Are readers tolerant of unique and bizarre character Names? [closed]
Closed by System on May 8, 2018 at 00:00
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I'm trying to refine a name for my main character and characters in general but I will be focusing on my MC for the example of this question. My question is: What criteria would make a name hard for readers to read?
I'm thinking of using roman and latin, and possibly gaelic names for the book.
Here's what I got.
- I really like the name Nyuna. (Pronounced Nuu-Nah)
- Her full name (maybe): Nu'nah Lux
- Nyu to her friends.
- Little One is her pet name.
Others I have...
- Nyuna Everstar Luxanna
- Nu'nah Lucia Luinir
- Lumii Luxann
- Lu'mii Luxe
- Reina Celestios
- Nu'nah Lux
Or would that be terrible writing to put an apostrophe in there to easily break the name up into 2 syllables? What would be criteria that make a name difficult for readers? Multiple first names, apostrophes in the middle of the name, amount of syllables, ...? The above are examples of bizarre names I have thought about that I am unsure of.
Online sources aren't being helpful with this particular question so I thought I'd post here.
A general idea of what my main character looks like and does for a living:
Image does not belong to me. It was found on google images after 15 minutes of scrolling through pictures. It's kind of close enough.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/35882. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Weird names are fine and tolerated, my personal rule is to ensure there is no ambiguity in how the reader should pronounce them; and "Nyuna" does have that problem, it is not certain whether to try and pronounce the "Y". The sound is more important than the spelling I think, so I'd ditch the "Y", with "Nuna", or "Nuuna" if you want the first syllable drawn out a bit.
That said and following that rule, I do use weird names, often ancient actual names and foreign myth names few people would recognize, or vaguely recognize (e.g. "Heraud" appeared before "Herald" appeared before "Harold"). I do that to constantly emphasize the "foreignness" of my setting, or to bring special attention to my hero, or both.
You may be instinctively doing something similar; a distinctive name makes a character special. Everybody with distinctive names makes the setting special.
One more general warning on names, however, is to keep yourself a cheat-sheet of names you have used, both for lookup of characters you haven't written about for awhile, and as reference when you need to make a new name: try not to re-use an existing name, and try to make any NEW names not easily confused with a previous name, either by spelling or the sound of the name. (Some readers rely on spelling, some readers hear the words they read as if spoken in their head).
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