"It isn't just one of your holiday games": A Rant

[truepenny]

I don't know about where you are, but where I am? The roads are crap. I had an errand I absolutely had to run this afternoon, and I'm actually just grateful I made it there and back again without, er, untoward excitement.

*heaves huge sigh of relief*
*has coughing fit*

***

I'm thinking about names again. And, because I'm me, I'm thinking about my thinking about names. melymbrosia has been posting about a TV show called Everwood, about which I know purely fuck-all, except the characters' names. Two of them are named Ephram and Colin, and in the middle of reading Melymbrosia's thoughts about the slash or lack thereof in their relationship onscreen, I realized that I was interested, not because I know or care about the show (as I said, I don't), but because one of them is named Ephram. And "Ephram" is just such a cool name that something good needs to happen with it.

It's one of the things that maddens me about J. K. Rowling, that sometimes her naming is spot-on, and sometimes it just so isn't. "Albus Dumbledore" is a terrible name, even if dumbledore is an archaic word for bumble-bee. "Harry Potter" is a terrible name--yes, I know, couldn't sound more completely ordinary if she'd named him John Smith, but it's still a TERRIBLE name. (And it bugs the crap out of me that apparently Harry's parents didn't have the gumption god gave a walrus and ACTUALLY NAMED HIM HARRY. Harry's a NICKNAME. For "Henry," which isn't the world's greatest name, but at least gives you something with dignity to fall back on once you're no longer a child.) "Filius Flitwick"? A terrible name. And I'm not even going to start in on the horror that is "Ron Weasley."

But then she can come out with things like "Draco Malfoy" and "Severus Snape." (And "Tom Riddle," although "Lord Voldemort" has got to be one of the hokiest names EVER for a villain.) Draco and Snape both have REALLY GOOD names. I generally dislike alliteration in names, and boy oh boy does Rowling overuse it, but it works for Snape. And, yes, Draco's last name is as lousy a pun as "Voldemort," but "Draco" itself is just amazingly cool. And now I can't use it, because she has.

I wouldn't care if she were consistently good. Barbara Hambly is generally quite good with names, although sometimes she tries too hard, and I don't resent the fact that I can't name anyone Nandiharrow or Gil-Shalos or Dogbreath of Malincore, because she gets full use out of the names. It's one of the reasons I like Dickens, because he just has these amazing names; they come welling out of everywhere. And it's almost the only thing I enjoy about Mervyn Peake. But for someone like Rowling, who doesn't pay nearly enough attention (in my ever so NOT humble opinion) to the sound and rhythm and grace of English, and who persistently undercuts the credibility of her own world with stupid, jarring, unnecessary puns, to come out with these fantastic names ... it's unfair and it makes me cross.

I have a Thing about names. It's one of the things that has to be right in my stories or I can't go on. I've spent days stuck because I can't think of the right name for a particular character or place. And I fiddle with them endlessly.

I used to make them up, when I was younger, so that characters in the drivel I wrote as a teenager had names like "Cedarion" and "Hezekyah." But then my ear got more sensitive; I still make up surnames when I need to, but given names are far far more likely to be strange nouns or Francophone versions of Greek mythological characters. (Another one that pissed me off no end was Jacqueline Carey using "Phedre." 'Cause Carey's got a tin ear for names.) And then there's the Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, which is my favorite reference book, bar none. It's wonderful. I recommend it highly if you're interested in this sort of thing. (If nothing else, the ODECN can save you from embarrassing anachronisms, like naming a character born in the eleventh century "Amanda," when "Amanda" is a literary invention of the seventeenth century. Highlander, I'm looking right at you.)

I don't know why names are like that for me. I think I've only written one story, ever, in which none of the characters had names. Usually, it's the first thing I figure out, and it's always the most important. If I have the name wrong, then I generally have the character wrong. I've had stories die under the weight of wrong names. (I've had them die of other causes, but the name problem is the most frustrating.) Names anchor characters for me, and they tell me things about characters that no other detail does. Objectively speaking, it's very weird.

And it also means that I can get interested in a character just for being named "Ephram."

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how uplifting it is to find out that other people are able to make use of my most nonsensical and self-indulgent posts.

"Ephram" distracted me horribly at first because I thought it ought to be "Ephriam," and indeed both that and "Ephraim" are much more common than "Ephram," according to Google.

I made up all my character names for the epic fantasy series I plotted when I was in high school; an embarrassing number of them ended in "-ion." There was profligate mixing of Greek, Celtic, French, and entirely made-up sources.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Department of not spoiling the ship for a happorth of tar: Shouldn't it be Ephraim?

The Book of Soppy American Names, pardon me, The Last Word on First Names (St. Martins Press, 1995, Linda Rosenkranz & Pamela Redwood Satran) spells it that way, and so does The Wordsworth Dictionary of First Names, The Oxford Dictionary of Babies Names and The British Book of Class Conscious Names aka The Daily Express Guide to Names. I have to resort to the Dippy Book of Babies Names, that's The Modern Book of Babies Names (1975, Foulsham and Co, Hilary Spence) to find any variants and the variant that has is Efrem. And the Dippy Book dredges the halls for variants, which is why it's useful.

I pretend that I collect name books, but in fact I collect names and the books are all useful for different things.

The lifelode thing has acquired characters who want to be called Taveth and Kevan.

As for Phedre, it's a real name, it's a play by Racine, and nothing prevents you using it as often as you want to -- it's not like Nandiharrow (lovely name) it's a name in use. And the same goes for Draco, though I suppose it might be too closely identified with Rowling by now. Drake and Draco, are in the Dippy Book.

I once stole a name from someone on rasfw. I stole it for a character and then I emailed her and asked if she minded, which she didn't, fortunately. The name was Tharsia, and both the character and the real person had derived that from Teresa, though I didn't know the real person had until afterwards.

My characters need names, but they're usually only demanding about some of the letters. Tavella is only fussy about the t and the v and them being in that order. If you show me a picture of a person, I can tell you what letter their name would begin with if they were my character.

This very occasionally leads me into trouble with people I meet not having the names I'm quite sure they ought to have, like that girl at WFC who tried on the crown and bought the copper clasp and is definitely not called any variant of Damaris.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna get into the Ephram/Ephraim thing in my reply to papersky, who's broken out the reference books.

About made up names and so on ... The names in The Project derive from a mishmash of English, French, Greek, and Latin, depending on the character's culture and socio-economic background. And I can make up names that sound French or Latin if I have to. Can't do that for Greek; I think it's a fluency thing.

I do not fuck with the Celtic.

As a teenager, I had a terrible tendency to make everyone's name end -eth, because I'd been brainwashed by Anne MacCaffrey. It's still one of the things I get sucked into when I reread her Pern books. Her human names tend to be anywhere from boring to dreadful, but the dragons' names are so damn cool. Ramoth, Canth, Wirenth, Prideth, Mnementh, Nemorth ... they have such fabulous names it makes me want to cry.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names does not admit the existence of "Ephram." It barely admits the existence of "Ephraim," noting glacially, Hebrew, possibly means 'meadows,' the name of the 2nd son of Joseph. It came into use in the 17th C, and is still current in USA.

Bizarrely, my other book of names doesn't list "Ephram," "Ephriam," OR "Ephraim." Since from what I can tell it's about on a par with your Dippy Book, I confess myself stunned and appalled. Clearly I need more name books.

(LJ's spellchecker recognizes "Ephraim," but not "Ephram" or "Ephriam," for what that's worth.)

You're quite right. I immediately identified "Ephram" as a corruption of "Ephraim"; the thing is, though, that "Ephraim" does nothing for me, while "Ephram" seems to be positively glowing with possibility. I can't explain it.

Although, yes, "Draco" is not J. K. Rowling's invention, I found it there. To me, it would feel like stealing. And "Drake," like "Ephraim," strikes no sparks off the inside of my skull. "Phedre" is a different matter; I read Racine in college. So you're right; I could use "Phedre." Maybe I will.

Sometimes I get characters who only have sounds, but there's still a particular name they want. I've been known to flip through the phone book trying to find a surname with the necessary sounds that is also the necessary name. It's often very frustrating. I try not to borrow names from people I know--although I did once have to email a friend of mine to ask if I could use his name, because the character just would not be budged--because it makes me uneasy. I can't explain that, either.

I don't usually have this name-urge surface wrt real people, although I have had friends who so very clearly had the wrong name that it made me itchy. But I never knew what their real name was.

and now, to gratify renenet *g*:

---
WORKS CITED
Withycombe, E. G. The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names. 1945. 3rd Ed. Oxford Paperback Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. p. 104: "Ephraim."

WORKS UNCITED
Rule, Lareina. Name Your Baby. New York: Bantam Books, 1963.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. If you like it, you like it. It just looks wrong to me, like Cherryh's use of Catlin, which took me a long time to settle down to.

I used to have the Rule, it was the American Useless Name Book. I can't see it on the desk so probably that's the one [Unknown site tag] kept in the divorce, along with one useless British one.

We also had books with use-names like "The Green Book of Blade Street" and "The Boring Book of British Hillforts", I think it's a natural result of having a lot of research books with names that are almost anagrams of each other, and a whimsical tendency.

I do use name books for that, I haven't used the phone book but then until recently my phone book was less diverse than one might wish. I have used the list of names in "Culhwch and Olwen" until it squeaks -- and also until people on various academic mailing lists mistook me for a C&O expert. As far as I know, nobody else has ever used that list, which is strange because it's a goldmine of authentic Welsh Arthurian names.

The Dippy Book is wonderful, really, it's just pathetic on meanings, which I suspect the author of getting from her dreams. But listen to this random sequence -- a male page: Skeets, Skelly, Skelton, Skip, (Skipp, Skippy), Skipton, Slade, Slevin (Slaven, Slavin, Sleven), Sloan (Sloane) Smedley (Smedly), Smith, Snowden, Sol, Solomon (Solamon, Soloman, Saloman, Sol, Sollie, Solly) Solon, Somerset, Somerton, Somerville, Sorrel.

You couldn't make that up. I feel terribly sorry for anyone whose mother bought this in pregnancy and was foolish enough to use it, but it's been a godsend to me on occasion. It has four pages of O.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

four pages of O

*drools*

I should get that book. "Slade" and "Slevin" both ping my radar (as does "Sloane," but I knew that already). And I have Mr. Withycombe to keep me on the straight and narrow.

The Rule is pretty damn useless. I've kept it out of a perverse sense of loyalty, because it's the book that got me started with the whole names-thing.

Back to Ephram/Ephraim:
it IS weird, because normally the Creative Misspelling School of fantasy names drives me absolutely spare (especially Rule #2: all names are cooler if you spell them with y's), and I generally have the same trouble you do; my eye insists on reading the standard spelling instead of the author's whimsy, and then jarring back when I realize I've read it wrong. "Ephram" doesn't collide with "Ephraim" for me, though. Again, haven't a clue what's up with that.

Oh, and The Boring Book of British Hillforts is just funny. Am still sniggering.

[tenebraeli.livejournal.com]

{{{{{{{snugglepounce}}}}}}}

From one Barbara Hambly fan to another!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If I see another copy of it, it's yours. It even has two pages of U, which is good going.

As for the Boring Book of British Hillforts, it has a companion volume called Let's Go For A Walk And Look At A Hillfort, the Boring Book is a complete alphabetical listing with everything ever found at each fort, whereas the Let's Go one is organised regionally, and very good on where to park and routes from the road and so on. They're not meant to be a related pair, but they work well together and you don't want the wrong one. Their real names are almost identical. They are both together somewhere on this desk, but I don't want to disturb the stratigraphic layers right now, it's bedtime.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The crush I had on Antryg when I was in college could have been measured on the Richter scale, I kid you not.

I've been disappointed in her recent fantasy novels, although I like the Benjamin January mysteries very much indeed. My vote for her best book would be Traveling with the Dead, because it talks so beautifully about the difference between romance (Ysidro) and love (Asher) and because she's wickedly wickedly clever with the vampire cliches. And because I can read that book three times in a row without pausing for breath and still love it.

Also, she knows her history and she's not afraid to use it.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Would it be worth reading, considering that I like Hambly, dislike horror and do not find vampires cool?

Vampire containing books I have enjoyed are The Dragon Waiting and the Brust book it would be a spoiler to name, as you may not have read it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's a good question, and it's hard for me to answer fairly because I *do* like horror, and am willing to put up with vampires to get it. But bearing that caveat in mind, I think you might enjoy the book.

Traveling with the Dead and the book to which it is a sequel, Those Who Hunt the Night, are both very vampire-heavy books; I think the vampire characters outnumber the humans. But Hambly is not at all impressed by the vampire mystique, and both books are partly (TWHtN) or largely (TwtD) deconstructions of the glamorous vampire cliche made popular by a hundred years of Dracula movies. I don't think of either of them as horror, but my threshold is probably higher than yours. They're also very good pre-WWI historical mysteries. In fact, TWHtN is pretty much a historical mystery with vampires in--fairly light fare--and I guess my suggestion would be to read it, and if you like the characters to go for TwtD. I find the vampirism secondary, in both books, to its effects on the psychology of the vampires themselves (did that make any sense? even remotely?).

They're both high-quality Hambly; I can say that much with confidence.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think they are as much or as little horror as The Silent Tower/The Silicon Mage books. That is, there is something as deeply horrifying as the Dead God, and as far from standard horror tropes as the Dead God as well.

I prefer Those Who Hunt the Night because it is less about succumbing to vampire glamour, but you might be especially interested in Travelling with the Dead for its portrait of a stable and happy marriage. I do think they are vintage Hambly, replete with spies, the scientific method, and moral complexity.