Back! Also, a essay on names in fiction
Aug. 18th, 2008 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesI'm in the mood for an essay, so here's an essay. Also, I am back.
So, my friend, Katie, (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lasafara) was reading the Twilight series. Her overall opinion? Bad, but not horrible, with moments of 'SMeyer, that was a cool seed of an idea -- why didn't you do something with it?'. Well, until she got to Breaking Dawn the fourth and final book in the series, where she was Not Happy.
That opinion seems to be shared with the rest of the fandom -- I haven't read the books myself, but I keep informed about the fandom. They were not pleased (except for the non-teenaged group Twilight Moms, who have stifled any dissent on their boards), and were planning on a campaign to return the books. Incidentally, Barnes and Noble now has a new return policy that I just found out about when I bought John Scalzi's latest book.
So, one of the points brought up was the name of Bella and Edward's child: "Renesmee Carli Cullen" (Sp?), named after an astounding 4 people at once. Names really set the stage for a series, let me tell you. My friend, Heather, has a comic where the main character is named Gin Bacardi and the villain is Necromancer von Evilstein. Heather's previous attempt at a comic, Donut Girls (an anime parody) featured such characters as Evil T. Bishounen (bishounen = beautiful boy). Heather has a gift for naming characters, as long as she is doing humorous work.
Other writers go with a serious thing. I remember, when I was writing my old webcomic, I had a whole explanation for the cultural mismash of names. (Granted, it was because I had picked out names mostly randomly, and needed an explanation, but that explains half of that comic.) Now, I make sure the names all have a certain feel to them -- having characters named Hendrick, Sharvari, Uhuru, Francisco, OisÃn, and Yusef has a totally different feel than people named Robert, Richard, Karen, Donald, James and Mary. It's one thing that Gene Roddenberry did deliberately with Star Trek -- the (human) leads were James Kirk and Leonard McCoy, but the rest of the crew was Montgomery Scott, Uhura, Hiraku Sulu, Christine Chapel and Pavel Chekov, even if two of them never got first names in the original series (and Uhura's first name was never fixed in canon). It creates a whole different feel to the ship -- like it really was populated by people whose ancestors were from all over Earth. Heck, I even recall an interview where someone notes that Chekov was introduced as a distinct acknowledgment to the Soviet Union's space program. If Roddenberry was alive today, we might have gotten Li Zhou and Parvati Gupta as acknowledgments of other nations' space programs.
It's also one thing that drives me batty about Avatar. Some Fire Nation names sound pretty consistent: the Royal Family (Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, Iroh, Zuko, and Azula) and Aang's old friend Kuzon. Then we get names like Jeong Jeong, Mai, Piandao and Ty Lee, which sound different (never mind that Mai is pronounced 'Mei' and Ty Lee probably should be spelt 'Tai Li'). It could be that there have been several cultures that eventually were united under a Firelord, and the naming still has that influence, just like we have names from all over Europe, some changed and some not, in the United States.
And don't even get me started about the dreaded fantasy apostrophe...
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Names = important. So, Twilight... now, done right, Bella's naming of her daughter could have told us something about her. See, if I understand the story right, Bella took up with Edward, a vampire, and wants to become one as well. Edward, on the other hand, refuses to turn Bella until after they are married. Turns out he knocked her up on the wedding night, leading to Dhampir Baby Girl Cullen. Now, the name could represent someone who just realized that if she wanted a big family, it's too late now (unless she adopts), and that all the names she considered for a kid, or all the relatives she wanted to honor, have to be fit into one baby. So, it could represent a second thought on the whole 'becoming an immortal undead' thing -- that, if Bella wanted a big family, she's not going to have it the normal human way. I can't speak for the execution (what with the 'not having read anything, and not planning on it'), but that could be pulled off. Most reviews I've read note that Bella's characterization is a bit weak at best, besides the 'OMGYoungLove' thing, so this could be a way of showing some more depth to the female lead of a series.
Or, it could just be that the author thought that smushing four names together was perfectly reasonable for the kidlet. Names are important, but execution is also important. If, to use the Star Trek example above, the casting department had just cast all-white actors for the crew of the USS Enterprise, all of Roddenberry's writing work would have been for naught.
So, my friend, Katie, (
lasafara) was reading the Twilight series. Her overall opinion? Bad, but not horrible, with moments of 'SMeyer, that was a cool seed of an idea -- why didn't you do something with it?'. Well, until she got to Breaking Dawn the fourth and final book in the series, where she was Not Happy.That opinion seems to be shared with the rest of the fandom -- I haven't read the books myself, but I keep informed about the fandom. They were not pleased (except for the non-teenaged group Twilight Moms, who have stifled any dissent on their boards), and were planning on a campaign to return the books. Incidentally, Barnes and Noble now has a new return policy that I just found out about when I bought John Scalzi's latest book.
So, one of the points brought up was the name of Bella and Edward's child: "Renesmee Carli Cullen" (Sp?), named after an astounding 4 people at once. Names really set the stage for a series, let me tell you. My friend, Heather, has a comic where the main character is named Gin Bacardi and the villain is Necromancer von Evilstein. Heather's previous attempt at a comic, Donut Girls (an anime parody) featured such characters as Evil T. Bishounen (bishounen = beautiful boy). Heather has a gift for naming characters, as long as she is doing humorous work.
Other writers go with a serious thing. I remember, when I was writing my old webcomic, I had a whole explanation for the cultural mismash of names. (Granted, it was because I had picked out names mostly randomly, and needed an explanation, but that explains half of that comic.) Now, I make sure the names all have a certain feel to them -- having characters named Hendrick, Sharvari, Uhuru, Francisco, OisÃn, and Yusef has a totally different feel than people named Robert, Richard, Karen, Donald, James and Mary. It's one thing that Gene Roddenberry did deliberately with Star Trek -- the (human) leads were James Kirk and Leonard McCoy, but the rest of the crew was Montgomery Scott, Uhura, Hiraku Sulu, Christine Chapel and Pavel Chekov, even if two of them never got first names in the original series (and Uhura's first name was never fixed in canon). It creates a whole different feel to the ship -- like it really was populated by people whose ancestors were from all over Earth. Heck, I even recall an interview where someone notes that Chekov was introduced as a distinct acknowledgment to the Soviet Union's space program. If Roddenberry was alive today, we might have gotten Li Zhou and Parvati Gupta as acknowledgments of other nations' space programs.
It's also one thing that drives me batty about Avatar. Some Fire Nation names sound pretty consistent: the Royal Family (Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, Iroh, Zuko, and Azula) and Aang's old friend Kuzon. Then we get names like Jeong Jeong, Mai, Piandao and Ty Lee, which sound different (never mind that Mai is pronounced 'Mei' and Ty Lee probably should be spelt 'Tai Li'). It could be that there have been several cultures that eventually were united under a Firelord, and the naming still has that influence, just like we have names from all over Europe, some changed and some not, in the United States.
And don't even get me started about the dreaded fantasy apostrophe...
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Names = important. So, Twilight... now, done right, Bella's naming of her daughter could have told us something about her. See, if I understand the story right, Bella took up with Edward, a vampire, and wants to become one as well. Edward, on the other hand, refuses to turn Bella until after they are married. Turns out he knocked her up on the wedding night, leading to Dhampir Baby Girl Cullen. Now, the name could represent someone who just realized that if she wanted a big family, it's too late now (unless she adopts), and that all the names she considered for a kid, or all the relatives she wanted to honor, have to be fit into one baby. So, it could represent a second thought on the whole 'becoming an immortal undead' thing -- that, if Bella wanted a big family, she's not going to have it the normal human way. I can't speak for the execution (what with the 'not having read anything, and not planning on it'), but that could be pulled off. Most reviews I've read note that Bella's characterization is a bit weak at best, besides the 'OMGYoungLove' thing, so this could be a way of showing some more depth to the female lead of a series.
Or, it could just be that the author thought that smushing four names together was perfectly reasonable for the kidlet. Names are important, but execution is also important. If, to use the Star Trek example above, the casting department had just cast all-white actors for the crew of the USS Enterprise, all of Roddenberry's writing work would have been for naught.
