My character names?

One of my languages is filled with words like barschut, arundit, Quaru, balchu, Balur, Jarud, dasfaru, barstul, etc. It's not all arus of course but it may have been a subconscious effort to make words so similar they make my other words seem incredibly diverse. Just to stick it to some people. BTW, barstul means chair. Yes, they're heavy drinkers. Why do you ask?

 

Exactly right! U's in his language are almost always long. The U's in his name are somewhere between uh and ue, like ok as in book. He's based on Hercules Mulligan and the Marquis de Lafayette as they appear in Hamilton. He's a spy who later becomes a general. But he's for a spinoff prequel about Khriza that I won't be publishing for quite a while. It's a side project I got hooked on.

 

Oh nice. Nailed it. I'm a pronunciation genius.

You've put a lot of effort into this world haven't you? How long has it taken you?

 

It's been a labor of some six to seven years. So I'm loath to change certain names. I was very adamant until recently over Zaktarash's name. Now he's Daktarash, which actually has a meaning in my books. It means daktarlike. Daktars are creatures I conceived of this current draft. So that would be last year, I think.

 

Oh wow. How have you kept yourself glued to it for so long? I scrap stories if I work on them for more than a year without completion.

 

It keeps evolving and now it's too big to drop. I think it makes me drop all other story ideas I get to be honest... But I keep them on the shelf for when I'm eventually done with this series. (Which will not be for a long time.)

 

I cant write more than one thing either. I have no idea how people have more than one project at once.

 

With my Khriza prequel, I'm planning on writing it while I'm writing my main series, because the books in that series are going to be longer. But I'm not doing much work on it since I'm so busy with Swordfist, which I haven't even finished. (I have a rough draft though, so I know where I'm going with it.) By now though I pretty much have the first book in the Khriza prequel all plotted out in my head, and I've posted on the forum about it to help flesh out the details. Duel between Alkandar and Arabur? That's for the Khriza book. Battle where Ragul dies? That's also for the prequel. I was advised against writing a prequel by a forum member, but the more I thought about the story and fleshed it out, the more it became a story in its own right that could stand on its own and now I feel it needs to be told. Just not now, while I'm working on the main series. But when I'm writing the prequel, there's going to be a lot of references to the backstory of the original series, because that's what it's telling, plus some things you don't hear about in my original series. It's like when Obi-Wan mentioned the Clone Wars once and you wanted to know all about them. (I promise my prequel series will be better than the Star Wars prequels though.)

 

If your prequel can stand alone and it's important I would completely disregard that.

 

Well, I have to turn in now. Goodnight!
Fun fact about all my dragon cultures' beds before I go:
Khrizans sleep in beds like humans. However, because Khrizans are bigger than humans, with bigger proportions like wingspan, their beds are much larger.
Idrakagar sleep on mattresses sans beds. Sometimes the mattress is mound-shaped. (They're okay on the floor too.)
Vrakardians stand on square pads with a square pillow attached to one side. Then their body swings downward at a complete opposite angle from their waking stance and their beak goes on the pillow while their tail sticks up in the air.
Dragans (DRAY-guns, not DRAG-guns) sleep on circular mats with their bodies curled in a spiral. (It's not a very tight spiral; they're not that flexible.)
Frazadrags sleep in beds, but absolutely must have the bed in a pit instead of raised (dig a bed-sized hole in your floor , make it a couple feet deeper and put the bed in it) and sleep with extremely heavy blankets-- the heavier the better. (They don't sleep well in warm climates where the thick blankets make them hot, but normal ones aren't heavy enough.)
And lastly, Teradraks sleep perched on branches or standing up on the floor. (Teradraks are not as human-like as Khrizans, but they are human-sized.)

 

Well, is this thread going to keep going? I don't feel like we're done here.

 

I'll probably get a lot of slack for this, but I don't like any of the names because I didn't make them.

Just kidding! Serious answer below: Don't hit me

*Shrug* I'm learning that with writing, you have to take everything with a grain of salt (except my advice, which is flawless in every way ). With the issue of your characters' names, what you might want to do is seriously consider the feedback from people who read your work and take other feedback lightly, since literally all of your names are made up and can be confused out of context.

If you're worried about name confusion when you're looking for feedback on the forum, you can shorten/rename them to ones that are easier for us to pronounce and just mention in your post that you're subbing names.

Good luck!
Totally not jealous that all but my character's names are simply whatever I could come up with and have no real meaning in the story.

 

[draws back fist for knockout punch]

Just kidding, thanks! (Also, handy tip: if you're making up names, you can also make up meanings. Unless you're borrowing real names. Like if all your characters are named Aaron and Cassius, Tadashi, and Jango and stuff. (My, what a diverse list of names! What kind of book are you writing where there's a Hebrew name, a Latin name, a Japanese name and a Star Wars name?)

Example: when I was writing, I had a character named Rissa. Then I was like, I need these guys to have last names instead of just "son/daughter of" names (which I use now as middle names called rashnames.) So I came up with a prefix-based system and I was like, hey, what if Rissa is the modern version of Rishta, who he's descended from? Maybe that's where he got his last name from. Okay. Arrissa. And Rissa is a blacksmith, so what if Rishta was a blacksmith and now his name means "smith"? Cool. Rissa Arrissa. And now that makes the protagonist (Ginzaekh Arrissa)'s uncle Nat Arrissa. Oh! What if Arrissa is a generic last name? So Zarakharn can use Zahn, which I've just now decided is a generic first name, to become Zahn Arrissa? Oh yeah, and since Ginzaekh's mom isn't an Arrissa by blood, she should be called something else since Ar- indicates blood. What if An- indicated marriage? Yeah, and then Ad- meant "the whole family" and At- meant "the married couple"? And just to spice things up, what if Ak- was like Mr.? And it could even be attached to the first name.

You know, stuff like that. Or it could be as simple as, "Hey, I know someone named Kayce Brewer, so what if the name Kaesi meant brewer? I'm a genius."

 

Well, see, Jango got turned into a dragon so he needs to find a way to turn back into a human. He heard that Japanese people have all kinds of stories of dragons, so he visited japan and kidnapped Tadashi and ended up befriending (him? her? no idea). They then heard of the historian, Cassius, who, once Jango told the story, showed them a portal to Mars, where Israel secretly has a colony. Thus the adventure continues!

Hehe, on a slightly more serious note, the names are more like Valfredo (MC), Arnack, Merrath, Katel, Roth, and Riome for (some of) the males, and Spearis, Elina, Opea, Niamo, Verth, and Pelion for (some of) the females. There aren't really any differences in the names between different dragon clans, which is my real concern, but I'm also not sure if it really matters. Either way, I like their names.

I might change Roth or Riome's name, since they're from the same clan and are mentioned and used on the same page, but I'm going to wait for beta readers to complain before actually doing it. After all, if there isn't an issue, why change it?

 

Roth and Riome sound fine. Only the uneducated would neglect to pronounce the e at the end.
For future reference, Tadashi is a male name. Have you seen Big Hero 6? There's also the origami artist Tadashi Mori.

 

I saw Big Hero 6 once when it first came out. Cute movie, but um, I forget names easily .

I actually meant for Riome to be pronounced "Ree (as in real) ome (as in Rome)." So basically it's the word "Rome" with a long "e" between the first two letters. Is that not how you pronounce it? It's not important that it's pronounced correctly, but I'm curious.

 

Nevermind. It looked like it was derived from Greek, so I assumed the e was long. My mistake. What a twist though. The people who would pronounce Hermione incorrectly would pronounce Riome correctly. I like that for some reason. It feels ironic somehow.

 

Have you thought about giving your characters surnames? I find that makes them more realistic...

 

I just didn't include them here. Yes, they do have surnames. The surnames are relative. As an example:

Ginzaekh, the protagonist, is of the family that takes its name from a dragon named Rissa. So his arname, or family name, is Arrissa. This is the one he is most known by. His mother, Rika, married into the Arrissa family, so she is an Anrissa. (Her arname would be her maiden name; males also use annames, taking their wife's arname, but this is not as common.) She and Ginzaekh's father would be called the Atrissas. The whole family would be called the Adrissas. Formally, the prefix Ak- would be attached to their names. Example: Rika, formally, would be referred to as Akanrissa. Or, if she were referred to by her first name (kind of like how Samwise Gamgee calls Frodo 'Mr. Frodo') she would be Akrika. If referred to by her full name formally, it would be Rika Akanrissa. For the emperor, the Az- prefix is used for formality, so he would be called Zarakharn Azarkhriza.

Then of course there are rashnames, which identify one's parent and serves as a middle name. Ginzaekh is named after his father, so he is Ginzaekh Ginzaekhrash. Ginzaekh's father would be called Ginzaekh Rissarash because his father's name is Rissa (who is named after their arfather, the ancestor they take their name from.)

 

That's funny, because I did exactly that. I read "Hermione" as "her-mee-own" until Book 4 when she teaches Krum it's "Her-my-oh-nee" and I read "Riome" as "Ree-ome", sounds like Rome.