On frozen winter nights in Minneapolis, I used to lie in the dark and listen to the high-school hockey scores. They were read out on the radio—hockey is always news in Minnesota—but I didn't much care who won. I was 10 or 11 years old, a little bit lonely and a little bit bored, and for some reason I found comfort and distraction listening to the names of towns and cities around the state. Hibbing, Cloquet, Eveleth: the pinch and chap of the Iron Range, with traces of the Finns and French who settled there. Crookston, Warroad, Thief River Falls: the dark romance of the forested northwest. Moorhead, Brainerd, Saint Cloud: the dull thud of the flat and unlovely middle and its Norwegian bachelor farmers. Pipestone, Owatonna, Blue Earth: the dreamy vowels of the riverine south. Did I want to go to these places? No more than I wanted to go to Narnia or Middle-Earth. But I found in their names a kind of secular liturgy, beautiful and full of promise. Only later, reading George Rippey Stewart's Names on the Land, did I discover that I wasn't alone.
I guess one of the things that's nice about the Realms is the fact that you can get away with a wild assortment of names there, just like you can in America. But for a lowly modder working in the Realms, most places have already been christened and canonized, so I don't get to make them up--though I do take liberties once in a while. (The Netherese library of Nevreveh where Manfred discovered his important secret was my invention, for instance.)
The names of H&C's characters gave me more freedom. "Ianth" comes from "Ianthe," and some or all of the associations I wanted from that name are probably obvious. "Manfred" is named after the main character in Byron's dramatic poem of the same name. "Vroman" I just liked the sound of.
1 comments:
I love names too. If there's one thing I love it's language, but names fascinate me especially. I've got more dictionaries, books on words, Thesauri, books on archaic English (my current precious is "Lost Beautios of the English Language" by Charles Mackay. It took ages to acquire that, but finally I can claim I own a book that contains a rhyme for "Silver": "Gilver", which means "To ache or throb". Also, didn't you always want to know the past tense of the verb "Slit"? [little hint, it's not a nice word to call a woman these days.]).). In total, I've got about 13 or 14, and that's not counting the two "The Meaning of Liff" books (though these are nice too. They give me the chance to read names of cities from all over the world, and also have a good laugh. Oh, and believe it or not, I've words from those to name characters too, but only because I didn't have any other word books on hand at the time. :P ).
I take ages deciding on the names of my characters. My character for Harp and Chrysanthemum was called "Cavessine Nori", as far as I recall. I can't right now remember from what I took "Cavessine", but it has to do something with water or fish. Nori is the Seaweed you'll find wrapped around Sushi. She's a Water Genasi. :)
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