Notes, What’s In A (Character/Place) Name?
What’s In A (Character/Place) Name?
Author: | Gregory P. Epley |
Published: | 10/28/2020 |
Rated: | G |
One mystery I will settle right now are the first names of two of the main characters. They are NOT … I repeat, NOT … based on the names of their respective “lists”. I am referring to “Craig’s List” and “Angie’s List”.
Back in May 2006, when I originally began creating main characters, I’d at least heard of Craig’s List, but hadn’t heard of Angie’s List until some years later. However, neither “list” was consciously on my mind when I conceived the two main characters of Anjie and Craig. It is pure humorous dumb luck coincidence. Nothing more.
In an initially conceived plot, Craig was a “sounds like” for myself, Greg. However, when I realized this idea wasn’t going to work, I simply retained the name because I liked it. I could still say he was somewhat based on myself, which he is, to a limited degree, but only to the extents that his hair color matches mine, his background is in computers, he has some liberal arts background, and he is visually impaired. That’s pretty much where the resemblances end.
Anjie, note the “j”, was originally the usual Angie, with a “g”, but I knew her legal full first name would be Angela in the latter case and wanted to avoid all the usual associations of “angel” to her name. At the time, I believe the particular text-to-speech engine and voice I was using with my JAWS screen reading software pronounced Angie with a “g” a bit strangely, which caused me to go into the pronunciation dictionary to correct this.
This may sound strange, but when you are trying to coax a synthesized voice into making a certain sound or sequence of sounds, it often helps to phonetically mangle the usual spelling. For example, sometimes you simply can’t get the speech engine to give you a hard “g” sound unless you add an “h” after it. Sometimes this happens at the beginning of some given and/or surnames, and sometimes it happens in the middle of certain words, though both are typically from some other language besides English.
However, in some cases, you can better coax the proper sound using a totally different single letter, as in the case of replacing the “g” in Angie with a “j”. The pronunciation was quite suddenly perfect, and I thought this unusual spelling would help better differentiate this character from the usual spelling, as well as take care of the “angel” problem, so Anjie, with a “j”, it became, and of course, Anjela, with a “j” had to follow.
Craig’s original surname was “Edwards”, but as the story progressed, I came to dislike having an “s” at the end of both Anjie and Craig’s surnames. I use a combination of various internet resources and a fairly lengthy list of real midwestern surnames when I need to come up with character names but couldn’t seem to find a replacement I liked for “Edwards”. I don’t recall exactly how or when I stumbled across “Edwin”, but it seemed to stick so I ran with it. Likewise, Anjie’s original surname was “Simms”, with a double “m”, but I later discovered an earlier form of this only had one “m”, so I ran with that and it stuck.
The fictional “Execor International” was originally “Farlight”, until I discovered some months into the project that a company which dealt with LED lighting already held the name. I tried on and off for quite some time to come up with something else, but it just wouldn’t happen. Then, one day some years later, I was fiddling around with a combination of a Latin dictionary and Google Translate, and happened to stumble upon the Latin “exsequor”, which I “Anglicized” into “Execor” after reading the six chilling definitions which seemed to be describing traits of my fictional scientific research organization.
“Waconga Lakes” was originally “Wanashaw Lakes”, so named after a prestigious founding settler named Mathew Wanashaw. However, living in Minnesota as I was doing at the time I conceived the first several novels in this series, I knew of the prominent Lakota and Sioux peoples who would likely have resided in the area when it was later settled by new arrivals heading west. Since I was necessarily wanting some various sizes and depths of lakes around, nearby or within the fictional settlement which would become the present-day metropolis, but such lakes didn’t physically exist in the area, I ran with some literary license. For whatever reason, it seemed I could find a lot more online resources on the Lakota, learned that sweetgrass had apparently been prominent in the area, and when I discovered the Lakota word for sweetgrass, this so coincidentally maintained my “W” city name that I decided to run with it, and Waconga Lakes was born.
The later “metropolis” of the city was originally much less of a metropolis, but I later didn’t feel this fit well with the founding of a now worldwide scientific research organization being nearby. The nearest international or major airport to the area within the state of Minnesota was a nearly 3-hour drive away, yet my home state of North Carolina, which is physically slightly over 61 percent of the size of Minnesota has at least three primary international airports. The farthest north and the farthest south are a bit less than 3 hours drive apart, so I figured I could reasonably drop another major international airport near my otherwise non-existent metropolis in southwestern Minnesota.
Most fictional cities or towns replaced a real place so travel distances could be accurately calculated. I was able to find plat maps and other detailed information online in a format I could follow, permitting me to more accurately place a much larger metropolis over a smaller city in southwestern Minnesota. Some clues are sprinkled in spots in the first novel as to what real city was replaced with the metropolis of Waconga Lakes, but it is likely that only those familiar with the area will guess where fictional Waconga Lakes resides. Also, uncertain of what events might occur, I felt creating some fictional cities or towns was preferable to “offending” someone.
If I happened to end up using any real names of persons or places, I can only say this was coincidental in the case of characters, and necessary to a degree for some places. One cannot reasonably write a story which is supposed to be occurring in any sort of recognizable place without dropping in a few familiar spots. I did try to avoid stepping on any toes with fictional business establishments, though this was sometimes an overly difficult task since one test was to see if anyone held the website domain, which in a rare few cases was for sale, usually at some exorbitant price no sane person would pay.
On no occasion was I trying to infringe upon or offend anyone through this series of novels. That I may have failed remains to be seen, but people need to just chill, take some slow, deep calming breaths, and keep things in perspective. In cases where I wrote a fictional character or characters interacting with some known celebrity or other notable figure, I did the best I could with what I had to work with. I tried to be careful, but again, this series will state at the beginning of every novel that it is NOT occurring on our same Earth in our universe. A necessity I was NOT happy to take, but very reluctantly felt was necessary given how overly sensitive so many people are, and the eagerness with which they file litigation.
It is no easy matter to come up with a character name which isn’t in use. Also, in this age of social networking, what if the “use” I discover is actually some old social profile of a deceased person? This sort of thing is going to be a long-term problem in our modern world because there is no simple solution to the underlying problem. There could be, but like so many things, there just isn’t.
Originally, the entire Neuroscience team were Caucasian, but as the story progressed and I realized the racial diversity forming among later groups, I decided to re-think the racial diversity of the initial Neuroscience team. Red-headed Kate Taubert became black-haired Japanese Kate Mikawa. Sara and Tim’s names didn’t change but transforming platinum blond Sara and honey blond Tim into African Americans nevertheless worked.
I had felt for some time that I perhaps needed or wanted an initially married couple with one child on the team. Doing so resolved several issues, most notably two more great minds on the team and some added racial diversity. I was considering more African American, then decided Hispanic would work better.
By the way, there is no especially significant reason why I use the terms “African American” or “Hispanic”, other than that I had to settle on SOMETHING. There seems to be no official consensus over the use of “Hispanic” versus “Latino”, so I simply settled upon “Hispanic”. Likewise, I didn’t like using “Black” or “Negro” for Blacks, so my only other acceptable choice seemed to be “African American”. Any mention of “features” accompanying race is purely for clarification, not insult or offense. It is, after all, a fact that most persons of a given race share certain feature characteristics most of us are familiar with, but as I must write for a wide audience, I was simply trying to clarify.
While I do have some characters express a very “anti-Chinese” perspective, this is not some personal thing for me. I tend to focus most of my Asian characters as Japanese because I could locate what I felt was much better resource material than I could find on the Chinese. The same is true of some African American characters and their predominantly Kenyan Kiswahili given and/or surnames.
No doubt I got some pronunciations or other character and/or place things “wrong”. I will try to correct these as I am made aware of them, but I may never succeed in getting everything corrected. I am trying to avoid any sort of racial stereotyping, but likely failed in some respects. I am, after all, human and imperfect. It is this recognition of this in myself which is the basis of my “Those who can do; those who can’t, criticize others who can” philosophy. I am generally NOT fond of criticism because while others may mean well, most criticism is nevertheless negatively toned, and anything negatively toned just makes others feel bad or worse, not better.
There is “always room for improvement”, but there is also, “If you can’t say anything nice, then perhaps you should say nothing at all”. There is a middle ground, or there is trying to be constructively positive versus negative. If you wouldn’t like anyone criticizing you in whatever ways you’re criticizing others, then perhaps you should re-think your own criticism. Consequently, I will NOT tolerate certain criticisms on this site. There is more than enough negative in our world. Let’s try to spread more positive with the same eagerness with which we spread the negative, and everyone will be a lot better off.
Now, I can hear some readers saying things like, “Yes, but you’re spreading your opinions on whatever through your writing”. Yes, and I’m also investing all the effort, money and time into the creation of content. This website and its domain aren’t free of charge, and I deliberately don’t pester visitors with all the advertising many other sites do because I dislike that being done to me and disagree with the rationalization over offering ads in order to offset site costs. I personally never click on any of the ads because I don’t feel the need to do so. I know what I want, when I want it, and will work to obtain whatever from wherever when the resources are available to do so, and not before.
However, to close on character and place names, I confess I went a bit overboard on the use of “Prairie”, as in “The Prairie Crown Mall and Suites”, “The Prairie Pebble Restaurant” and the community of “Prairie Grove”. Most of the reason for this was trying to find something which wasn’t already in use, but the Prairie Pebble and Prairie Grove existed in the very first draft, and I couldn’t seem to come up with anything better for the mall and suites which didn’t sound ridiculous and/or somehow conflicted with something which already existed.
It can be especially difficult coming up with fictional organizations which don’t already exist in the form of some other group, acronym or organization. It is far more difficult than most people realize. For example, what eventually became the GFRT or Global Foundation for a Reformed Tomorrow began as the COAFGA, pronounced Koh-aff-gah, or Coalition of Americans for Government Accountability, which morphed into the ACCCGA or American Coalition of Concerned Citizens for Government Accountability. However, like the “N double A C P”, I could predict the latter ending up referred to as the “A triple C G A”, and the group was always intended as a predominantly fundamentalist or neoconservative religious group, so GFRT worked overall better.
The character of Senator Tobias Mambu is NOT any doppelganger of Barack Obama. While both men may present some similarities, Mambu was NEVER intended to portray Obama. I simply needed and wanted an African American politician I could utilize in the story without having to worry over offending a real person.
Related to this are certain real persons from our universe which I will NOT reference in the A-Wareverse. These persons simply do NOT exist in the A-Wareverse. I will NOT be drawn into offering examples. If some readers wish to take offense to this, let them write and publish their own books and risk the vengeful legal actions our justice system does nothing to protect one from. Don’t I wish I had an Anjie and/or Craig on my side, but sadly, they only exist in the fictional context of this series.
The character of Mr. “Kaji” was originally “Kato” until I decided I didn’t like the association too many readers would make with “The Green Hornet”, plus some people pronounce it Kay-toh while others say Kah-toh, where Kaji is pretty standard Kah-jee. Creating a new style of karate proved an almost insurmountable task, but the style name really does represent the tenets presented.
“Shinju”, pronounced Sheen-joo, was, and still is, something of a work in progress. A fictional mysticism I created because I was seeing plots which rendered A-Ware useless. Think of it as all the things Batman can do, but which Superman can do better, only you must allow some room for something to control Superman, such as kryptonite, or you risk creating an unstoppable force which resolves all problems in short order.
While some aspects of Shinju do resemble those of the Star Wars Jedi, their source is not precisely the same. The presence of fictional “midi-chlorians” appear to be the reason Jedi can harness the fictional “Force”, whereas harnessing Shinju is of a more spiritual source. There is nothing present at any cellular or genetic level which results in any human being harnessing Shinju. Shinju is a granted power versus a more inherited one. And its kryptonite is not so much a “dark side” as it is “a straying too far from God’s purposes”.
The question then becomes … how far is too far? However, that is not necessarily a question human beings can ask or answer since the answer is “of God”. This offers an author a certain flexibility without being too constrained or not constrained enough. The original Japanese language dictionary resource I referenced for many early years of this project later disappeared, forcing me to find other, less liked sources. I saw one problem I would have depending on how I decided to go with plots, so was given no choice but to come up with some fictional terms which have no precise translation into any modern language.
“Shinju” is a real Japanese term, though depending on what source you consult, it can mean “double suicide” or “pearl”. One resource indicated the double suicide meaning was spelled with double “u” at the end, while other sources only showed one. I liked the pearl idea, as in “creating a positive out of a negative”, or the way an oyster creates something as positively beautiful as a pearl from the irritation or negative of a grain of sand. This is just one of those literary liberty stretches an author sometimes has to make to create something sufficiently useful as a plot device.
As always, thanks for reading this notes article, and I hope it was useful in clarifying some aspects of A-Ware series books.