I hope this makes for an interesting discussion. When naming your characters, how alien do you think they can be before a reader gives up and skips over them? Of course they should be at least semi-intuitively pronouncable, and names like Skgahgrezh, Grimrr, and Shrrgnien ^{(ETA: these three names are Paolini’s invention)} should be avoided, but where do you draw the line? Especially if, like me, you don’t want to turn to meaningless ‘generic fantasy’ names to populate your world? I have characters with (linguistically significant) names like Gaalo, Siaynso, Ngoiining and Komaabhom, among others. Do these cross the line into something that will prevent people from wanting to read? Even if I only refer to the more difficult ones by full name once and use a shorter version throughout (Ngo instead of Ngoiining, Kom instead of Komaabhom, etc)?

What do you guys do for character names?

Basically, I either bastardize names I find on databases (like Behindthename.com) and/or pick obscure ones, or, less often I come up with names on my own with no linguistic basis whatever.

The ASOIAF names are pretty good as well.

The ASOIAF names are pretty good as well.

I agree. Most of them are just normal names that just spelled differently, or slightly modified in some way.

My story uses Japanese names. The nice things are that they are really easy to pronounce(if you know the very basic rules) and you can do lots of neat things with them without trying very hard(puns and character-specific meanings), but the syllabary is pretty limited, so the names can run together pretty easily for people who aren’t used to keeping them.

I did try to avoid overusing the more common name constructions(names ending in -suke, -rou, and -maru for boys, or names ending in -ko for girls), so hopefully it doesn’t get that bad.

You guys make good points. Would it help my particular case that the names I listed are all basically ‘code names’ given to them by the god-king? And that throughout the length of the novel they will be referring to each other by their easier-to-pronounce real names (Short, simple names like Kobate, Garu, Taku and so on)?

I have this… neurosis, you might say, that when I invent names they have to be able to relate back to the relevant language and ‘fit’ within the socio-linguistic culture. That being said, I don’t use said conlangs for anything other than proper nouns, and even proper names that are place or landmark names, I use the English equivalent.

I have three cultures/nations. Each of them has a language based on an modern-day language or family of languages, so (I hope) the names look vaguely familiar, particularly those of the “primary” nation. They all use the same romanization and one of them uses very simple syllables, so I’m not really worried about people having difficulty with them. Family names are in one of the “other” languages—another nation invented them—so (I hope) there is an interesting contrast when people of the “primary” nation use their full names.

You definitely don’t want readers to start skipping names, but if they look too difficult then maybe it’s better to use the English translation of Skgahgrezh after its first mention.

Also, Ngo is a perfectly cromulent name if you’re Vietnamese :)

My stories use Russian names. Well, the ones set in Russia do. Though I try to pick ones pronouncable by american audiences.

They need to be immediately pronounceable, unless you’ve got a very good reason why they aren’t. The way I see it, the culture you’re focusing on in any fantasy novel is not “really” speaking English. They’re speaking Common or Morporkian or whatever; what you write down is just a “translation” of their real language. This is the same no matter whether the society is Asian, Middle Eastern, European, etc.-influenced. What do we do in the real world when we translate names from other languages with sounds and characters English doesn’t have? We sound them out as best we can and write them down phonetically. That’s why “Mao Zedong” and “Mao Tse-tung” are the same person.

So whatever your primary cultures are, I think they should have names as easily-pronounceable as you can make them. Doubly so because the reader’s going to be reading an awful lot about them, and there’s a limit to how many Grhshknk’s and Fhrdrhl’s you can stand. It’s like how most English speakers can muddle through Spanish, French, German names, all those languages which also use the Latin alphabet, albeit with a terrible accent. But give them an Arabic name, even if it’s transliterated, and it’ll be a whole lot more difficult.

I think this could be used very well in a book encompassing several different countries. The closer countries, your main country’s allies, would all have names almost as easily-pronounceable as your main country. The ones farther away with the strange-sounding language (like, goodness me, Chinese! Or Russian! Or Hindi!) would have more difficult names that no one, not even your characters, are quite sure how to pronounce. It’d be an interesting way to differentiate between countries, and even characters—this one’s been used before, but it’s still good: have a poorly-educated character continually mispronounce a foreign name (“Mao Zedong” turning into “Mousy Tongue” or whatever) while a well-traveled character pronounces it correctly.

Swenson said it perfectly. :D