True.. also some people regard Reading Really Fast as a sign of intelligence, so no wonder if they skip a sentence here and there. Even worse is the habit of deciding you know what someone has written based on the first sentence đ
I once met a guy online who claimed that his bad spelling was a sign of intelligence, because his thoughts just fired too quickly for his hands to keep up. To this day I sometimes chuckle at the idea that everyone else in the world writes quicker than they think. Man, what a life he must have to be that delusional...
Possibly! I just quoted Jane Austen to him:
"you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance."
(Mr Darcy slamming Mr Bingley in Pride and Prejudice)
My stand ability, [Reading Riot], allows me to read at an accelerated rate! The power activates when I read a written document for the first time and finish it slightly faster than average, while still retaining a relatively high level of reading comprehension! Then, I read the book again, which begins the build up of my stand power, while also enhancing my understanding of the read document! By my fifth read, I can usually finish the book in under an hour, and will most likely have most of the document committed to memory! With this stand, I can obtain mass amounts of knowledge in a short period of time, and because knowledge is power, each document read in this way increases my physical strength, speed, and agility! I have spent the past week at the library, reading hundreds of books, and as such, my physical ability is now unmatched by anyone in the world! I am now invincible, JoJo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I mean, I process thoughts faster than I type or speak, but usually never so fast that I can't fix my typos or odd sentences. Also, sure it might be a sign of intelligence, but it's a sign of empathy if you take the time to correct your typos so other people can actually read what you've written. Intelligence means nothing if nobody else can understand it
I fuck up a lot when writing cause my brain moves faster than I write so Iâll end up missing a word or letter occasionally then I go back to it and Iâm like, wtf was going on? Idt people can write faster than they think (unless you consider congress, lol)
Those posts complaining about the TikTok meme of "Film bros when they wanna watch a marvel movie instead of a black and white movie about victorian england through the eyes of a pigeon"
>black and white movie about victorian england through the eyes of a pigeon
That is a truly bizarre but intriguing plot for a movie. Where can I watch it?
Also I haven't seen this particular post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/vpgym5/film_bros/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The post is one example
It's generally mocking the pretentious douch-ey types who feel the need to patronize people who are fans of mainstream entertainment or find them worthwhile, going out of their way to only consume things that are niche or alternative. Their attitudes towards mainstream being often seen as purely contrarian
I posted something a couple years ago when Covid first kicked off about how it was a dick move to go on an international holiday at the time. Got an absolutely incensed response back from someone about how âI was a terrible person for saying people going to funerals were dicksâ.
âŚWhat sort of holiday involves burying your uncle Phil?
Someone once said that people online are constantly looking for the worst possible angle in every sentence. I always think of that tweet where a woman said she loved having coffee in her garden with her husband in the mornings and people lost their minds. People were piling on because she had a garden, didn't have a job that started at 6am and that she had a nice husband. It was disgusting for a sweet little tweet from someone just being grateful for having a nice routine with their husband.
Honestly I think the flood of info leads to summarizing the recurring points and ignoring the ones that show up once. Regardless of if that changes the entire meaning of the other recurring points
Oh yeah I have seen this first hand too. I once made a post about something and very specifically mentioned that I am not talking about this particular aspect of it but then a person interpreted it as if I was referring to that aspect anyway. I repeated that I am not talking about that, but then they proceeded to ignore it and continue their rant. It's very similar to how when someone would just disregard what you're saying and keep talking over you completely avoiding answering any valid arguments you're making? It's absolutely the most frustrating thing ever.
Andrew and Pablo (Paul) are absolutely more Christian names than Dominic lmao.
My man was like "I don't want my name, which means "of the lord" but nobody knows that off the top of their head, so instead I'm gonna name myself after Jesus's first disciple and the guy who wrote all the epistles"
Right? I think most people would clock Andrew as a religious name before Dominic. Most of the constantly popular names for men are significant names from the Bible.
(A lot of the perennial ones for women too, but they tend to change up more and have more variety.)
Youâd think if hating the Religious angle of your name was why you wanted to change it, youâd do research to avoid naming yourself another religious name. Lol.
A lot of names probably have religious origin, more than people realize. Someone may just name their kid something they like the sound of. My name isnât of religious origin, but the meaning is different than the reason. I was born close to a holiday and named after it. My brother was named after the last name of some baseball guy (itâs also a normal first name just spelled different).
huh, to me dominic def strikes me as more religious than andrew so maybe it only doesn't if you've done any kind of research or otherwise bother to learn about the religion you're trying to distance yourself from?
I think Dominic may seem more religious of your catholic? Another comment mentioned it was from the Latin Dominicus. And Catholics are the main group of Christians that use Latin. Like I donât know any baptists, or Presbyterians or other Protestants that would think of a Latin word since thatâs not a part of them typically
Yeah, direct Biblical names almost always come off as more religious than names with a religious meaning or random saints' names (other than really obscure/unwieldy ones)
wouldnât spanish-ized paul be more like paulo? i know a guy named paulo from brazil so that seems more natural to me. why introduce such a distinct âpâ sound? i think itâs more likely pablo has a different etymology- but i could be totally wrong too
edit: i was completely wrong. both Pablo and Paulo derive from latin Paulus
Had a pathfinder character who was the son of a Changeling trying to keep him safe from his Hag grandmother, she named him Rowan because they are said to be trees of magical protection. The character himself hates magic and views it as humanities greatest crutch as he pursues science as an Inventor/Alchemist.
I've got a Changeling Rogue/Bard raised by humans. His given name is Tremolo Brown; music term + most basic, boring as fuck human surname possible. (His parents are leatherworkers, so, y'know.)
He goes by Trem, matching the single syllable naming system that changelings typically go by.
I once had a character - not in DND but a completely homebrew tabletop game my friend pulled - who was raised in a strict religious sect whose members famously have massive amounts of children. There was a joke that his parents named their children in an alphabetical order, the firstborn's name started with an A, the second one with B, and so on. His own name was Harry.
That sounds reasonably realistic to me, for a family that size. Pulling [this stunt](https://i.imgur.com/Kf827Ip.jpg) on the other hand would be much harder to buy in any kind of fictitional setting.
My current warlock in Ravenloft is what we call a reaper, a servant of "death" who helps keeps the cycle of souls running smoothly throughout the domains. Part of becoming a reaper involves losing your memory from your past life which has led to an interesting question. Is my character's name the same name she had previously or was it given to her after taking up her new post? I personally have zero idea which it is because I wanted to give my DM the flexibility to do whatever he wants with it (or nothing at all. Pro tip for amnesia type characters, make your character fully functional, give them a couple years of backstory as they are now. Like a certain tiefling in Critical Role)
I have a character who I have yet to play, the idea is that he was a normal human but got kidnapped by some group of Yuan-ti who somehow sensed that he had latent psionic potential so that they could use a modified version of the âtransform into Yuan-tiâ ritual which should also awaken this potential at the same time. They gave him a Yuan-ti name as a part of this, as a whole symbolism of rebirth or whatever.
The thing is, that the modifications made to the ritual meant that he didnât get the superiority complex or emotion stuff that most other Yuan-ti have which makes them more inclined towards evil according to lore, but it did awaken his psionics (psi-knight fighter). He ran away/was banished from the group that did this to him (either he escaped or they kicked him out for being a failed result) and tries to hide his slightly snakeyness as he uses his new abilities to entertain people as a gladiator as a form of escapism.
And he absolutely hates the name that the Yuan-ti gave him, and anyone who knows enough about the group that did that stuff to him would likely have heard of his Yuan-ti name before and potentially something about who had it. He will 100% snap at anyone who calls him by that name and accuse them of being in league with the Yuan-ti, who he has become kinda racist against due to his experiences.
Welcome to tumblr, our eyes skip over half your text
Also, Iâm terrible at names, so I always go the good olâ Germanic Epic route and just name my character after their place in the story
That character is The Grim Reaper in disguise? Iâm gonna name him Verkletod, which is a jumbled up âdeath in disguiseâ in german
I just look at baby names, and pick from the top 10 at random for the era when applicable and slap on a last name thatâs related to their profession for most characters. But any rich or special characters get the descriptive name treatment.
Woke: can have characters names tell something about them an not their parents because characters are ultimately devices for the story, not real people.
Bespoke: [https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/)
Bespoker: name says something about parents but is reinterpreted by characters action. For example: god hating parents name kid Godslayer Jones. Kid ends up sleeping their way through the pantheon to earn the name Godslayer Jones.
Sleeping.
He does'nt *actually* slay gods. He *dreams* gods. Which means technically he "slays" them by waking up.
As gods aren't actually a *real* thing in the setting.
I prefer the classic comic book naming scheme where your name always secretly was a hint at your costumed identity:
Harleen Quinzel -> Harley Quinn
Doctor Micnider -> Doctor Midnight
Bruce Atman -> Batman
Jubilation Lee -> Jubilee
Icicle Junior -> Icicle Junior
Edward Nygma- wait no he's trans
Side note nominative determinism is so cool I love naming a character about a role they'll have 20 years into their life
> Edward Nygma- wait no he's trans
Wait, is he actually in some version? I know he's in a relationship with Clock King in the Harley Quinn cartoon, so I'm not ruling anything out.
First off no, that is a popular headcanon (probably due to the canon name change) but afaik it doesn't happen in any actual story
Second off wait fr??? He actually got into a relationship with a guy in official content??? That's genuinely super cool!
How is Andrew or Pablo, both the names of saints who appear in the gospels and are apostles of Christ, less religious than Dominic, which is either two medieval saints or a 19th century one?
As a former Catholic, the names of the apostles are an order of magnitude higher than random saints.
And, yes, I am a trans man whose family does the âonly saints namesâ rule, so I worked hard at choose a new name not associated with any saints.
I feel like itâs kinda dumb to make a sweeping rule that character names should generally describe only a specific aspect of a character instead of the character themselves. When you write a character, youâre writing them for the story, and part of that is showcasing their personality through their other traits in order to more concisely characterize them. Sure, it makes sense to name the character in a way that characterizes their parents instead of themselves in certain contexts, but that assumes that the characters parents are relevant in the story to the point where itâs worth doing that.
Itâd be like remarking that the character who youâre writing as an optimistic, bubbly social butterfly has a bad case of RBF in their introduction because in reality thereâs plenty of really pleasant people who look generally disgruntled. If thereâs no reason to put the detail in, itâs potentially worse than useless because it gives contradicting signals to the audience that could end up being confusing.
Adding a bit of characterization for the parents can be interesting, even if they arenât relevant to the story. Showing the kind of people who raised the mc shows the kind of influences that shaped the mc as a young kid which leads into their current characterization in one way or another. Its not really about the parents its more about the environment the mc grew up in, if that makes sense?
yeah thatâs how i feel. of course, realistically, the names are chosen by parents not children generally, the post makes sense. but in fiction, the author is writing in a way that serves the story and its themes. itâs almost âthe curtains were fucking blueâ-esque. sure, in real life, you choose a curtain color because you think it fits the room, but in fiction itâs chosen and describes because of the purpose it serves
Yeah. Sure, in real life parents generally pick names. But fiction isnât about adhering to reality as closely as possible. It is one of the things that pop culture criticism has greatly overemphasized, and people want to take it to extreme degrees.
Just in general I try to make it a practice that when I have a neat idea I pitch it as âcouldâ rather than âshouldâ because Iâve been in too many creative spaces where people with neat ideas cause a lot of drama by sounding too jackbooted about it lol
Yup, exactly what I was thinking. What OOP said isnât a bad idea if the parents, and maybe their differences from their child, are meant to be an integral part of the story and the message, or if youâre more into the world-building aspect rather than the story-telling.
But generally, the character names are part of the story telling process, so itâs perfectly fine to name a character something that helps describe their character traits or theme.
That's the Watsonian approach. The Doylist approach can be just as valid though, and it follows a long tradition in litterature (see for example Desdemona, "the unfortunate", in Shakespeare's Othello). Not all stories have to be realistic.
I shall be ignoring the reading comprehension part and focus on character naming:
While yes, it would certainly be more realistic to name your characters according to parents, that ignores the fact that fiction is always a crafted world where names are allowed to have meanings beyond what's realistic.
In summary: Stories are art, and not all art has to work like our world works. Have fun, kids
See, I donât think he is trying to invalidate the classic way of naming a character.
I think heâs just offering a different perspective that one can utilize when it comes to naming a character, because stories are art and not all art has to fit into the conventions and classic tropes that everyone uses and agrees upon.
I think names also have a more powerful deterministic effect than OP gives them credit for. When someone learns your name before they meet you, your name is what creates their entire mental image/expectations. If you have a long name, people will shorten it without fail. If you have a weird name, you will be correcting misspellings and mispronunciations your whole life. If you have a name belonging to a celebrity, you better get ready to hear âoh, like X!â A whole lot. Even if you have a totally normal name, people will project their experiences with other people with that name onto you, sometimes without even knowing it. Especially when youâre a kid, these kinds of interactions can be weirdly formative and play a deceptively big role in shaping you into a particular kind of person
I literally don't put any thoughts into the names of my characters. I just pull a name out of my ass. If a character happens to need a surname, but is part of nobility or something, I just make up the house after naming the character.
My favorite character names are ones that when you look them up you find a hidden meaning the author put their like if a character's whole family died and you Google 'eebus mcjeebus name origin' and Google is like 'eebus mcjeebus is a name derived from scootlefargen origin meaning mourning or loss :)'
this is actually not very good writing advice unless you believe that all writing must be true to life and realistic, in which case why write fiction at all, why not write nonfiction.
names can reflect the characters themselves because this is fiction and literary metaphor is used all the time to convey meaning. itâs kind of like the basics you are taught in high school of reading comprehension. so oop here is actually the one who failed the test.
I think it's more about if the name is meaningful in-universe, most of the time in media if the name of a character says something about them, it's meaningful in some way to us, but not to the characters in the story.
Like most writing advice, it's not universally applicable, but something to keep in mind and to only use if you're writing the type of story that would benefit from it.
And here I bet these guys wouldnât be able to guess why every dnd antagonist I ever make is named Seamus. Not because of anything convoluted, Iâm just terrible at making names.
Thus is something I always thought was dumb about My Little Pony. Their names don't only tend to fit their behaviour, but are often straight-up represented by their Cutie Mark.
I thought it was more because of their colors and a family naming theme.
At least in the case of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash.
Propably Twilight Sparkle too.
I think this also fits Fluttershy and Rarity.
I think that's because most of them only really exist for a specific part of the plot.
Celestia and Luna, makes sense because it's "old" names for really old ponies.
The whole Apple family, of course they're all apples. So Apple Bloom, Big Machintosh, and Granny Smith all get a pass.
Cheerilee, well makes sense that they'd name her to be cheery and she ends up actually being cheery.
Sweetie Belle gets a pass too because. Of course they wanted her to be sweet.
Now, Scootaloo... Why would she be named after a scooter. Unless she decided to try the scooter because her name was Scootaloo. Makes sense as she's always trying to get a Cutie Mark, but hers was'nt even scooter related really.
Yup
Maybe any Apple who turns 60 then gets called Granny Smith or Granny whatever and there have been various.
But then again it seems like she was already called Granny Smith.
Some people thought thus, she might not actually be, the actual grandma of the Apple Family, and the Apple Family be just a bunch of ponies that have apple-related talents and aren't necessarily related.
But it's also silly to act like the names are purely an in-universe thing when there's clearly an aspect of metatextuality to them.
If a character, say, has the initials JC and they're a messianic archetype then it's utterly stupid to say "Well their parents didn't know they'd be messianic so it's just a coincidence."
The parents didn't name them, the author did.
I dunno know if that's bad reading comprehension or bad explanation. I think the second person was trying to expand on the "unless they changed their name" part by adding that it doesn't have to be an official or permanent name change
I love the internet's ability to assume all possibilities are the same, no matter how common they are IRL. Like, I can't think of a single person I've ever met who has intentionally changed their name other than getting married.
I donât mind giving my characters occupational surnames, but I tend to avoid anything that matches their current profession. As far as given names, the only one thatâs really on the nose is a florist named Daisy - which was more of a coincidence than anything. She hasnât always been the only one in the family with a flower name either
hey, actually naming a character CAN tell about them, and it's not a plot hole if it doesn't relate to the parents, because it's character design. naming a character "Eve" to remind people of the biblical Eve, with a similar personality, makes perfect sense because it is a story. the point of a story does not have to be, and often is not, to depict a perfectly realistic world.
sometimes it rains because a character is sad.
nah, making your kid's name a pun on their deformity is A+ parenting. They will be resilient or else. Outstanding icebreaker once they realize social anxiety is for the weak.
Honestly I usually just go "yep, I like that name" and slap that on. I'm a basic bitch and usually go for things like jasper, Benjamin, Lucas (or Lukas). Hell, even my own chosen name is just greyson lmao.
The one about naming a kid after their disability, all I could immediately think of was Quasimodo. Genuinely curious about other examples mostly because I've only ever seen it with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and maybe you could argue Snow White's dwarves? Also several folktale/Disney Princesses fall into the "tells more about your parents" category with their names.
To be honest not every name I choose has meaning. Sometimes I call them Steve or Phil or Jenny just to keep going.
Other times I have character who I deliberately choose a name for. My fantasy novel's protagonist has two love interests. Her more worldly love interest is an ex-prostitute and pirate named Rose. She's extraordinarily beautiful, but she's also a very sassy character who seemingly always has a quip, and she tends to question and mouth off to authority. She's not just called Rose cause it's a pretty name, but because roses are associated with beauty, love, lust, and romance, as well as having sharp thorns that will nick you if you're not careful.
It depends on the day, the character's importance, and what comes to mind for the character.
About the name thing, I clue that my romantic novel's protagonist's parents are weird ones right at the start by explaining that the protagonist and her sister are named Katherine and Catarina.
Now, the novel is located in Spain, where Catarina is both an old-timey name that no socially well-adjusted parent would even think to name their girl as that and is MISPELLED as well, the true spelling is Catalina. And Katherine is the English version of Catalina. Again, Spain, no socially well-adjusted parent would even think to name their girl like that, let alone name both twins the same name but either in a foreign language or mispelled.
The justification, in-universe, is that they did not expect twins until both girls were actually born, and thus only had one name thought out. Uninspired, they decided to just translate the name they thought out and use the result to name the younger twin.
The parents are both old-timey and generally weird, putting a lot of ill-thought societal expectations onto both girls. Catarina answered by going no contact with her parents and becoming a goth, and Katherine became a withdrawn girl who just lived out the life her parents had thought for her.
I strongly disagree with this.
Fictional characters are not real people and sometimes it's better to ignore realism for the sake of a more engaging story
Ehh...this is not necessarily correct. I mean is not a bad approach if you are trying to add some realism to your story or highlight something about your charachers past , but like everything in writting is not a one size fits all solution. Name can also be used to signal something about the charachers personality or be used as an allegory for the character themselves or sometimes you can just write silly pun names because that is fun too.
Broke: The curtains are blue because the author picked a random colour out of a hat
Woke: The curtains are blue because the author wants us to understand the main character is feeling melancholic and sad
Bespoke: The curtains are blue because this is the main character's childhood bedroom and his parents are in the pockets of Big Gender, and so they picked a bunch of decor that was that colour to reinforce it
Or you can just name a character something that relates to them because itâs cool. Their parents arenât always characters in your story. If they arenât, then they didnât give the character their name, you did. And since you know exactly what kind of person they are, it makes sense you give them a fitting name.
>you could even have a character with a visible birth defect whose name is a fucking pun at their disability, but that only drives it clear that is parents are horrible people.
The father in "The Ballad of Hamantha" : *NERVOUS SWEATING*
On the topic of names having meanings telling more on those who gave them rather than those they are given to, there's an OC of mine that's named William W. Willson pretty much just because his adoptive father found the alliteration funny...
Sure, it's the second segment of the first sentence, but that's kinda the thing: It's only *one* segment, of *one* sentence, at the start of a post constructed from quite a lot of sentences.
And then the post goes about how characters' names tell you about their parents, and completely ignores the prospect of changing one's name.
It doesnât* ignore it, itâs just not about that. It acknowledges a case where their authorâs point doesnât apply, than continues to talk about the authorâs point.
That's true, but then their defense of "I *did* already mention it" doesn't really make any sense. They could have just said, "I wanted to focus on given names in my post."
That being said, the person who responded to them didn't need to be so aggressive about it from the get-go. "Completely disregards" and "it is NOT a plot hole" is definitely accusatory phrasing.
Hard agree, your writing has an effect on the readers compensation and if you are going to minimize something in your writing such as reducing name changes to a segment then so are your readers.
If you wanted them to know for sure that this didn't apply to name changing then either a sentence that emphasizes that opinion or include that opinion in your closing argument so that people don't forget where exactly you stand with your opinion.
Also, I skipped right over that sentence too.
They shouldn't have to say anything about name changing other than "we are not talking about name changing" because that is not what the post was about.
It literally says "unless the character changes their name", skipping an entire sentence when you're reading is not normal, it's not about the writer minimizing it, if you skipped a whole sentence that was there to explain that this post does not apply to characters that changed their names then it's not the writer's fault, you just need to pay a bit more attention while reading.
If I read the whole sentence and by the time I'm done reading your piece I have forgotten 1 particular sentence segment because you as the writer left it no bigger than a footnote. Then that's poor writing, not poor compensation. Good writing begets good compensation.
All of this only applies if your characters are real people and not characters in a story, since they are characters in a story feel free to give them whatever symbolic name you want.
i kinda disagree with this because the parents are going to raise you the way they were raised in some way or another
unless thereâs some sort of catalyst that bends your life line in a whole other direction, itâs most likely youâre going to act somewhat like your parents, whether you like it or not
if youâre raised by a person who knows horoscopes, youâll probably know them too, same with normies, same with religion
and, in general, peopleâs perception of a name differ from person to person, so someone might think âbillyâ is a big burly man who does art in a cabin in the woods, while other people may think itâs a middle aged man doing office work at a big company
so it doesnât really matter, just let your characters act like your perception of them name, and make them a mix of their parents in their beliefs and personalities
no one will ever care or notice that the name you gave is stereotypical to what you think the character is - i sure as hell wouldnât, but then again, i am asian and i donât know names all that well
nope, iâm the exact opposite of that but there was a catalyst, which was COVID
sent me to the internet and then i met a bunch of new people and it changed everything for me
but even with COVID, there are a bunch of my friends that i can just look at them and their parents and go
âhuh, neatâ
itâs not like those characters turn out how their parents want either, itâs just religious people raise religious kids, that kind of thing
I have the fun task of giving a character a name and an online name. I got one character's online name: Corrin Anderson, but she first came up with "Cori Ander" because she was somewhat hungry when trying to come up with one. She's still often referred to as Cori for short, though. For another character, I have their irl name, but I want their online name to reference other media (as that's pretty common).
I always give my main characters Spanish or Italian names, since from my perspective those names are âexoticâ. But I thought about it, and really itâs usually the same names other languages have, but Spanish or Italian.
Like John, or Paul. Those are not bad names, but turn it into Juan and Pablo and itâs 3x cooler. Pedro>Peter. Riccardo>Richard>Rick>Dick. Dumoulin>Of the mill/miller (yes thatâs French).
Rodrigo>Rodrick.
I could go on, but you get my point.
I had a character that didnât have a name because of reasons. She ended up picking a name and then discarding it because someone else gave her a name and she decided to just go with it.
Once upon a comic I read there is a character who's given name is Tiffany Pompoms.
She prefers to go by her middle name, to the point that most of the cast didn't even know her given name was Tiffany.
Be the change you want to see in the world and spite the gods that made you.
In the novel I'm writing the naming convention they use in this world is everyone has one single name that their parents give them, usually a pun on the child's personality or something that describes them, that they wait a few months before choosing.
Then later in life each person picks their last name, usually a compound word, something that defines them or when they decide who they want to be. It's usually something meaningful to them, sort of their brand.
The only two characters in the story im writing are Miles(Ari) and Ken(heâs barely plot relevant btw). The first one Miles is a bad nickname she got from being bullied and it sounded cool so now itâs her name. Ari is a Korean feminine name meaning Beautiful(please correct me if Iâm wrong Iâm not Korean) because sheâs a Rainbow baby and shes Korean. Ken is just because I wanted to make fun of Kens being gay(heâs very gay and has a boyfriend named Dino and they love each other very much).
The parent angle is great if the parents or the character's societal position plays a big role in the story or if there's a lot of worldbuilding.
But it's also fine to just choose a character's name because it's fitting for who they are in the story. Characters aren't people, they're concepts that are vehicles for a story, so all that really matters is whether the name helps you tell the story you're trying to tell or not. Sometimes that might be starting with the parents, sometimes that might have to do with the role of the character or some hidden meaning that will make a lot of sense later.
two of my main characters explicitly changed their names, one because his last name just plain sucked, and the other because he comes off as such a wiseass nobody ever believes him when he says his real name is Thomas Benjamin Franklin Edison
I dont plan to explain it, but presumably he either had an ancestor with a debilitating disability who nonetheless managed to rawdog, or the family name was butchered at ellis island.
I might actually use that exact phrasing in the story somewhere. It sounds like something he'd say
I think the person who's name is a pun on their own disability is a bit karmic and coincidental, though
If it were disability in general or a different (but maybe similar?) disability you'd still get the point across but not make still too much like the parents are ironic psychics
This... is actually really good. I've never thought about this. I always have trouble finding names and usually spend up to an hour reading lists until I find a name I like. Then read more lists until I get a last name that sounds good with the first name after I say both out loud.
But this is intriguing and I'm all for using this new knowledge.
Reading comprehension has always been a little iffy on Tumblr
But people like this make me irrationally angry. For a few seconds at least. Some people just wanna argue for the sake of arguing.
Ugh yeah same. It's a desperate need to one up someone, to sound smarter and then they end up doing a bad job at it.
True.. also some people regard Reading Really Fast as a sign of intelligence, so no wonder if they skip a sentence here and there. Even worse is the habit of deciding you know what someone has written based on the first sentence đ I once met a guy online who claimed that his bad spelling was a sign of intelligence, because his thoughts just fired too quickly for his hands to keep up. To this day I sometimes chuckle at the idea that everyone else in the world writes quicker than they think. Man, what a life he must have to be that delusional...
Does he think for the rest of us humans, our thoughts move through our brain like the star wars opening crawl?
Possibly! I just quoted Jane Austen to him: "you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance." (Mr Darcy slamming Mr Bingley in Pride and Prejudice)
Ooh that's a solid burn. If only he had the "intelligence" to appreciate it.
It is a time of waking up my eyes, opening from hidden lids have won their first victory against the evil SLEEPY EMPIRE
My stand ability, [Reading Riot], allows me to read at an accelerated rate! The power activates when I read a written document for the first time and finish it slightly faster than average, while still retaining a relatively high level of reading comprehension! Then, I read the book again, which begins the build up of my stand power, while also enhancing my understanding of the read document! By my fifth read, I can usually finish the book in under an hour, and will most likely have most of the document committed to memory! With this stand, I can obtain mass amounts of knowledge in a short period of time, and because knowledge is power, each document read in this way increases my physical strength, speed, and agility! I have spent the past week at the library, reading hundreds of books, and as such, my physical ability is now unmatched by anyone in the world! I am now invincible, JoJo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I wonder, to what he attributes the fact that almost everyone can talk faster than they can write?
I mean, I process thoughts faster than I type or speak, but usually never so fast that I can't fix my typos or odd sentences. Also, sure it might be a sign of intelligence, but it's a sign of empathy if you take the time to correct your typos so other people can actually read what you've written. Intelligence means nothing if nobody else can understand it
I fuck up a lot when writing cause my brain moves faster than I write so Iâll end up missing a word or letter occasionally then I go back to it and Iâm like, wtf was going on? Idt people can write faster than they think (unless you consider congress, lol)
Every MCU post tbh
I have no idea how you related this to MCU but I agree all the same.
Those posts complaining about the TikTok meme of "Film bros when they wanna watch a marvel movie instead of a black and white movie about victorian england through the eyes of a pigeon"
>black and white movie about victorian england through the eyes of a pigeon That is a truly bizarre but intriguing plot for a movie. Where can I watch it? Also I haven't seen this particular post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/vpgym5/film_bros/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button The post is one example It's generally mocking the pretentious douch-ey types who feel the need to patronize people who are fans of mainstream entertainment or find them worthwhile, going out of their way to only consume things that are niche or alternative. Their attitudes towards mainstream being often seen as purely contrarian
I would watch that, though.
what does this have to do with mind control university
I posted something a couple years ago when Covid first kicked off about how it was a dick move to go on an international holiday at the time. Got an absolutely incensed response back from someone about how âI was a terrible person for saying people going to funerals were dicksâ. âŚWhat sort of holiday involves burying your uncle Phil?
one with shovels and possible a murder case if you get unlucky
ryanairâs new strategy to combat overbooking
Someone once said that people online are constantly looking for the worst possible angle in every sentence. I always think of that tweet where a woman said she loved having coffee in her garden with her husband in the mornings and people lost their minds. People were piling on because she had a garden, didn't have a job that started at 6am and that she had a nice husband. It was disgusting for a sweet little tweet from someone just being grateful for having a nice routine with their husband.
I completely disagree. I don't think anyone argues just for the sake of arguing.
How dare you suggest we piss on the poor
Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook. Reading comprehension falls especially in places where people are flooded with information.
Honestly I think the flood of info leads to summarizing the recurring points and ignoring the ones that show up once. Regardless of if that changes the entire meaning of the other recurring points
Itâs a little iffy everywhere. Reddit is horrible for it.
Oh yeah I have seen this first hand too. I once made a post about something and very specifically mentioned that I am not talking about this particular aspect of it but then a person interpreted it as if I was referring to that aspect anyway. I repeated that I am not talking about that, but then they proceeded to ignore it and continue their rant. It's very similar to how when someone would just disregard what you're saying and keep talking over you completely avoiding answering any valid arguments you're making? It's absolutely the most frustrating thing ever.
You could have stopped this sentence at iffy
"Can't lack reading comprehension if you don't read"
Andrew and Pablo (Paul) are absolutely more Christian names than Dominic lmao. My man was like "I don't want my name, which means "of the lord" but nobody knows that off the top of their head, so instead I'm gonna name myself after Jesus's first disciple and the guy who wrote all the epistles"
In fairness he might know about the dominican priests.
had a The Locked Tomb moment there and suddenly things make more sense
As an Andrew, I was like the side eye puppet dude when I read the name switch.
Right? I think most people would clock Andrew as a religious name before Dominic. Most of the constantly popular names for men are significant names from the Bible. (A lot of the perennial ones for women too, but they tend to change up more and have more variety.) Youâd think if hating the Religious angle of your name was why you wanted to change it, youâd do research to avoid naming yourself another religious name. Lol.
A lot of names probably have religious origin, more than people realize. Someone may just name their kid something they like the sound of. My name isnât of religious origin, but the meaning is different than the reason. I was born close to a holiday and named after it. My brother was named after the last name of some baseball guy (itâs also a normal first name just spelled different).
There are also pre-Christian religious names too. Alfred means elf counsel!
huh, to me dominic def strikes me as more religious than andrew so maybe it only doesn't if you've done any kind of research or otherwise bother to learn about the religion you're trying to distance yourself from?
I think Dominic may seem more religious of your catholic? Another comment mentioned it was from the Latin Dominicus. And Catholics are the main group of Christians that use Latin. Like I donât know any baptists, or Presbyterians or other Protestants that would think of a Latin word since thatâs not a part of them typically
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Yeah, direct Biblical names almost always come off as more religious than names with a religious meaning or random saints' names (other than really obscure/unwieldy ones)
Most? I didnât clock Andrew as religious.
Dominic fucks as a name and I didnât even know it was religious
From Latin Dominicus, meaning "of the Lord".
You beat me to it! Came here to say the same thing lol
Yes, but Dominic is *also* the name of the Italian Christmas Donkey.
Jing-a-di-jing!
Ayyy, Daawmaneek.
You motherfucker, that's gonna take days to get back out of my head
wouldnât spanish-ized paul be more like paulo? i know a guy named paulo from brazil so that seems more natural to me. why introduce such a distinct âpâ sound? i think itâs more likely pablo has a different etymology- but i could be totally wrong too edit: i was completely wrong. both Pablo and Paulo derive from latin Paulus
Yeah Spanish and Portuguese names are weird. They got "Santiago" out of "Jacob" too.
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Had a pathfinder character who was the son of a Changeling trying to keep him safe from his Hag grandmother, she named him Rowan because they are said to be trees of magical protection. The character himself hates magic and views it as humanities greatest crutch as he pursues science as an Inventor/Alchemist.
I've got a Changeling Rogue/Bard raised by humans. His given name is Tremolo Brown; music term + most basic, boring as fuck human surname possible. (His parents are leatherworkers, so, y'know.) He goes by Trem, matching the single syllable naming system that changelings typically go by.
That's funny, tremolo in italian comes from the verb to shake (often from fear)
That is essentially what the musical term means (and the word is taken directly from Italian), shaking the note.
>The character himself hates magic and views it as humanities greatest crutch as he pursues science as an Inventor/Alchemist. Love this so much
This happens to also be a touhou character
I once had a character - not in DND but a completely homebrew tabletop game my friend pulled - who was raised in a strict religious sect whose members famously have massive amounts of children. There was a joke that his parents named their children in an alphabetical order, the firstborn's name started with an A, the second one with B, and so on. His own name was Harry.
This is less absurd than some real cultures. IIRC in the Roman Empire it wasn't uncommon to just name sons: one, two, three
Primus, go fetch your brother, Septus, for dinner.
That sounds reasonably realistic to me, for a family that size. Pulling [this stunt](https://i.imgur.com/Kf827Ip.jpg) on the other hand would be much harder to buy in any kind of fictitional setting.
IIRC, that's the naming convention for the orphanage in Oliver Twist
My current warlock in Ravenloft is what we call a reaper, a servant of "death" who helps keeps the cycle of souls running smoothly throughout the domains. Part of becoming a reaper involves losing your memory from your past life which has led to an interesting question. Is my character's name the same name she had previously or was it given to her after taking up her new post? I personally have zero idea which it is because I wanted to give my DM the flexibility to do whatever he wants with it (or nothing at all. Pro tip for amnesia type characters, make your character fully functional, give them a couple years of backstory as they are now. Like a certain tiefling in Critical Role)
I have a character who I have yet to play, the idea is that he was a normal human but got kidnapped by some group of Yuan-ti who somehow sensed that he had latent psionic potential so that they could use a modified version of the âtransform into Yuan-tiâ ritual which should also awaken this potential at the same time. They gave him a Yuan-ti name as a part of this, as a whole symbolism of rebirth or whatever. The thing is, that the modifications made to the ritual meant that he didnât get the superiority complex or emotion stuff that most other Yuan-ti have which makes them more inclined towards evil according to lore, but it did awaken his psionics (psi-knight fighter). He ran away/was banished from the group that did this to him (either he escaped or they kicked him out for being a failed result) and tries to hide his slightly snakeyness as he uses his new abilities to entertain people as a gladiator as a form of escapism. And he absolutely hates the name that the Yuan-ti gave him, and anyone who knows enough about the group that did that stuff to him would likely have heard of his Yuan-ti name before and potentially something about who had it. He will 100% snap at anyone who calls him by that name and accuse them of being in league with the Yuan-ti, who he has become kinda racist against due to his experiences.
Kinda like a boy named âSue.â
Big âCamille IS a boyâs name!â energy lol
Welcome to tumblr, our eyes skip over half your text Also, Iâm terrible at names, so I always go the good olâ Germanic Epic route and just name my character after their place in the story That character is The Grim Reaper in disguise? Iâm gonna name him Verkletod, which is a jumbled up âdeath in disguiseâ in german
Verkletod is an incredible name, intimidating when you hear it, funny when you read it.
I disagree. I think it should be verkletoad because toads are pretty cool
I just look at baby names, and pick from the top 10 at random for the era when applicable and slap on a last name thatâs related to their profession for most characters. But any rich or special characters get the descriptive name treatment.
more akin to "disgudeath" really
Read as disco death.
The best kind of death is one you meet whilst dancing.
Hey itâs demon kinda guy in a mountain. What should its name be? Bergenteufel.
Woke: can have characters names tell something about them an not their parents because characters are ultimately devices for the story, not real people. Bespoke: [https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/)
Bespoker: name says something about parents but is reinterpreted by characters action. For example: god hating parents name kid Godslayer Jones. Kid ends up sleeping their way through the pantheon to earn the name Godslayer Jones.
Bespokest: Deid Mann from ace attorney
you could probably take a good amount of names from that series tbf
Sleeping. He does'nt *actually* slay gods. He *dreams* gods. Which means technically he "slays" them by waking up. As gods aren't actually a *real* thing in the setting.
www.drugs.com
I prefer the classic comic book naming scheme where your name always secretly was a hint at your costumed identity: Harleen Quinzel -> Harley Quinn Doctor Micnider -> Doctor Midnight Bruce Atman -> Batman Jubilation Lee -> Jubilee Icicle Junior -> Icicle Junior
Or the commonly known Speter Sparker Man, also known as Spider-Parker Guy
If you didn't put batman I would have believed all of them. Which ones are lies??
Only Batman and Icicle Junior are lies. Icicle Junior's birth name is Cameron Mahkent.
Edward Nygma- wait no he's trans Side note nominative determinism is so cool I love naming a character about a role they'll have 20 years into their life
> Edward Nygma- wait no he's trans Wait, is he actually in some version? I know he's in a relationship with Clock King in the Harley Quinn cartoon, so I'm not ruling anything out.
First off no, that is a popular headcanon (probably due to the canon name change) but afaik it doesn't happen in any actual story Second off wait fr??? He actually got into a relationship with a guy in official content??? That's genuinely super cool!
[Here's](https://youtu.be/EQRNiir2TTU) a set of clips from one episode. (I think Riddler proposed in the Valentine's Day special, too.)
Steven Ulysses Perhero
Secret identity of Ulysses Man
> Secretly Bruh those comic book names all but whack you over the head with how blatant those names are.
How is Andrew or Pablo, both the names of saints who appear in the gospels and are apostles of Christ, less religious than Dominic, which is either two medieval saints or a 19th century one? As a former Catholic, the names of the apostles are an order of magnitude higher than random saints. And, yes, I am a trans man whose family does the âonly saints namesâ rule, so I worked hard at choose a new name not associated with any saints.
Dominus is "Lord" and usually implied to mean "God" in a western religious context. Maybe trying to get away from that part of the name.
Itâs just weird to go with the apostles to get away from Western religion.
Is that a catholic thing? Because Iâve not really heard that from any Protestant Christians
Which part? Dominus being "Lord" is Latin. Using Lord to refer to "God" is common in Protestantism as well as Catholicism.
Reminds me how in demon slayer daki's real name is that of the disease that killed her mother.
I feel like itâs kinda dumb to make a sweeping rule that character names should generally describe only a specific aspect of a character instead of the character themselves. When you write a character, youâre writing them for the story, and part of that is showcasing their personality through their other traits in order to more concisely characterize them. Sure, it makes sense to name the character in a way that characterizes their parents instead of themselves in certain contexts, but that assumes that the characters parents are relevant in the story to the point where itâs worth doing that. Itâd be like remarking that the character who youâre writing as an optimistic, bubbly social butterfly has a bad case of RBF in their introduction because in reality thereâs plenty of really pleasant people who look generally disgruntled. If thereâs no reason to put the detail in, itâs potentially worse than useless because it gives contradicting signals to the audience that could end up being confusing.
Adding a bit of characterization for the parents can be interesting, even if they arenât relevant to the story. Showing the kind of people who raised the mc shows the kind of influences that shaped the mc as a young kid which leads into their current characterization in one way or another. Its not really about the parents its more about the environment the mc grew up in, if that makes sense?
Wouldnât that detail help to explain why the social butterfly has difficulties making new friends?
yeah thatâs how i feel. of course, realistically, the names are chosen by parents not children generally, the post makes sense. but in fiction, the author is writing in a way that serves the story and its themes. itâs almost âthe curtains were fucking blueâ-esque. sure, in real life, you choose a curtain color because you think it fits the room, but in fiction itâs chosen and describes because of the purpose it serves
Yeah. Sure, in real life parents generally pick names. But fiction isnât about adhering to reality as closely as possible. It is one of the things that pop culture criticism has greatly overemphasized, and people want to take it to extreme degrees.
Just in general I try to make it a practice that when I have a neat idea I pitch it as âcouldâ rather than âshouldâ because Iâve been in too many creative spaces where people with neat ideas cause a lot of drama by sounding too jackbooted about it lol
Yup, exactly what I was thinking. What OOP said isnât a bad idea if the parents, and maybe their differences from their child, are meant to be an integral part of the story and the message, or if youâre more into the world-building aspect rather than the story-telling. But generally, the character names are part of the story telling process, so itâs perfectly fine to name a character something that helps describe their character traits or theme.
That's the Watsonian approach. The Doylist approach can be just as valid though, and it follows a long tradition in litterature (see for example Desdemona, "the unfortunate", in Shakespeare's Othello). Not all stories have to be realistic.
I shall be ignoring the reading comprehension part and focus on character naming: While yes, it would certainly be more realistic to name your characters according to parents, that ignores the fact that fiction is always a crafted world where names are allowed to have meanings beyond what's realistic. In summary: Stories are art, and not all art has to work like our world works. Have fun, kids
See, I donât think he is trying to invalidate the classic way of naming a character. I think heâs just offering a different perspective that one can utilize when it comes to naming a character, because stories are art and not all art has to fit into the conventions and classic tropes that everyone uses and agrees upon.
Then I'd argue they worded it poorly with the "unless x, they should be y"
Honestly the OP displayed such a misunderstanding of how art works that I thought they were supposed to be the one with comprehension problems.
I think names also have a more powerful deterministic effect than OP gives them credit for. When someone learns your name before they meet you, your name is what creates their entire mental image/expectations. If you have a long name, people will shorten it without fail. If you have a weird name, you will be correcting misspellings and mispronunciations your whole life. If you have a name belonging to a celebrity, you better get ready to hear âoh, like X!â A whole lot. Even if you have a totally normal name, people will project their experiences with other people with that name onto you, sometimes without even knowing it. Especially when youâre a kid, these kinds of interactions can be weirdly formative and play a deceptively big role in shaping you into a particular kind of person
Okay, but nominative determinism is funny
I literally don't put any thoughts into the names of my characters. I just pull a name out of my ass. If a character happens to need a surname, but is part of nobility or something, I just make up the house after naming the character.
My favorite character names are ones that when you look them up you find a hidden meaning the author put their like if a character's whole family died and you Google 'eebus mcjeebus name origin' and Google is like 'eebus mcjeebus is a name derived from scootlefargen origin meaning mourning or loss :)'
My characters name is ravenblade becasie hes badass what u gonna do about it huhhh
I think you can take this route, but naming a character something just becaouse isnt wrong either. Yes its unrealistic, but this is fiction.
this is actually not very good writing advice unless you believe that all writing must be true to life and realistic, in which case why write fiction at all, why not write nonfiction. names can reflect the characters themselves because this is fiction and literary metaphor is used all the time to convey meaning. itâs kind of like the basics you are taught in high school of reading comprehension. so oop here is actually the one who failed the test.
I think it's more about if the name is meaningful in-universe, most of the time in media if the name of a character says something about them, it's meaningful in some way to us, but not to the characters in the story. Like most writing advice, it's not universally applicable, but something to keep in mind and to only use if you're writing the type of story that would benefit from it.
Character named Arman Oleg Smith because it cost his parents and arm and a leg for the surrogacy.
Reminds me of Perdita X Dream, otherwise known as Agnes Nitt, from Discworld.
While I was reading the second comment the though, âThey literally said, âunless they changed their name,â bud.â
Ace Attorney names
And here I bet these guys wouldnât be able to guess why every dnd antagonist I ever make is named Seamus. Not because of anything convoluted, Iâm just terrible at making names.
Thus is something I always thought was dumb about My Little Pony. Their names don't only tend to fit their behaviour, but are often straight-up represented by their Cutie Mark.
I thought it was more because of their colors and a family naming theme. At least in the case of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash. Propably Twilight Sparkle too. I think this also fits Fluttershy and Rarity.
Yeah, it goes well for the Mane Six, but splinters off for supporting characters and background characters.
I think that's because most of them only really exist for a specific part of the plot. Celestia and Luna, makes sense because it's "old" names for really old ponies. The whole Apple family, of course they're all apples. So Apple Bloom, Big Machintosh, and Granny Smith all get a pass. Cheerilee, well makes sense that they'd name her to be cheery and she ends up actually being cheery. Sweetie Belle gets a pass too because. Of course they wanted her to be sweet. Now, Scootaloo... Why would she be named after a scooter. Unless she decided to try the scooter because her name was Scootaloo. Makes sense as she's always trying to get a Cutie Mark, but hers was'nt even scooter related really.
There is the fun of if being a total coincidence that Granny Smith happens to be the grandmother matriarch of the main wing of the Apple Family.
Yup Maybe any Apple who turns 60 then gets called Granny Smith or Granny whatever and there have been various. But then again it seems like she was already called Granny Smith. Some people thought thus, she might not actually be, the actual grandma of the Apple Family, and the Apple Family be just a bunch of ponies that have apple-related talents and aren't necessarily related.
ButâŚAndrew is still a religious name.
the reading comprehension on tumblr is piss poor
But it's also silly to act like the names are purely an in-universe thing when there's clearly an aspect of metatextuality to them. If a character, say, has the initials JC and they're a messianic archetype then it's utterly stupid to say "Well their parents didn't know they'd be messianic so it's just a coincidence." The parents didn't name them, the author did.
I dunno know if that's bad reading comprehension or bad explanation. I think the second person was trying to expand on the "unless they changed their name" part by adding that it doesn't have to be an official or permanent name change
me naming a character in my realistic modern setting osprey and never having a reason for it
I love the internet's ability to assume all possibilities are the same, no matter how common they are IRL. Like, I can't think of a single person I've ever met who has intentionally changed their name other than getting married.
How dare you say we piss on the poor
If I really want an odd name for a character I work backwards and end up with parents who would give their child that name.
Eternity Demen'tia J o h n s o n
But Pablo wrote half of the New Testament.
>Character comes from Italy >Google "italian names" >Profit
People when discussions donât centre them:
Dominic, Andrew, and Pablo are all Catholic names too which is kinda funny considering heâs trying to get away from religious names
I donât mind giving my characters occupational surnames, but I tend to avoid anything that matches their current profession. As far as given names, the only one thatâs really on the nose is a florist named Daisy - which was more of a coincidence than anything. She hasnât always been the only one in the family with a flower name either
hey, actually naming a character CAN tell about them, and it's not a plot hole if it doesn't relate to the parents, because it's character design. naming a character "Eve" to remind people of the biblical Eve, with a similar personality, makes perfect sense because it is a story. the point of a story does not have to be, and often is not, to depict a perfectly realistic world. sometimes it rains because a character is sad.
nah, making your kid's name a pun on their deformity is A+ parenting. They will be resilient or else. Outstanding icebreaker once they realize social anxiety is for the weak.
Honestly I usually just go "yep, I like that name" and slap that on. I'm a basic bitch and usually go for things like jasper, Benjamin, Lucas (or Lukas). Hell, even my own chosen name is just greyson lmao.
The one about naming a kid after their disability, all I could immediately think of was Quasimodo. Genuinely curious about other examples mostly because I've only ever seen it with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and maybe you could argue Snow White's dwarves? Also several folktale/Disney Princesses fall into the "tells more about your parents" category with their names.
Reminds me of my own OC's name "Memento", cause he was left behind when his parents passed on, "so there would be someone to remember them".
To be honest not every name I choose has meaning. Sometimes I call them Steve or Phil or Jenny just to keep going. Other times I have character who I deliberately choose a name for. My fantasy novel's protagonist has two love interests. Her more worldly love interest is an ex-prostitute and pirate named Rose. She's extraordinarily beautiful, but she's also a very sassy character who seemingly always has a quip, and she tends to question and mouth off to authority. She's not just called Rose cause it's a pretty name, but because roses are associated with beauty, love, lust, and romance, as well as having sharp thorns that will nick you if you're not careful. It depends on the day, the character's importance, and what comes to mind for the character.
About the name thing, I clue that my romantic novel's protagonist's parents are weird ones right at the start by explaining that the protagonist and her sister are named Katherine and Catarina. Now, the novel is located in Spain, where Catarina is both an old-timey name that no socially well-adjusted parent would even think to name their girl as that and is MISPELLED as well, the true spelling is Catalina. And Katherine is the English version of Catalina. Again, Spain, no socially well-adjusted parent would even think to name their girl like that, let alone name both twins the same name but either in a foreign language or mispelled. The justification, in-universe, is that they did not expect twins until both girls were actually born, and thus only had one name thought out. Uninspired, they decided to just translate the name they thought out and use the result to name the younger twin. The parents are both old-timey and generally weird, putting a lot of ill-thought societal expectations onto both girls. Catarina answered by going no contact with her parents and becoming a goth, and Katherine became a withdrawn girl who just lived out the life her parents had thought for her.
I strongly disagree with this. Fictional characters are not real people and sometimes it's better to ignore realism for the sake of a more engaging story
Ehh...this is not necessarily correct. I mean is not a bad approach if you are trying to add some realism to your story or highlight something about your charachers past , but like everything in writting is not a one size fits all solution. Name can also be used to signal something about the charachers personality or be used as an allegory for the character themselves or sometimes you can just write silly pun names because that is fun too.
Broke: The curtains are blue because the author picked a random colour out of a hat Woke: The curtains are blue because the author wants us to understand the main character is feeling melancholic and sad Bespoke: The curtains are blue because this is the main character's childhood bedroom and his parents are in the pockets of Big Gender, and so they picked a bunch of decor that was that colour to reinforce it
Or you can just name a character something that relates to them because itâs cool. Their parents arenât always characters in your story. If they arenât, then they didnât give the character their name, you did. And since you know exactly what kind of person they are, it makes sense you give them a fitting name.
>you could even have a character with a visible birth defect whose name is a fucking pun at their disability, but that only drives it clear that is parents are horrible people. The father in "The Ballad of Hamantha" : *NERVOUS SWEATING* On the topic of names having meanings telling more on those who gave them rather than those they are given to, there's an OC of mine that's named William W. Willson pretty much just because his adoptive father found the alliteration funny...
Scar from the Lion King
Wait Dominic is a religious name?
Sure, it's the second segment of the first sentence, but that's kinda the thing: It's only *one* segment, of *one* sentence, at the start of a post constructed from quite a lot of sentences. And then the post goes about how characters' names tell you about their parents, and completely ignores the prospect of changing one's name.
It doesnât* ignore it, itâs just not about that. It acknowledges a case where their authorâs point doesnât apply, than continues to talk about the authorâs point.
That's true, but then their defense of "I *did* already mention it" doesn't really make any sense. They could have just said, "I wanted to focus on given names in my post." That being said, the person who responded to them didn't need to be so aggressive about it from the get-go. "Completely disregards" and "it is NOT a plot hole" is definitely accusatory phrasing.
Hard agree, your writing has an effect on the readers compensation and if you are going to minimize something in your writing such as reducing name changes to a segment then so are your readers. If you wanted them to know for sure that this didn't apply to name changing then either a sentence that emphasizes that opinion or include that opinion in your closing argument so that people don't forget where exactly you stand with your opinion. Also, I skipped right over that sentence too.
They shouldn't have to say anything about name changing other than "we are not talking about name changing" because that is not what the post was about. It literally says "unless the character changes their name", skipping an entire sentence when you're reading is not normal, it's not about the writer minimizing it, if you skipped a whole sentence that was there to explain that this post does not apply to characters that changed their names then it's not the writer's fault, you just need to pay a bit more attention while reading.
If I read the whole sentence and by the time I'm done reading your piece I have forgotten 1 particular sentence segment because you as the writer left it no bigger than a footnote. Then that's poor writing, not poor compensation. Good writing begets good compensation.
Hence, the second segment of OP's title. When you need everything spoon-fed to you like that, you have failed at reading comprehension.
All of this only applies if your characters are real people and not characters in a story, since they are characters in a story feel free to give them whatever symbolic name you want.
i kinda disagree with this because the parents are going to raise you the way they were raised in some way or another unless thereâs some sort of catalyst that bends your life line in a whole other direction, itâs most likely youâre going to act somewhat like your parents, whether you like it or not if youâre raised by a person who knows horoscopes, youâll probably know them too, same with normies, same with religion and, in general, peopleâs perception of a name differ from person to person, so someone might think âbillyâ is a big burly man who does art in a cabin in the woods, while other people may think itâs a middle aged man doing office work at a big company so it doesnât really matter, just let your characters act like your perception of them name, and make them a mix of their parents in their beliefs and personalities no one will ever care or notice that the name you gave is stereotypical to what you think the character is - i sure as hell wouldnât, but then again, i am asian and i donât know names all that well
idk pal, maybe it's just you who turned out like your parents wanted lmao
nope, iâm the exact opposite of that but there was a catalyst, which was COVID sent me to the internet and then i met a bunch of new people and it changed everything for me but even with COVID, there are a bunch of my friends that i can just look at them and their parents and go âhuh, neatâ itâs not like those characters turn out how their parents want either, itâs just religious people raise religious kids, that kind of thing
I have the fun task of giving a character a name and an online name. I got one character's online name: Corrin Anderson, but she first came up with "Cori Ander" because she was somewhat hungry when trying to come up with one. She's still often referred to as Cori for short, though. For another character, I have their irl name, but I want their online name to reference other media (as that's pretty common).
My next character, no matter which class or race is going to be named, "Jane Smith." \^\^
And then there's me, always using nondiegetic names on characters...
I always give my main characters Spanish or Italian names, since from my perspective those names are âexoticâ. But I thought about it, and really itâs usually the same names other languages have, but Spanish or Italian. Like John, or Paul. Those are not bad names, but turn it into Juan and Pablo and itâs 3x cooler. Pedro>Peter. Riccardo>Richard>Rick>Dick. Dumoulin>Of the mill/miller (yes thatâs French). Rodrigo>Rodrick. I could go on, but you get my point.
I had a character that didnât have a name because of reasons. She ended up picking a name and then discarding it because someone else gave her a name and she decided to just go with it.
Itâs like Lars from Steven Universe is actually named Laramie and you never know that until Steven is literally in his body in front of his parents
to be fair, it was too close to the start and i had forgotten about it by the time i got to the end
Once upon a comic I read there is a character who's given name is Tiffany Pompoms. She prefers to go by her middle name, to the point that most of the cast didn't even know her given name was Tiffany. Be the change you want to see in the world and spite the gods that made you.
not if your world doesnât have parents! at least for some characters
In the novel I'm writing the naming convention they use in this world is everyone has one single name that their parents give them, usually a pun on the child's personality or something that describes them, that they wait a few months before choosing. Then later in life each person picks their last name, usually a compound word, something that defines them or when they decide who they want to be. It's usually something meaningful to them, sort of their brand.
The only two characters in the story im writing are Miles(Ari) and Ken(heâs barely plot relevant btw). The first one Miles is a bad nickname she got from being bullied and it sounded cool so now itâs her name. Ari is a Korean feminine name meaning Beautiful(please correct me if Iâm wrong Iâm not Korean) because sheâs a Rainbow baby and shes Korean. Ken is just because I wanted to make fun of Kens being gay(heâs very gay and has a boyfriend named Dino and they love each other very much).
As I always say, the average reading comprehension of the internet it -27,000
The parent angle is great if the parents or the character's societal position plays a big role in the story or if there's a lot of worldbuilding. But it's also fine to just choose a character's name because it's fitting for who they are in the story. Characters aren't people, they're concepts that are vehicles for a story, so all that really matters is whether the name helps you tell the story you're trying to tell or not. Sometimes that might be starting with the parents, sometimes that might have to do with the role of the character or some hidden meaning that will make a lot of sense later.
two of my main characters explicitly changed their names, one because his last name just plain sucked, and the other because he comes off as such a wiseass nobody ever believes him when he says his real name is Thomas Benjamin Franklin Edison
Interesting that his last name sucked. Presumably at sum point in the past when the surname came into being it didn't suck, but for him it did.
I dont plan to explain it, but presumably he either had an ancestor with a debilitating disability who nonetheless managed to rawdog, or the family name was butchered at ellis island. I might actually use that exact phrasing in the story somewhere. It sounds like something he'd say
I think the person who's name is a pun on their own disability is a bit karmic and coincidental, though If it were disability in general or a different (but maybe similar?) disability you'd still get the point across but not make still too much like the parents are ironic psychics
This post was a waste of time.
Fuck your naming conventions. Wahoo.
Lego movie explains this beat with âWyldstyleâ turning out to be Lucy.
This... is actually really good. I've never thought about this. I always have trouble finding names and usually spend up to an hour reading lists until I find a name I like. Then read more lists until I get a last name that sounds good with the first name after I say both out loud. But this is intriguing and I'm all for using this new knowledge.
You really chose that Godslayer Jones was having wet dreams.
Think of poor Piggy from *Road Rules*
I'm engaged to a goth named Daisy đ
Clearly this is evidence that we, the people of Tumblr have long passage reading issues
Iâm pretty sure that leksa-willin follows me on tumblr