![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I always have trouble with character names.
I thought I'd settled on a pair of names, but the more I think on them the less I like them.
Best to settle them before I start writing, don't you think?
So, a poll. I like polls. :)
Notes: As I've mentioned elsewhere, the tale takes place in 10th-century Britain-- specifically, about 922 a.d., at various locations in the Irish Sea and on its edges.
I like, for some reason, giving the male a tie to the god Thor; the old gods were going out of fashion but remained as name-elements, and many individuals continued to be devoted to them. Thor was sort of the god of brute strength in the fight against evil; my character is probably really more an Odin type (ruthless and wise) but prefers the Thor-ish elements of himself.
As is visible in the choices, I had been thinking of old Irish myths. The Ulster cycle was committed to writing in the 8th and 12th centuries, so an Irish person may well have known the tragic tale of the Sons of Uisliu, Noisu among them, and his lover Derdriu.
I like the idea of giving him a name that can be adopted to either of his languages, he being perfectly bilingual (Norse and Irish).
As for the girl, I'm undecided as to whether she should have a Welsh or Irish name. I don't think it matters much. (Her mother was from the kingdom of Dalriada, which first absorbed Pictland and then became known as Scotland. They were Ulster Irish, ethnically, and their language was undifferentiated.)
Her father is of course Welsh and it's likely she'd be given a Welsh name.
[Poll #371627]
I thought I'd settled on a pair of names, but the more I think on them the less I like them.
Best to settle them before I start writing, don't you think?
So, a poll. I like polls. :)
Notes: As I've mentioned elsewhere, the tale takes place in 10th-century Britain-- specifically, about 922 a.d., at various locations in the Irish Sea and on its edges.
I like, for some reason, giving the male a tie to the god Thor; the old gods were going out of fashion but remained as name-elements, and many individuals continued to be devoted to them. Thor was sort of the god of brute strength in the fight against evil; my character is probably really more an Odin type (ruthless and wise) but prefers the Thor-ish elements of himself.
As is visible in the choices, I had been thinking of old Irish myths. The Ulster cycle was committed to writing in the 8th and 12th centuries, so an Irish person may well have known the tragic tale of the Sons of Uisliu, Noisu among them, and his lover Derdriu.
I like the idea of giving him a name that can be adopted to either of his languages, he being perfectly bilingual (Norse and Irish).
As for the girl, I'm undecided as to whether she should have a Welsh or Irish name. I don't think it matters much. (Her mother was from the kingdom of Dalriada, which first absorbed Pictland and then became known as Scotland. They were Ulster Irish, ethnically, and their language was undifferentiated.)
Her father is of course Welsh and it's likely she'd be given a Welsh name.
[Poll #371627]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
another vote
Date: 2004-10-23 10:36 pm (UTC)(Just to keep all opinions in one place!)
this is from kat
Date: 2004-10-23 11:14 pm (UTC)Re: this is from kat
Date: 2004-10-23 11:26 pm (UTC)Simply because I've used names in an excerpt doesn't make them final.
It's just that I'm not going to write a story with a character named [MALENAME].
Re: another vote
Date: 2004-10-24 09:28 pm (UTC)I also like Angharad, but I feel it's almost too common. It pops up anywhere there is any reference to the northlands.
I disagree about the 'y's. They do tend to sound fantasy-ish, but to me nothing more directly invokes the feel of the north.
So I voted for Nyfain and Njal.
Re: another vote
Date: 2004-10-24 09:58 pm (UTC)According to my research, Angharad first became a relatively common name around the time period of this novel. So it strikes me as a 'safe' name. And it won't get me made fun of by Dave. (You should hear him about Thorstein the closet Viking Jew. "Oh, no thanks, I don't like bacon very much." He is inescusably terrible, but funny, and you know, he keeps me sane and helps me actually make sense sometimes.)
Njal has been very popular. I have been leaning towards giving my boy a name with Thor in it but you know, Njal is quite a sweet name really and it was the first one I used in a preliminary, preliminary draft, which gives it seniority.
Ahh! Well, having a poll that people actually voted in has certainly been fun, and I've found all sorts of new people. :) Even if I'm no closer to actually deciding on a name than I was...
no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 01:33 am (UTC)So, there's my vote. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 02:58 am (UTC)I like Angharad, and that was the one I'd started off working with in outlines and such.
But I keep misspelling it. I keep dropping the final D. I don't know why.
Also, it's impossible to spell in the later Viking-Age runes, because they dropped the "ng" and "d"! So my little plot point where he's writing her runic love-notes is either going to have to be anachronistic (with him using seriously old runes), or sort of glossed-over...
But I do like it. And it is the proper age. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 02:40 pm (UTC)I'm so proud of myself--I actually made that icon! But the image itself is from The Mummy Returns. FULL of hot people. I could make 1000 icons. :)
You could keep the name Angharad, play with its spelling (like dropping off the D and such), and claim that it's the same as when people play with spellings today--Kelly vs. Kelli, or Brandy vs. Brandie. I mean, look at all the different ways to spell Katherine that are out there (not to mention the myriad names related to it).
The issue with the runes, I'm not sure. Even though those 'ng' and 'd' were dropped, doesn't anything in the runes serve to substitute??
no subject
Date: 2004-10-24 05:26 pm (UTC)Well, most of the other names have a ton of alternate spellings-- Noisu, Naoise, Nosiu; spellings weren't standardized yet for centuries. So misspelling it isn't any particular trouble. Except that Angharad is fairly well-standardized from the beginning, not having any of the weird dipthong vowel combinations that lend themselves to reinterpretation. I want to spell it properly, but I keep messing it up.
I'm not overly fussed about the runes. Each book I read is dead certain of the date at which they switched to the newer ones, and each one is totally different. So I don't think the average reader of the novel is going to complain if he uses the wrong rune set. I can always find *some* source that'll back me up. (That's the fun of doing a lot of research.)
I don't know why they reduced the alphabet for the later writing-- they had the same troubles I do, in that they'd go to write something and not have a letter! So they'd have to misspell their own names on purpose, just to approximate. All in the name of simplicity, I guess. But it seems silly...
Character names
Date: 2004-10-25 12:10 pm (UTC)-aleksander
Re: Character names
Date: 2004-10-25 02:33 pm (UTC)I was pretty sure that Ravn/Rafn meant Raven, and I had originally had a vague thought that perhaps I could pair him with Branwen for the woman's name, as Bran is a mythological Welsh raven and thus Branwen is the raven girl. (I had a friend named Branwen in high school.)
But I couldn't really come up with a good backstory to explain it, and Branwen didn't make the final cut for the girl's name because I couldn't find any early enough attestations for it. Also, I tend to avoid using names of people I really know in my stories, and even though I lost contact with Branwen years ago, I still *know* her, enough to feel odd if I reused her name.
But Ravn was just cool enough that he stuck around. :)
I dunno what it is about Njal! Everybody likes him! He's not quite a majority-- most of the non-lj users have voted for Thorkjell and thus don't show in the graphical poll results-- but he's well up there.