Naming Conventions
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Just for fun, does anyone else here love inventing naming conventions (things like all the names in a family starting with the same letter, or people remaining unnamed until a certain age, etc.)? What are some cool naming conventions you’ve used in your stories?
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.
I used a silly naming convention in one of the stories I played around with, where the people naming stuff were remarkably uncreative, giving literal descriptions as names. It was funny at first but got annoying.
On a side note, I love how Roman names tend to have suffixes related to gender, many being forms of -us and -ia (Julius and Julia).
What conventions do you use?
Oh dear. XD
Yeah, suffixes are cool. Those should be used more often.
I’ve used a few. I have a nation in which any children of nobility are given gem names (or names related to or modified from gemstones) and another nation in which each noble family has a certain letter all their names start with (which gets confusing when more than one or two of the characters are introduced in a story, because these noble families also tend to have a lot of kids; that system is probably my least favorite, logistically speaking).
There’s a naming system I’m working on, though, where children aren’t given “public” names until they hit a certain age. They’re given a family nickname, only used by family members and their most trusted friends, and outside of the family they’re referred to by their relation to a named family member (generally whatever relation the people meeting the individual will most recognize). For instance, if a girl was being introduced to her named sister’s friends, she might be called “Elora’s third sister.” Once an individual reaches a certain age, they’re given a public name by some sort of official and afterward they use that name (though nicknames are still often used by the family and can still be given to close friends as a show of trust). I haven’t built up the culture around the system yet, but I’m finding the system itself a lot of fun to play with.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.
I have this organization of what’re basically medieval ninja and I like their naming system a lot. Basically, they take in reallllly young kids who’re orphaned or abandoned or born into the organization if their parents let them, and then they train them. At first they call them their given name intermixed with Blade # or Trainee # with # being whatever number they are. And then when the kid’s old enough/ready, they’re allowed to choose their own name. So it’s like a code name but also their own name, and they often have a special meaning behind them. (They’re also still told they’re given name, too, so they can use that with really close family and friends.)
I only have two fantasy books… so not really.
One, Scars, which has a little written but not much planned out. Is like princes kings and queens kind of fantasy.
Then the other is like more actual fantasy. The MC, Sheela, has a human and Shire (biggest horse in the world) form and that is normal for her people to have another form that makes them quicker, sneaker, able to fly, ect. Her best ftiend, Darrik, his other form was a big snowy owl. But in the story she’s on earth. Human’s attacked their planet, and took lots of them back to Earth for testing, and killing those who fought back. Sheela was one of those that they took. So fantasy character in real world. With more planned out storyline wise but none written cuz i aalready have 2 or 3 main projects… and if i did all mine that i have some planned out then i would have line 15 main projects xD
One people group in my novel use a Russian inspired family name system, where the children get a patronymic, except in my world it would be a matronymic. And the matronymic comes before their given name, then their family name. So Ingvar’s daughter’s first name is Ingvariyna but she’s known as Eirwen. Still working out the masculine versions of the matronymics.
The same people also see it as something like a dishonor to name a child after their parent. It’s seen as the parent failing at life so much that they need to give their child the same name in order to redeem that name.
@pensword Ooh, that’s super interesting!
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.
Thanks!
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