Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing

Resonance with Names

Years ago, a friend who owned a video game company called me and said, "Dave, I have a problem. We've made this great fantasy videogame, but we don't have a name for our hero. I've been going over names with my staff for days, and we're stuck. How do you name a fantasy character?"

"That's easy," I said. "You take two words that come to mind to describe that character, then put them together, and consider their sounds to make sure that they resonate properly."

I then asked him to describe the character in five or six words, and I spat out a name. My friend was silent for a moment, and then said, "That's perfect. That's perfect! We've been beating our heads against a wall for weeks, and you come up with the name in ten seconds. Tell me again how you do that?"

I can't even recall the name, but I met the friend a few weeks ago, and he reminded me of the incident. So I'll try to make this process a little clearer.

A classic example of this might be seen in George Lucas's use of the name Darth Vader. "Darth" is probably a contraction of "dark" and "death," or it might be a modification of "dearth." "Vader" could be a truncation of "invader," or it could simply be Dutch (vader) for "father." Hence, I'm fairly certain that it is inspired by the words "dark," "death," "invader" and "father." But by happy coincidence, it resonates with other dire-sounding words as well.

Similarly, Tolkien used these techniques in creating names. Some of his names are easily untangled. Treebeard is an ancient tree with a lichen-like beard. Mount Doom doesn't need to be untangled at all. Mordor, the name of the evil kingdom where Sauron dwells, sounds like "murder," but of course "more" and "door," the two words that make up the name, suggest that by entering this place, you might be walking through a door into murder.

However, Tolkien complicates what Lucas did by using names that often have foreign roots. Remember that Tolkien was a philologist, one of the world's foremost authorities on the origins of words with Germanic roots. He was very familiar with old German, Norse, Danish, English, and so on.

Take Gandalf Greyhame. The name "Gandalf" is an Old Norse name taken from a list of dwarves from folklore. The word Gandalf is a contraction of gandr (wand) and alf (elf). Hence his name literally means "elf with a wand." But you don't have to speak Old Norse for it to resonate. In English it sounds like a contraction of grand and elf. So whether you are talking Old Norse or English, the sound of the name resonates. Greyhame is a bit easier. Hame is an Old Dutch word for "home," and is also the root for the word "hamlet." Thus, the name itself sounds like "gray home," (much like the Gray Havens that the Elves in The Lord of the Rings are fleeing to for refuge). Tolkien says that the word translates into one of his mythical languages as "gray mantle"—which is an odd mistake for Tolkien to make. Having words in two separate languages that are spoken as "gray" and that mean "gray" sounds odd. It just doesn't happen unless those languages are linked by common roots. Tolkien once lamented that the name Gandalf was concocted unwisely in an hour with little thought, but it's still quite serviceable as a name.

Here's another name: Gollum. Gollum is a hobbit-like character who was magically turned by sorcerous power into a monster. His name is obviously morphed from the word "golem," which in Jewish folklore was a creature made from inanimate materials—such as twigs and string—so that it was magically transformed into a living servant. In many ways, Gollum is a golem—a monster given long life so that he can serve his evil master.

What about the name Sauron? Once again, Tolkien says that it has a meaning in a foreign tongue (the elvish language Quenya) and that it means "abhorred." But the name has entirely different roots. In Greek, the word saur means "lizard," as in "dino-saur." The suffix on in "Sauron" means "the first." Hence, Sauron's name translated from Greek is "The First Lizard," or perhaps more appropriately, "The Great Lizard" or even "The Lizard King." Tolkien would have known this. So Sauron is, in essence, the king of all cold-hearted creatures, the ultimate heartless killer.