What word processor are you using? Most (all?) of them will have a search and replace feature, so you don't need to make the changes manually...
True. but there are a few times where her name is spelled out. Like the first time her best friend tries to pronounce it the first time she sees it.Plus there is the rewrite of some jokes that was made of her name.
Yeah me either. It looks like it should be either 'Nwaaas' or 'Nn-Waaas'. And that's really the problem, it just doesn't scan. You can come up with non-real and fantastical names like (plucking from books I've read recently) Magneric or Kalkator but because the letters make the sounds you expect them to it's not a major problem. The problem is when you have the word there and as you run your eye over it you still don't know how to say it. Find and replace will help you here. Go through your text editor of choice, bring up the advance find and replace tool, type it in, job done. You can do that manually, finding each use and replacing yourself, or using 'Find All' to let you put a yellow highlight behind them so they are easy to find and change yourself. But I promise it's not as hard as you think, I promise. I've had to do this kind of stuff and it really only take a couple of hours. As for character stuff; the character comes form the character not the name. Names stick in readers heads because they like the character. Think about Harry Potter; not a memorable or unique name but it sticks nevertheless. James Bond isn't a cool name really but he's a cool character. I know someone who called her kids Rogue (as in X-Men) and Harley (as in Davidson not Quinn, he's a boy). And I'm sure she thought that was all very unique and interesting but as far as I'm concerned that's close to child abuse. And her kids are just kids, neither of whom have grown up to be especially chuffed at their burnout of a mother who gave them weird names that they have to live with forever, doubly so because they don't shorten at all. Characters aren't real people so we don't have to worry quite so much but it's the same impulse. Just like my friend your heart is in the right place, wanting names that will stand out from the crowd, but ultimately it's a big misguided to be quite so unique.
You've obviously never met a multi-national family. Names are often a source of headaches because you do quite literally have the dilemma of somebody in the family or possibly people in any future country of residence not being able to pronounce your child's name and ridiculing them. My husband's name is a case in point, which is Jan. Common Czech and German name - I probably also in Dutch and Swedish I imagine. It's the foreign version of John. Guess how your son's gonna get treated if you lived in England and named your son Jan? My own name, incidentally, is English-Chinese-Czech minus the -ova So is my daughter's. I've basically just guaranteed her a life of confusion because there's quite literally nobody who would ever be able to pronounce her full name correctly Anyway, Nwah - I immediately pronounced it exactly as the spelling goes: N-wah! It sounded like perhaps a fat baby seal yawning? and yes I promptly forgot there's even an S in the name. I don't think it's worth fighting for an odd name for the sake of being odd. Everyone knows Harry Potter and his name is iconic - and it is perhaps one of the most ordinary names. What's gonna make your character stick in a reader's mind shouldn't be his name - it should be his personality, what he does, what he achieves. In fact, an easy name is better - everyone remembers the name John Green or Stephen King. But for the love of all that's good, I cannot tell you the name of this Indian author I once read and whose writing I enjoyed, which is Chitra Banerjee Divakruni. The only reason I could write that for you was because I googled it. Yes, Chitra thingyabob is way more unique than either King or Green, but whose name do you actually remember at the end of the day, once you close your browser and put down your book and all you have is your memory for reference? Easy and ordinary isn't bad. Trying too hard is. If you have a strong character and if you have strong writing to back this up - trust in your skills as a writer - your readers will remember, and it won't be because he's got an unpronounceable name. Besides, is your character's odd name really the first and perhaps only thing any reader's gonna remember? Have a name overshadow all that other good characterisation and riveting plot? Because the reader will remember the odd name - but perhaps at the expense of everything else. Also, once, I did actually put down a book because I couldn't stand the names. I couldn't take any of them seriously. The MC was called Pug. There were characters called Macro, Gardan and Chitachikala or something else odd. There was another called Ashen-Shugar. Now, bad names will not doom your book as this one I refer to is actually rather successful - but it certainly lost at least one reader. One could question how many more readers it lost based on bad names alone, which hardly seems worth it after all the effort and time you took to writing a whole book.
Hehe, oh yes, I have known families that have literary started family feuds over the name of a child. But I've also known people who have name their child "whatever" just because it sounded cute. Heck, people name their children for all sorts of reasons. As for the uniqueness and the "hard to pronounce" and about how simple names work too. I'm not against simple names. The other MC of my story is named Dawn Graves. Very simple IMO but I think stands on her own as a character as the story progresses. The reason I went with it originally, is to help emphasis just how out of place this character really is compared to everyone else. I do think Nwahs can work as a name but I don't want to start a war over it because you are right; a hard to pronounce name can turn people off of a story before they give it a chance. So I may just go ahead and change it back to the original, "Shawn". But thank you all for your opinion. It really has given me somethings to think about.
Actually, calling a girl "Shawn" will be unusual and distinctive enough. I know a lot of kids, I've encountered a great many unusual names, but Shawn as a female name I've never come across. Shawna, yes. So "Shawn" would definitely stand out. (BTW, how does "Nwahs" fit her personality? Not to be rude, but even knowing how you want it pronounced, I hear the sound a little kid makes when he taunts another kid and sticks out his tongue. And you do realize that her life would be one long conflict with teachers who couldn't pronounce it? In fact, it looks specially designed to put subs in a bad situation. "It's pronounced Nosh!" says the child, obviously meaning "How can you be so stupid?" Not a good start to the day.) But it sounds like you're rethinking it. I think that's the prudent thing. What your own friends felt about the name may be very different from the reaction of the random reader.
I agree unfortunately the world is becoming filled with people with unusual names. Specially this day and age. A quick youtube search shows tons of examples. As for the name Shawn. I've known a few women named Shawn. In fact the reasearch ive done into it described Shawn being the female spelling where Sean was the male spelling. As for the name Nwahs fitting her. Its jinda hard to explain without writing a bunch out on a cellphone. Lets just say shes always been the odd one out and the name is a further expression of that.
There was a Turkish lad at my school by the name 'Cem', pronounced 'Jem/Gem', and woe betide any and all substitute teachers who called him anything else.
I've never had any personal experience with it myself. I know my wife does has though. honestly I found her name very easy to say but for some reason people just have a hard time saying it the first time they see it. But I've also read some stories online about how their will be some wild and crazy name and the parent will say it's pronounce using symbols that are not even in the name. Ugh. Hurts my head sometime.
My name is Gaelic and lived in France for two and a half years. Every time we had a substitute teacher or on the first day of the new year they'd pronounce it wrong and the class would shout the correct pronunciation back. I've also heard it said that Irish expats in America legally change the spelling of their name to one that is phonetically the same.
Which, come to mention it, is what Shawn is. (I know a young couple of Scottish extraction who named their firstborn Eoin. Same name; a Gaelic variation on John. He's going to have fun in school, but his younger brother will have more. His is Tamhas (Towas), and how fast will his American teachers learn that the mh is pronounced w?)
Those two will probably have an experience similar to mine. Incidentally I'm the only one of myself and my two siblings with a distinctly Gaelic name so my siblings never really experienced that problem.
Can you think of other names that are odd without being a pain to pronounce? My maiden name is Ng. I'm not even kidding. Talk about a pain to pronounce...
Actually, it's a simple sound. Quite literally, it's "Mm". But the lack of vowels baffle Europeans so much that, well, they just can't believe it. And then on the conversation goes. I've had the same conversation so many times I can recite it to you. It has, however, been a constant source of amusement for us when people couldn't pronounce our surname. Back in the day when promotional callers still rang your landline (I no longer have a landline so I have no clue if this still goes on) - anyway, back in the day, callers would ring up and say, "Hello, could I talk to... erm... ummm.... eeeerrr...." And it was just fun to listen to them all flustered and awkward I usually help them out after a while and ask, "Do you mean NG?" (the literal letters) And they would always be so relieved!
Oh yeah, landlines are still a thing. Back a few year ago me and my wife decided to go back to one in order to save some much needed funds and OMG!! I swore the company sold that number to every telemarketer on the planet. The damn thing would not stop ringing and those who we wanted to call, family and friends, could never get thru. So we just got rid of it and fund some cheap cell phone plan.
My first read-through of this my mind changed landlines to landmines. I was very confused for a short bit.
And not uncommon in China and among Chinese emigrants, either. Besides yourself, I know two other people whose surname is Ng, and them I know (or knew) face to face.
Yeah it's actually a very ordinary surname lol. My Czech surname is actual more unusual than my Chinese one, but my Czech one has vowels, which will always be less baffling than my Chinese one lol. Even amongst the Czechs they go "Whaaat?" when I tell them my married name. Ng is a fun surname really. Jokes aplenty. Because the sound "Mm" is actually used to denote the negative of something - eg. I don't like this = Mm-like, don't want to eat this = Mm-eat, not going somewhere = Mm-go. You get the idea. And because words often sound the same - it's their written form that gives them their meaning - yeah you can end up with some hilarious names. Case in point: my uncle's name sounds like it means "I'm not cold" His name actually means "The country's pillar". But there you go with Chinese sounds and the joys of having the name Ng Only in Cantonese though. In Mandarin there's no such problem since Ng is spelt and pronounced as Wu, and their negative form is more like Bu, even though the way you construct the negative form would be the same.
Sounds like Japanese puns, for example, the given name Mitsuki can be written as 'three moons' 'full moon' or 'beautiful moon'. Bleach protagonist Ichigo gets jokes because his name is a homophone for strawberry but his name as written with the characters 'one' and 'protect'. Unlike Chinese, Japanese doesn't have subtle intonation differences, which in some ways makes them worse XD
Our current landline is one digit away from the doctor's surgery. We've had messages left asking us to contact them with the results of their tests...only they don't leave a number for us to let them know that they got the wrong number! Our last landline was similar to the guard-house of the local army depot. Late on Saturday night, and very plaintively. "Sarge, I've missed the last bus back to camp!"
Strawberry poor guy. What's the kanji for Mitsuki? I once had a student called Mizuki (美月), which meant beautiful (美) moon (月). Maybe 月 can be pronounced both ずき (zuki) and つき (tsuki)? I think I've derailed the thread......
Exactly that, I'm on my phone so I can't type it here right now, but you can see that the zu has dots? That is the thing that is changing tsu to zu. By the same token, the da in Honda and ta in Tanaka are the same kanji, which means rice paddy.
Tsu (つ ) is not the same letter as zu (ず ). The root of zu (ず) is su (す). When without the dots, it is su, and when the dots are there, then it is zu. Tsu is a different letter. Although in looking for the hiragana to paste into this messsage, I found out づ is also zu. Anyway i don't even speak Japanese so...
