the situation exactly answers." It is a Saxon name.
There's a book full of Windhams here, but they only time they spell it Wyndam is when they list all the variants. Windham is most usual in the USA, Wyndham in the UK and Australia.

Pryce looks like the modern word Price, cost, but it probably derives from Ap Rhys, son of Rhys. Rhys means "enthusiasm" in Welsh.

Wales was never conquered by the Anglo-Saxons. They built a bit of a wall instead, apparently.

But later Welsh history gets rather depressing.

And I spent far too long finding all that out instead of writing.

Profile

beccaelizabeth

January 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

How do I even wonder these things?
Apparently I forgot to sleep
Unusable names
Random names for cities
On naming epic fantasies
Arabic names
Plot detangled
Facebook Name Trees
(no subject)
Torchwood thoughts continued
word choice again
(no subject)
people turn out to be person who turns out to be people
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)

Active Entries

Style Credit

Style: Sky for Crossroads by branchandroot
Resources: Destined For Nothing

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 6th, 2026 10:21 pm

beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Entries tagged with names

How do I even wonder these things?

Apparently I forgot to sleep

Unusable names

Random names for cities

On naming epic fantasies

Arabic names

Plot detangled

Facebook Name Trees

(no subject)

Torchwood thoughts continued

word choice again

(no subject)

people turn out to be person who turns out to be people

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Profile

January 2026

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags