What's in a Name?

What’s in a Name?

By Karen Azinger

Author of The Silk & Steel Saga

 

What’s in a name? Everything! Names evoke mystery, menace, magic and wonder. Whisper a single name and readers are instantly transported to another time and place. Arthur…Camelot…Excalibur…Frodo…Mordor…Voldemort, these names shimmer in our hearts and dreams like magical touch-stones. Some evoke wonder while others embody dread. More than any other genre, fantasy tasks authors to create unique and interesting names, but these names should not be a jumble of alphabet soup, impossible to pronounce and even harder to remember. For my medieval epic fantasy, The Silk & Steel Saga, I took great care in choosing the names for my main characters, striving for names that are both unique and memorable and reflective of my characters’ prominent traits.

Liandra, the Queen of Lanverness, is one of my favorite names in the saga. Naming this character was one of my top priorities. After discarding half a hundred mundane names, inspiration finally struck. As soon as I thought of Liandra, I knew I had the perfect name. Lyrical and feminine, yet it has an underlying strength, a fitting name for a queen who uses “beauty to beguile, spies to foresee, and gold to control.” Liandra is a unique name, one I’ve never seen used in fantasy, perfect for my Spider Queen.

Kath, the princess of Castlegard, is a strong female character who is often underestimated and frequently overlooked. Because she is ignored and overlooked, I wanted her to have a common girl’s name, but I also wanted my character to be bold enough to name herself. Katherine is her birth name, the name her father calls her, the name of a princess destine to wed for the good of her kingdom, but my character rejects that destiny and therefore rejects that name, choosing instead to be called Kath, a unique and catchy twist on an otherwise common name.

The Mordant is the name for my darkest character. This name pays homage to the land of Mordor in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but instead of an eye wreathed in flame, the Mordant is a very real, very complex character who has lived for over a thousand years. One of the unique aspects of The Silk & Steel Saga is the way the reader gets to view the world from the perspective of a very malevolent evil. It is through the Mordant that my books explore the mechanisms of evil.

Sir Blaine is my classic knight, always striving to be worthy, determined to be a sword wielding hero. This character required a very “knightly” name. When naming a knight, one instantly thinks of the Knights of the Round Table, but authors need to steer clear of stereotypical names like Lancelot, Galahad, Gwaine, Percival and Tristan. Instead I chose a name that sounds like it belongs among Arthurian legends yet is fresh and unique. Blaine rhymes with Gwaine, the perfect original name for my classical knight.

In epic fantasy, the names of settings deserve just as much thought as the character names. If you get stuck, just glance at any world map for inspiration. For example, Inverness is a city in Scotland and also in New Zealand. I’ve never visited either place yet the name always struck me as lyrical, magical, even mystical. Putting my own twist on the name, Inverness becomes Lanverness, the only kingdom of Erdhe ruled by a queen. For the capital city of Lanverness, I chose the name Pellanor, a twisted spelling of Pellinore, a king from Arthurian legend who is famous for hunting the Questing Beast. Choose the names of your kingdoms, cities, and castles with care. Names can instill a touch of classical legend in your epic fantasy.

And last but certainly not least, writers must choose the names for their books. A book’s name should infuse an instant sense of genre. The name should attract attention, create expectation, and be easy to remember while being distinctive. The name of my first book, The Steel Queen, was chosen by my London editors. They wanted a name that could work as a cross-over title to attract both fantasy and historical fiction readers. After a month of e-mailing long lists of names back and forth, they finally settled on The Steel Queen. Once I broke free from my London editors and reclaimed the rights to my books, I chose the rest of the titles as well as the saga name. To “brand” the titles and identify them as part of a saga, I patterned all the titles after the first book, resulting in, The Steel Queen, The Flame Priest, The Skeleton King, The Poison Priestess, The Knight Marshal, and The Prince Deceiver. The final book of the saga will be named The Battle Immortal. 

 

Choosing a saga name is similar to choosing a book name, but with an added twist. In the fantasy genre, epic sagas are often referred to by their acronym, so The Lord of the Rings becomes LOTR and Game of Thrones becomes GoT. So in choosing my saga name, I took into consideration this convention of the fantasy genre. One of the things I love most about my saga name, The Silk & Steel Saga, is that the acronym is SASS. I hope my readers will agree that the women in my saga have a lot of sass!

What’s in a name? Everything! Choose wisely! 

(The cover art for this essay features an Art Card of Erdhe by Karen Azinger using rubber stamps by Stampland, Alextamping, and Unknown.)