Subject: More thoughts on names.
Author:
Posted on: 2011-05-10 06:27:00 UTC
I'm gonna come down on the side of "names are important" and basically agree with Miah: the name itself may not shape who you are, but it absolutely affects how people form expectations about you and react to you, and the same goes for characters. The way I was taught, if the name you choose for your character doesn't tell you something about them, you're doing it wrong. That doesn't mean it has to spell it out in bold-face neon, like Suethors do it--far from it. At the very least, though, it has to suit them (as well as being appropriate for the setting). For me, it always boils down to "it feels/sounds right," but there's a lot that goes into that. Some names sound happy or sad, thoughtful or careless, strong or weak, etc., and that's because of a) the sounds that make them up, b) associations with other bearers past and present, and to a greater or lesser extent, c) the etymology. I'll often spend quite a long time searching for the right fit if the character is meant to hold a prominent role, taking all the above into consideration.
Careless naming can come back to bite you. For instance, why on Earth or off it would a self-respecting guy choose to call himself "Supernumerary"? I have some idea why now, but when Nume started turning into a real character instead of a silly joke name for use in games of Fill the Plothole, it was an issue for me. I'm really grateful that "Evarel" turns out to be a variation on a real name, or I'd have faced a serious dilemma when writing the former RP character into my original fiction, which is on the more realistic side of the fantasy spectrum. (The idiot still insists on bynaming himself Starshade, but that's just the kind of ridiculous showboating thing he would do, so it works.)
As for myself, I took ages to choose Neshomeh as my Internet name, and I picked it because it means something relevant to me and, more importantly, it sounds like me. I didn't choose any of the other words with the same meaning because they didn't fit. Neshomeh does. This is terribly important online, because let's face it, if I was still calling myself SoulFinder, you guys wouldn't look at me the same way: the first thing you'd see of me would be two words smushed together by a silly high school girl who hadn't thought better of it yet.
Names are important.
~Neshomeh