On the Authentic Use of Names, Period

After bitching about nicknames yesterday, I noticed that Suisan wrote two excellent posts about related issues very recently: one about the overuse of certain names in Regency Romancelandia, and one about how representations that are inaccurate but

pander to the ignorance of the audience

stick with popular stereotypes often seem more real than the real thing. (Hellooooo, post-modernism!)

Both those issues have bugged the shit out of me, too, though obviously, the latter only when I know when the author has gotten something dead wrong.

A note to authors: the names Evelyn, Aubrey, Jocelyn (thanks for the reminder, Tam!) and Jamie were (and to a large extent, still are) male names in Merrye Englande/Scotlande. These are just examples off the top of my head; I’m sure Maili has further examples she can regale us with. Actually she wrote a most excellent bitch kitty rant about the name issue a while back, but I couldn’t find it, wah!

And please, for the love of God: don’t name your characters of EITHER gender Devon, McKenzie or other trendy names. Also, if I see another rakehell named Lucien, Damien or Devlin, I’m going to, I don’t know, punch a crotch, or something.

Yes, I know names like Gregory, George, John and Richard are common names that probably sound rather ho-hum, but I’d rather see those boring names than start giggling hysterically when I see a Regency heroine named Devon.

Also, if you want to use a foreign variation of a common name, learn exactly how it’s spelled in the character’s national origin before using it. I didn’t mention this in my review for Hot Spell because I didn’t want to nitpick excessively, but I was incredibly distracted by the Big Bad French Vampire’s name in “The Blood Kiss.” Why? Because his name was Eduard.

Which, based on my understanding, is the German way to spell it. The correct French form, as far as I know, is Edouard. That’s not to say there aren’t German names and variants in spelling in Frenchylandia and vice versa, but that one little O made all the difference in the way I read the name in my head and the accent I kept assigning the vampire.

And then there’s the issue of rampant first name usage in historicals, which Suisan talked about. This actually bugs me quite a bit, and I’ve had to deliberately numb myself to it by telling myself it doesn’t matter. Then, I’ll read a piece of fiction that was actually written in those times and be swept anew by despair at the way so many authors pointlessly violate these rules because goddammit, I LIKE having all these things be all nitpicky and right because it keeps me properly immersed in the universe.

There’s nothing wrong with a married couple addressing each other as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” nor with friends of long standing calling each other solely by their titles or their last names. Using the first-name basis has become a sort of lazy shortcut to show the reader how intimate and friendly the characters are with each other. Eschew this indolence!

And as a corollary: There is nothing wrong with servants addressing their employer as “Master” or “Mistress,” even privileged servants who have seen the characters grow from a wee babbie, oh the dear little duck, or what-the-fuck-ever. You will not catch a servant from those times addressing the lord of the manor by his first name. Shit, you won’t even catch a servant addressing a non-aristocratic employer by his first name. And likewise, the employer wouldn’t address the servants by their first names, either. It’d be like, I don’t know, having your chest grabbed by the janitor. It was (and in some circles, still is) viewed as a very real violation of protocol and a sort of personal space.

I’m just sayin’.

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  1. Katie says:

    You know, when I read the linked posts and then this one, I noticed that most of the references of incorrect names are referring to _main_ characters.  I think there are plenty of correct names used for side characters, at least in Regencies, usually as indication of the difference between the stuffy, authentic nature of English society as opposed to the compelling and interesting stories of the hero/ine. 

    The anachronistic and weird names of main characters seems often to be an explicit way of tying the reader to the character by pointing out ways that they are different from established Regency norms – just like every heroine in current romance novels is more of a ‘feminist’ than either anyone in the era or anyone else in the book, the distinctive names are a way of indicating the uniqueness of the character.

  2. Karen says:

    “Eschew this indolence!”

    Now that’s a battle cry I can get behind!

  3. SandyW says:

    A true story on formality and first names. Just to illustrate that this isn’t only a Regency-historical-waylongtimeago custom.

    My grandmothers were born in the American South in 1907 and 1911. Nice middle-class ladies; one a school teacher and the other a farmer. They lived just down the road from one another for 20 years. Went to the same church, were in the same Sunday School class. Their kids married one another. We moved away when I was a kid, Grandma No.1 moved with us. When we went back for a visit, she sometimes came along.

    So there they’d be, these two white haired ladies, drinking coffee first thing in the morning. In their housecoats. Saying things like, “How have you been, Mrs. Smith?” “I’ve been fine, Mrs. Jones. How about you?”

    This was until they both passed away in 2001. Cracks me up every time I think about it.

  4. Candy,

    I’m so glad you brought this up. I am right in the middle of a category historical romance set in Italy (hint, released this month from H*******n) where there are secondary characters named Barbarina and another one Figaro. 

    All other things aside, this is just way too much in the same book!  Couldn’t the author have gone for two different operas at least for her source material?

    *sigh*

    And as an aside rant—let’s NOT hear it for the heroines in category historicals who behave absolutely against character just so that the author could fit in the requisite one sex scene (hint, also released this month from H*******n in the same batch, and dealing with three sisters).  For two thirds of the book they are resolute virtuous women of their period, they resist the hero, set a fine example of being genuine to themseves, the hero is on the verge of changing for the better, deliciously teetering on the verge in fact, the sexy tension is going great with true verisimilitude, and then, BAM!

    Suddenly against all logic or character tendencies or plotline they decide to give themselves to him just like that—but first, after idiotically turning him down for a much better offer and one that would have made a lot of sense in that time period.  FOR NO DISCERNABLE REASON AT ALL.

    Yeah, I am all for hot sex scenes and surrender and whatnot, but really, how hard is it to let characters stay true to themselves?  C’mon, let’s make them grow organically out of real character development, not just because it’s time for the Scene (TM).  Let the Nookie Scene be an outgrowth of character!

    Just as you dont wanna pluck a cherry before it’s ripe, YOU DONT WANT TO PLUCK A TENSION ARC CHERRY BEFORE IT’S RIPE.

    So there. 🙂

  5. KariBelle says:

    Just a few names to add to the list of names that used to be masculine:

    Beverly
    Marion
    Claire (no, seriously)
    Vivian

    my step-father’s middle name is Vivian.  He is in his mid-sixties and he is John Vivian, III.  This means the original John Vivian was named well over 100 years ago.

    I knew a guy in college named Claire.  That guy caught HELL, but it was an old family name passed down through the men in his family for generations.

    The only exception I could deal with in a historical is one that I have not actually seen in a historical novel yet.  Here, in the South, absolutely ANY name, no matter how manly, can be a girl’s name if you put Mary in front of it.  Examples of people I know:

    Mary Kent
    Mary Wallace
    Mary Archie
    Mary Joseph

    And you don’t dare call any of these women just plain Mary.  They WILL set you straight.

  6. Waterhouse says:

    “Eschewing indolence”

    Heh.
    I was told you can go blind doing that.

  7. Suisan says:

    OMG. You linked to my ramblings?

    Wow. Um, thanks.

    Another male name—Shirley. Went to school with a boy named S. Carter [insert last name] III. He was the first to turn Shirley into an S.

    My father’s last name was Christian, and he used to get the internal corporate mail for another engineer four states away whose first name was Christian. Oops.

    Hey, and thanks again for pointing out my ramblings to others. I’m flattered.

  8. smoorman says:

    Another male name is Ashleigh. The female variants are usually spelled diffrently, I think. Also, I have an ancester named Valentine. You don’t see that much anymore.

  9. Bron says:

    Just wanted to echo SandyW’s ‘true story on formality and first names’.

    My very pregnant grandmother met another pregnant woman in the food stamps queue during the 1930s Depression. They lived not far from each other, and became close friends, the friendship lasting till my grandmother died some 30 years later. Yet they were always “Mrs Berg” and “Mrs Rudge” to each other. I remember Mrs Berg coming to visit us (10 years or more after my grandmother died, and we’d moved to another city), and my mother commenting afterwards that she didn’t even know Mrs Berg’s first name.

    These were not upper-class women, but proud working-class women. And since my grandmother was something of a socialist at the time, it wasn’t about airs and graces and emulating the upper classes 😉

  10. Look what I found to play with: More names than you can shake an over-familiar servant at. And all in handy groups, which is how I discovered St. Conan.

  11. Tonda says:

    I know names like Gregory, George, John and Richard are common names that probably sound rather ho-hum, but I’d rather see those boring names than start giggling hysterically when I see a Regency heroine named Devon.

    Some of those names are not always the author’s fault . . . PUBLISHERS sometimes demand a name change (just like they change our titles). And sometimes they come back to you with the name that they want. A lot of them don’t like it when you give your characters regular names (or names that are perfectly period but strange to today’s readers). They want their bad boy alphas to stand out (and to have ridiculous nicknames).

    And likewise, the employer wouldn’t address the servants by their first names, either.

    Hate to disagree with you here, but . . .many/most people did call their servants by their first names (with the exception of some of the upper servants, such as the butler and housekeeper). Some even simply assigned a name to the job and then called the servant by whatever name it was they had chosen (e.g. the first footman was “George” even if his actual name was John). What you won’t see is the master of the house calling the maid “Miss ——”. It was perfectly acceptable for superiors to call their inferiors by their fist name, just as today adults call children by their first names but children are expected to call the adult “Mr./Mrs.——”.

  12. Eileen says:

    If I was a servant and my master was named Devon- I wouldn’t call him by his title either. Pansy name like that and he can buff his own damn shoes.

  13. sarasco says:

    On servants and names, the real problem is the overfamiliarity aristocrats have with them to demonstrate how not class-biased they are. But back to names…

    We’ve always had a housekeeper, as did my dad and his siblings growing up. To the adults, they have always been Letty or Ann or whatever. The kids have always been taught to address them as Mrs. Letty or Miss Ann. My grandmother is always referred to as Mrs. Lastname, and the children as Master George or Miss Linda. My parents housekeeper calls me Miss Sara.

    Even if you are friendly and familiar with people who work for you in this capacity, there’s still a separation just like in any job. Even if you call your boss by their first name, there’s deferrence. My mom and Mrs. Letty sit around talking about their families, etc. but she still calls my mom Mrs. Martha. Even though my mom has asked her to drop the Mrs. part.

  14. Lynn M says:

    Also, if you want to use a foreign variation of a common name, learn exactly how it’s spelled in the character’s national origin before using it.

    I worked on an historical set in mid-18th century Scotland, and I was bound and determined to use the exact spellings of names based on their Gaelic orgins. In doing that, however, I ended up with a bunch of names that were unpronouncable. My Margaret became Maighread, which I knew from the pronunciation guide in my name was pronounced as MAY-red, but figured no reader out there would ever get. So I went back and forth over the problem of being accurate to the region versus having names that no reader would be able to pronounce. And I know I hate it when a character has a name I have no idea how to pronounce.

    I guess I’m wondering how to solve that little problem. There’s always that anvil-over-the-head method of having the characters explain it in some way or providing a pronunciation guide at the back of the book. But I imagine that would be a turn off, too.

  15. J-me says:

    In Robert Altman’s ‘Gosford Park’ (setting in 1930 English country side and extreme in it’s authenticity) servents are called by their last name only unless they were married.  It’s a comment about Lady Trenthem that she calls her maid by her first name.  And in Jane Austen novel’s all the servants are referred to by their first name.  If I remember correctly, Miss, Mrs. and Mr. were a middle class distinction for people with money but no title.  (Could be wrong.  World Literature classes were an awful long time ago.)

  16. Candy says:

    Some of those names are not always the author’s fault . . . PUBLISHERS sometimes demand a name change (just like they change our titles).

    I don’t know why this surprises me, but it does. It makes me a very, very sad panda.

    Please tell me this doesn’t happen too often.

    Hate to disagree with you here, but . . .many/most people did call their servants by their first names (with the exception of some of the upper servants, such as the butler and housekeeper).

    Thank you for correcting me!  I forgot about the very real distinction between the upper and lower servants. I’ll put a little footnote in the article once I have a bit of time.

    Interesting tidbit about Malaysian servants: I had nannies (mostly Indonesians who were illegal immigrants, or girls from indigenous tribes) all the time I was growing up, and I always called them by the Malay word for sister (“kakak” or “kak”). It would’ve been scan’lous if I’d called them by their first name. My parents called them by their first names, of course.

    So I went back and forth over the problem of being accurate to the region versus having names that no reader would be able to pronounce. And I know I hate it when a character has a name I have no idea how to pronounce.

    Oooh, that’s a great issue to bring up. Hmmm. I do think that Gaelic is a bit harder to work with, mostly because the phonetics are so very different from what English phonetics are (English phonetics = oxymoron?).

    It’s also a question of consistency; if you Anglicize the names of the main characters from a certain country, then stick with it; if you’re determined to have authentic, say, French names, then don’t plop a German or Spanish or Italian variant in there for no good reason, because that just screams “typo.”

  17. Tonda says:

    In Robert Altman’s ‘Gosford Park’ . . . [there’s] a comment about Lady Trenthem that she calls her maid by her first name.

    That’s because her maid is an upper servant and should have been called by her last name, which Lady Trenthem can’t pronounce. Upper servants were very touchy about their rights and their place in the scheme of things (hence the fight at their dinner table about who sits where). House maids, grooms, footmen and such = first name. Ladies maids, valets, cooks, and others of a middling level = last name only. Top tier servants (housekeepers and butlers) = last name only, or even sometimes honorific + last name (seems to have been common for housekeepers to have had “Mrs.” attached to their name, regardless if they were married or not; and other lower servants would have always attached the honorific when speaking to or of them).

    And in Jane Austen novel’s all the servants are referred to by their first name.

    Some where and some weren’t. The Bennett’s housekeeper/cook is addressed by her last name (Hill) but she’s not called “Mrs. Hill” as she would have been in a larger household where her status would have been higher (and where her duties would not have overlapped with those of the cook).

  18. Up until the last century, personal identity and status in Britain were strongly linked to family and ancestry. Society and relationships were a lot more structured too, and people really did believe that this had to be maintained or the world would spin off its axis and freefall into utter chaos. So it makes sense that people would usually address one another by titles or surnames – that was the important bit. It meant everyone knew who they were and where they fit into things. Using a first name to address someone implied they had no authority or status whatsoever, which was not a comfortable place.

    What makes me more nuts than the anachronistic use of first names is the way the heroes’ names always, always, always have to be so damn rampantly virile and dangerous. I realise names have power, but it’s starting to feel like they’re compensating. Aren’t all those bulging thews and big swords enough? I’m not asking for heroes called Hilary, Earl Muffintopp, but couldn’t they be slightly less obvious?

    Let us throw off the tedium of oh-so-cunning allusions to nouns including sex, devil and all the lords of the underworld. Ditto savage, sinister and all those other menacing adjectives. Let us free ourselves from the chains of all those predatory animals like lion and wolf and variants thereof. Especially wolf. I hate wolf. Wolf is dumb. It makes me think of Constanza shrieking for her beloved “Wolfie” in Amadeus. See? Peter Schaffer knew a thing or too. “Wolfgang” is just not epic.

    Besides, if I were a shape-changing duke who had to keep my abilities a closely-guarded secret, absolutely the last thing I’d do is keep the name Wulf, Marquess of Synister-Wolffpac. I’d be changing my name pretty sharpish to something jolly and medieval like Walkelin Chacefloosie. Bet I’d get more totty that way too.

  19. Maili says:

    1. Daughters – the eldest girl is usually addressed as Miss Leaveworth and her sisters as Miss Lucy, Miss Mary, and Miss Rose. When the eldest gets married, Miss Lucy becomes Miss Leaveworth and her two sisters are still addressed as Miss Mary and Miss Rose. That’s until Lucy gets married.

    2. So I went back and forth over the problem of being accurate to the region versus having names that no reader would be able to pronounce. And I know I hate it when a character has a name I have no idea how to pronounce.

    It’s considered very impolite to speak Gaelic in front of an English speaker [which is usually why it’s difficult to get any native Gaelic speaker to say something in Gaelic to a tourist; they weren’t being possessive or secretive about it, they know it’s just rude to do so].
    It’s usually polite to introduce self in English. If the guest wishes to speak in Gaelic, we wait until the guest does so. THEN we can use our ‘true’ names when conversing in Gaelic. Until then we don’t reveal our ‘real’ names. My family are acutely embarrassed that I’m using Maili in front of English speakers. *Shrug* 😀

    For your story, Lynn, a possible solution is to have your characters to introduce their ‘true’ names first and invite the English speaker to address them by their Anglicised or English names. It’s been known to happen, so why not?

    3. Candy – I wrote quite a few bitch kitty rants about names! The only one that survived The Day that I Stupidly Murdered My Blog is this lame post: Names, Names, Names.

  20. Tonda says:

    So I went back and forth over the problem of being accurate to the region versus having names that no reader would be able to pronounce. And I know I hate it when a character has a name I have no idea how to pronounce.

    I’m with you on this. I really want to write a great Scottish heroine, but all the names I like are too freaken strange when written out (they don’t bother me, as my sister is Siobhan and my brother is Niall, but I know most of America isn’t going to be able to just “hear” via their eyes that “bh” = “v”, etc.).

    I have a similar issue with people writing in dialect/accent. And how to portray this. If your characters are all speaking to other people with the same accent, then it seems silly to me to have them speaking in “dialect”, as the POV character isn’t going to recognize it as such and wouldn’t “hear” it that way. It also doesn’t make sense to me when they’re not even speaking English.

    I read a Scottish historical a while ago where the hero was a Gaelic speaking Scott and the heroine was an English woman who did not speak or understand Gaelic. The book took place in Scotland and all the characters except the heroine were speaking Gaelic to one another. It drove me nuts that the hero and all the other Scotts spoke in a “Scottish dialect” in the hero’s POV scenes. I thought it would have been SO much better if the accent was only apparent when he was speaking English to the heroine and the scene was in her POV.

    Maybe I over think these things—LOL!—but it really distracted me.

  21. Maili says:

    Tonda – I think I know which book you were referring to [it was the one I “volunteered” to read as an attempt to be fair about Scottish historical romances last November and failed miserably] and I’m so, fully, completely, totally with you on that.

  22. Suisan says:

    Help! We need a

    < /I >

    in here somewhere.

  23. susanw says:

    I have a similar issue with people writing in dialect/accent. And how to portray this. If your characters are all speaking to other people with the same accent, then it seems silly to me to have them speaking in “dialect”, as the POV character isn’t going to recognize it as such and wouldn’t “hear” it that way.

    I’m a dialect minimalist.  Partly this is because I tend to write stories with characters all over the social ladder and from a variety of regions.  I could spend the time to figure out how to write dialect for a Scottish aristocrat, a farmboy from Shropshire, a Cockney, an Irish peasant, etc.  But I figure A) it would make reading my dialogue needlessly confusing for my readers, and B) I’d still be doing research on the manuscript I just finished and found an agent for! 

    My other issue with dialect is I’ve seen too many cases where I feel like the author is showing condescension toward any character speaking non-standard English.  The worst was an unpublished writer in a class I took who couldn’t be convinced that using Margaret Mitchell’s slaves as a model of black dialogue was a bad idea.  But I’ve seen Scots, Cockney, and American Southern dialect that had the same effect on me.

    Oh, and I just realized I have a third issue—if you get it wrong, it shows.  I’m originally from Alabama, and nothing grates on my readerly ear worse than a botched attempt to write a Southern accent.

  24. Janet M says:

    I could weep with gratitude (or to be honest gratitude mixed with hysterical laughter) for this topic. One wonderful weapon we historical writers have is the use of different levels of formality between characters—it’s similar to, but more complex, than tu/vous in French. Call me an old perv, but I think there’s nothing sexier than being addressed as Mrs. Whatever while Joslyn/Evelyn or whoever rips off your clothes, and you address him as “my lord.”

    Not that it happens that often to me.

    Janet

  25. Marsha W says:

    I think there’s a small amount to be said for culture and marketing. Most of the historical romances I’ve come across have been written by Americans and are most likely to be read by an American audience. Some Historic names are just unacceptable to readers because there’s a definite connotation to them that likely distracts from what the writer may have intended her readers to think. This isn’t to be taken as a literal example but a name like Albert or Marvin does not bring to mind “hero”.

    There’s a definite overuse of Devlins, Gabriels etc. But I think sometimes the author is trying to inspire heroic images and I suppose, for some, connotations outweigh the need for accuracy…particularly since some of these books are written to titillate rather than inspire deep thought. These issues generally come to fore when the writing isn’t good enough to distract you from its failings.

  26. Victoria Dahl says:

    I think the stories about the grandmas calling each other Mrs. so-and-so is the exact problem. I don’t WANT to think of my heroine as an old-fashioned grandma, and I certainly don’t want readers to go there.

    I’m guilty of having my heroine insist the hero call her by her first name, but I do try to use it to show intimacy. I do use the hero’s title (IF he has one) as his familiar name, but I absolutely refuse to have my heroine moaning, “Oh, Mr. Jennings!” in the bedroom. Or hallway. I don’t care how accurate it is. Huh-unh.

    I’d imagine there were differences in every time just as there are now. People in my family’s hometown call my grandma Winnie, and always have. Things aren’t formal. And in the past, I’m sure there were plenty of exceptions to go along with all those rules. (Isn’t that sort of the point of the Austen novels? Fitting in and being acceptable and above reproach versus. . . not?) For example, I’m sure some women called their sisters Mrs. or Lady, while some addressed siblings by their first names.

  27. Tonda says:

    I’m guilty of having my heroine insist the hero call her by her first name, but I do try to use it to show intimacy.

    I work the name change in in a very particular way. First I make a mental transition, where the characters begin to think about each other in a more intimate way as they grow closer, while they continue to speak formally. Then I let the fist name or nick name get used in some kind of emotional scene (either a hot one or a dangerous one). I work really hard to make the transition feel natural, like an organic development.

    What I hate are books where the character just blithefully says something like, “Oh, I hate all that formality, won’t you please call me Violet.” right after they meet. It feels forced, unnatural, anachronistic, and it doesn’t bring them into any real intimacy.

  28. Robyn says:

    Many names that were popular and attractive as near as 100 years ago aren’t now, and I wonder if that’s why editors want to change them. I think of women’s names like Alice, Agnes, Bernice, Helen, etc. EAP- I love you. Wolf names of any kind are an instant turn-off for me.

    My mom was fine with two college students I told her shared our dorm quad until she met them. Rene was from France, Ashley from England. They were both men.

  29. Susan K says:

    Part of what bothers me about anachronistic names is that they are all too often bundled with anachronistic characters.  If the heroine’s name is Raven, you know she’s a foot-stomping, hair tossing Valley girl, no matter whether the book is a Scottish medieval, English Regency, or Victorian New York.

  30. Sorcha R says:

    Slightly off-topic but still in Regencyland, I just read a horrible book called The Husband Trap which, aside from the author’s annoying habit of writing in sentence fragments, featured a situation in which the hero (mistakenly) thought his new bride wasn’t a virgin. His thought process went something like, “He knew it shouldn’t matter, but it did.” Er, hello, Regency England here – as far as they were concerned, it SHOULD matter!

  31. Sorcha R says:

    EAP, I think I love you. If I were a vampire/werewolf/high-level mage, I would change my name to Bob Jones, Marquis of Normalcy-Nothingtoseehere. Reminds me of that How to Be a Super Villain list floating around the ‘net.

    Also, I have a sekrit love for the name Hilary used for men, but that’s just me. *G*

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