This is wildly OT and applies to more than romance novels, but it’s something that’s been stuck in my head a while, so here goes:
It kind of bugs me that a lot of authors, especially authors of genre fiction, get the diminutive forms of foreign names wrong or completely ass-fucking-backwards.
This train of thought got kick-started when some co-workers and I engaged in a conversation about my Chinese name.
Yes, I have a Chinese name. My parents, for some reason, inflicted two different names on both the girls in the family. They gave us English names (Honey and Candy) but then put down Chinese names on our birth certificates and promptly proceeded to pretend the Chinese names didn’t exist. This created quite a bit of confusion on the first day of kindergarten, since the teacher naturally went by what was on the birth certificate. I ended up getting into an argument with the teacher over what constituted my “real” name.
My sister’s story is even funnier. She didn’t know about HER Chinese name until she took a math test in first grade. Her teacher had no idea who this “Honey Tan” was, but she definitely wasn’t registered in the class.
Anyway, most Chinese names have at least two parts to them, not including the family name. Some have three, and some have only one, but the vast majority of the Chinese names will consist of a family name, followed by two other names: Zhang Zi Yi, Chow Yuen Fat, Leung Chiu Wai, Mao Tze Tung, Deng Xiao Ping, etc.
This is because one part of the name is usually a name used for a whole generation of kids. Basically, every boy and girl born to a group of brothers will have a name in common. All my brothers’ sons have names starting with Cheng, for example, while all their daughters’ names start with Kim. The second part of their names is what distinguishes the child within the generation: there can be a Cheng Kin, Cheng Leong, Cheng San, etc.
Note that it’s not always the first part of the name that’s the generational name; I’ve seen people switch it around, too, though from what I’ve observed, using the first name as the generational name is more prevalent.
People familiar with Chinese culture know that these two-part names are usually treated as a unit. If you’re very familiar with the person and want to create a diminutive, you drop the generational name, which makes sense; if you did it the other way around, you’d be calling upwards of a dozen people the same name. So, for example, somebody named Xiao Ming who had Xiao as the generational name may be referred to as Ming, Ming-Ming, or Ah Ming.
People here in Portland find my two-part Chinese name horribly confusing. I hyphenate it to indicate that it should be pronounced as one unit, but people still inevitably try to pronounce only the first part. I try to politely correct people who do this, but some people really, really resent this, occasionally stooping to hostile or snippy comments. I don’t see why it’s treated as such an imposition, because there are similar compound names in English, like Mary-Ann.
I also had a hard time pinpointing why I was so bothered by this. A rose by any other name, etc., right? Then it hit me: it’d be like me calling somebody named Stephen, “Phen,” or somebody named Brian, “Ian”—without their permission, and without knowing them very well.
OK, so I’m taking a long time to make my point, and my point is this: different cultures have different methods of creating diminutive forms of names. And when a name from a certain culture or time period isn’t given the proper diminutive, it can really jar on the ears.
Take, for example, my French friend, Edouard. Some of his American friends call him Ed, sometimes even Eddie baby, which makes me laugh, mostly because it sounds so WRONG. On the other hand, a very French diminutive (albeit one that would probably only be used on a little kid), Dou-Dou, makes me laugh even harder. But this is a pretty good illustration of how diminutives sometimes focus on the stressed syllable.
And once you get into the sort of diminutive where letters are added or completely changed in a name instead of merely trimming away syllables, things get a whole lot more complicated. How Daisy became a diminutive for Margaret and Dick for Richard is still something I have yet to puzzle out, but some, like Nicky or Colette from Nicole, are less difficult to figure out.
And as anyone who’s read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy can tell you, Russians have their own system of diminutives, and they’re not afraid of inflicting four of five different ones on the same person, some of them not resembling the original name at all, therefore making you feel like a right a dumbass when you realize a few dozen pages down the line that this character you totally thought was somebody else was one of the major characters.
I think this is all a very long-winded way to say: if you want to write about a foreign culture or a different time period, try to get the diminutives right.
Yeah, I realize this is nitpicky shit. Most people probably don’t care, but when used correctly, it really adds an authentic flavor to the prose, and when used wrongly, my OCD self tends to pick on it and pick on it and not let it alone, le sigh. And y’all know how much wiser it is to keep me happy.
If you don’t mind a stupid follow-on question, are you saying that in “Chow Yuen Fat†(god of actors), “Yuen†is the generational name?
I wouldn’t be able to say for sure unless I saw his siblings’ or paternal cousins’ names 🙂 . But the general rule of thumb seems to be that the first name is the generational name, though I’ve encountered a couple of exceptions. This may be because the generational name tends to be some sort of adjective (e.g. beautiful, or strong), while the second part of the name tends to be a noun, and Chinese tends to use the adjective-noun syntax.
In my job I write to authors a lot (editorial assistant), so is it respectful to use the hyphenated name? I usually do it to avoid revealing my ignorance of whether “Mr.†or “Ms.†is the appropriate form of address, but I don’t want to perpetrate a worse insult.
Yeah, that gets confusing. I’ve encountered the same problem here at work, actually, where I occasionally need to write e-mails to people with unisex names. I usually address them using their full name followed by a colon, or I omit the name entirely and just use a greeting like “Hello.” I don’t know how useful this sort of information is for you, but I don’t think addressing them by their hyphenated name is particularly disrespectful. But keep in mind I’m not the foremost expert on business etiquette, either.
Good rant!
And word on the foreign language thing. For example: Do not have a French-speaking character address a female character as “cheri”. She should be “chérie”. Otherwise you have some bizarre gender-bending explaining to do and I know they sound almost exactly the same but YES IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE AAAAAARGH.
*cough* Ahem. Sorry. But really, how long does it take to check and fix that? (I excused it in Don’t Look Down on the grounds that the speaker was American and maybe they do things differently in Louisiana. Also, first edition. But it still bugged me.)
I’m with Electric Landlady on the chéri/chérie/cher/chère thing. Gender (and accents) is essential in french so I also get a “whah?” moment when I read a woman being called “cheri”.
BUT I was just in LA last month and I get the feeling that the locals (who did not learn standard Fr in school, of course) are used to spelling cher and cheri only that way.
Now on the name/nickname issue, I have three names on my birth certificate. Here we use the French système so the last of the names is my “real” name. And my name isn’t nickname-able. My mother called me Minou (kitten) or Billibulle (her invention). Other people usually call me by my full name or the one my aunt invented in irony (long story) tilezanj (little angel). It’s in creole, btw.
For my brother, it’s easier…and not. His real name is Stéphane and the official nickname here is phaphane. Some call him Stef, our German neighbor calls him Steffan (Shteffan). The official name is a problem, though. My father went overboard (first child, son etc.) and called him Marie Emmanuel Gregory Stéphane. LOL, yes, that many names. So my brother has multiple personalities, depending on how the clerk felt that day or how many names fit on the id, form, card…
As to EAP’s comment : “Most non-native speakers I know are deservedly pretty damn proud of their command of English and would eat their own dictionary rather than avoid using a word if they knew it.” I agree and disagree. I was raised in two languages, French and Creole, taught in French only and learned English and Spanish in school. Now, the first three I can switch btw in the same phrase sometimes; Esp, I use in short phrases or foul language, LOL.
Still, if I have to stick English for a long time, say when I travel, I find that I spontaneously use French (my working language) for short answers, yes, no, maybe, wait or if I’m not paying attention and someone asks me a question. But that’s just me…
Oh, one last thing about nicknames. There are the official ones: Mama=Emma, Fanfan=Frantz, Toyo/Toya=Antonio/a, Têtê=Marie-Thérèse, Michou=Michel/elle, Rachou=Rachelle. Anything else is usually the strong syllable. Gette=Georgette, Zaza=Elsa, Dèdette=Odette, Flo=Florence etc. I’ve always been told that the origine of the rampant nicknaming is…superstition. You don’t tell the first name of someone so an evil spirit won’t steal his/her soul. But mostly it’s a way to show you’re close to the person.
It often get to the point where the real name is completely forgotten and the nickname has to be mentionned in the obituary just so you know who it is that died!!!!
In general, people can never make out my first name when they hear it spoken, so I generally have to spell it for new acquaintances, and am simply lucky that I enjoy talking to people about my names.
And for other people who like knowing fancy words for things: hypochoristic is the linguistic term for nicknames.
Still, if I have to stick English for a long time, say when I travel, I find that I spontaneously use French (my working language) for short answers
It’s interesting to hear that, La Karibane. Have to admit my comment was pretty much based on the way my relatives and friends speak. You’re definitely right about the swearing. English is mum’s 3rd language, but she still only swears in the first two. When we were kids, we picked up nothing from her but enough of those words to make it worth her while to teach us properly. Otherwise she worried we’d holler our favorite phrases at the top of our lungs around someone who actually understood what they meant. Not that we’d ever dream of it, of course…
But she and my relatives (even the ones living abroad) tend to stay in one language unless they’re stuck for a word or stressed. I wonder if it’s different because you can switch between languages quite easily? I tend to get in a zone for one language and then find it quite hard to switch out of it (which is why I suck at translation btw) and mum says she’s like this as well.
So it might be that these experiences don’t reflect the general rule. But it still bugs me that there are so many characters in books who go around using their own language for really simple words all the time. One-offs, or asides, okay. But not extended monologues littered with “oui”s and “non”s. And the explosion of “der”s that Darla wrote about? That’s just bizarre.
I don’t know how useful this sort of information is for you, but I don’t think addressing them by their hyphenated name is particularly disrespectful.
It’s useful (and thanks!), because before this I wouldn’t have imagined it might be disrespectful (here in America, you know, land of the free and home of the brave, we’re all on a first-name basis, uh, aren’t we?).
and here I though both nicole and colette were diminutives of Nicolette.
People are constantly trying to make my name more feminine by adding “y”s or shortening it. My name is cameron, it’s never to be anything else. ever.
It always surprises me that characters in romance novels never correct people when they use random diminutives and nicknames.
I translate romances from time to time. The last one I did (and probably the worst) involved a fictional francophone European kingdom (clearly modelled on Disney cartoons, but never mind that) with a king named Marcel, for some unexplicable reason shortened to Marc. Marc and Marcel are too separate names. The first one is pronounced Mark, the other one is Mar-SELL. I actually had to rechristen the hero as Marcel, since in my native language the entire thing became even stupider.
As for foreign phrases – I had been offered a book for translation (I refused) in which the hero, a hot-blooded 100% Spaniard from Andalucia, ended his every second sentence with “Madre di Dio”. This had me practically rolling on the floor. It’s in Italian.
A Spanish man would say “Madre de Dios” (can’t do the accent, sorry). I have met plenty, though, and none of them felt any need to include this (or similar) phrase every two minutes.
So my Latino sex god should not keep his cojones in his cajones. *makes a note*
most of the wierd diminutives like Bob for robert, dick for richard, or hodgie for roger come from the difficulty that children have in pronouncing a proper latin r sound (the one pronounced on the hard palette like an l), and the problem they have in leaning to pronounce a germanic r (the one pronounced in the throat, where they can’t see how it’s done).
thus Sara becomes Sala bacomes Sally
also other similarly but more easily pronounced sounds are substituted for more difficult ones, such as V in Sylvester becoming F in Fester.
Margaret sounds like Marguerite which means daisy in French. That’s how Margaret became shortened into Daisy.