How do you feel about naming in fanworks?

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I wanted to make this thread not to point fingers at any specific hack or fanfiction, but to see how the community feels about how the world-building in projects made by fans (fire emblem or otherwise) affect their enjoyment of the experience, and in more emphasis: naming.

Names are a big part of writing, they give life and personality and characterization to just about anything, sometimes they let you know the purpose of the object, sometimes a place’s name reflects the culture and tone of said location you visit and, perhaps what I find most important, are the names of characters, as they can greatly impact your perception and first impressions of them.

With that introduction, I’m interested to know how names make an impression for you people of the community, what do you think makes for a good name? What makes for a bad one? Allow me to answer the question myself and take it from here.

I find that names of characters are a good way to reflect the culture of a place, European names constitute a western setting, while Asian names make for a great eastern feeling, and why it works great on, for example, FE14, where both nations themes clash. What I don’t like however, is how there are original characters often found in fanfiction writing where they do not fit the setting and, unfortunately, it is never explained why they are named the way they are…

An example: the birds chirp a playful spring tune, the vast greenery expands the visible horizon, sturdy trees make for housing the innocent critters, however the great and constant flow of nature is matched by the uncaring, yet ambitious, rise of King Augustus, whose steel-plated guards march tirelessly, with their lances in one hand and their unyielding heart on the other, fighting for a cause far greater than their individual selves, submitting the growing rebellions from the fragile citizenry, who can do naught but watch as their dignity crumbles under the sole of the nobles. Though in the sinking sands of despair is where hope shines it’s brightest, as Arthur, a boy as courageous as he is youthful charges to the defense of his village from the cold grasp of the empire, not alone, as he boasts his loyal friends: Beatrice, the charming fire caster who sears foes and hearts alike; Cassian, an adept myrmidon with a blade as sharp as his tongue; Julia, the pale and shy, yet equally caring and kindhearted cleric; and last, but not least, Yunaka, the swift-footed thief whose prescience and wariness prove to be an invaluable asset. The brave quintet now face immeasurable odds, but with their hearts united, they can triumph over the darkest night.

… Notice how one name does not fit the rest? Or the entire world around them? Maybe I wrote too much for such a silly point, and yet it’s something I see over and over again in romhacks, fanfics and other derivative media. And I make it clear that Yunaka from Engage is actually a decent example of the out-of-place name being done right, as

minor Engage spoilers

it is meant to draw attention to her as it is a new identity invented by her, and her former name fits the rest of the setting.

Names come from the language spoken in the inserted culture, or sometimes a former name is re-branded by colonizers with their whole different values and philosophies, which can work as a great way to justify interesting names that could otherwise not fit. But truly, why would a personal weapon/item/macguffin, location or character be named in a language the characters of the setting don’t even speak? Does the story provide reasonable context and explanations as to why that be the case? The crushing majority of fan-stories do not.

But what about you folks? Does out-of-place names bother you? A little? Not at all? I know that I am most likely in the minority, as normal people don’t fuss out over such minute details as I do, but I value to know your perceptions on the matter, and thank you if you’ve read till this far. Bunny out.

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Personally I really like when people think about the names in their work, especially where it relates to cultures, it can make the world feel much more thought out, however I still think you shouldn’t worry if you think very little about this.

Fe has always had a, to use the TV tropes term, “Aerith and Bob” thing where there are characters with fantastical names like “Kenneth”, " Caineghis", or “Niime”, and characters that use standard everyday names like “Roy”, “Marcus”, or “Arthur”.

In my FE8 project I didn’t really think about names too much mostly going with the FE6 style of odd and standard names, when it was relevant to a character, or the world I did think more about it, for example the country of Galiall is named after the god the country revers, this allowed me to play around with letting descriptions be up to interpretation, sort of like Nergal’s Japanese death quote.

In my FE6 hack a future release will include a character named “Legaula” who Idolizes Legault to the point she changed her name.

Other times I will just name a character for a reference, I encourage this, it is fun.

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I do think at the very least people of similar backgrounds from the same nation should have names that stem from similar cultures. I don’t think it needs to be completely rigorous, of course. It’s more important to write a good story than a rigorous fandom wikia.

The only thing that does stand out to me is when the names sound like… well, like they’re from an American high school. Characters speaking with an American - or a generally modern - vernacular, obviously that’s fine, Black Company is GOATed, etc. And diminutives are great, in and of themselves. But when the names have that student feel, particularly when it comes to diminutives, it can really stand out.

For DoW specifically, I knew I wanted to evoke real-world cultures. Names linked to significant Protestant powers cropped up in the north, to call on Roundhead vibes - fitting, given the austere, Parliamentary nation; names linked to significant Catholic powers showed up in Aulestra, for a more Cavalier aesthetic, which fits the extravagant personalities there and the emphasis on royalty that doesn’t show up in the north. Rijesca itself, the focus of the story, gets roughly pan-Balkan names, bleeding more into Baltic in the east, while more Central European in the north, near Fantasy Germany; giving a sense that there are a wide variety of cultures in a not especially cohesive nation, and helping signpost roughly where within that nation individuals come from. So while I didn’t have to do particularly rigorous world-building, and, more importantly, didn’t have to feed that to the player, it still gives a sense of coherence.

Besides, given how the text is delivered in FE, shorthands are hugely important. In VQ, when the player spends time in Mahala (I had to check the fucking TVTropes page to remind myself what it was called ffs) I didn’t have to wonder who was connected to it. I could be pretty sure without checking Codex pages or supports that Natsuko and Hokulani were. I could reliably pick out everyone from Kuching, and, relevantly, that Anisa wasn’t originally from there, which matters for her and helps her stand out from the pack. Et cetera.

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First and foremost, I always aim to use names that were not used in FE before. And also that weren’t used in other hacks, if possible.

Why? Because it gives the project more of an identity. My Lord’s name is Ruby. And I hope that people will hear the name Ruby and go “Oh. Ruby from that Rom hack? The Rise Of Dragons? That Ruby?”.

It’s actually remarkable how efficient FE has gotten at not reusing names. Almost every single character in all of FE has a unique name. Only a handful of names are actually repeats. Some examples that come to mind are Hilda (FE4 and 3H), Lorenz (FE1 and 3H), and Arthur (FE4 and Fates)

Also, I absolutely agree that a name should reflect the setting. My Hack’s Jagen is from Sacae, so his name is Kublai. The meaning of this name is “Long Lasting” (Ironic, in a way).

I use this website called Behind the Name to look up various names by their meaning, and tie those meanings to the character’s personality and/or background.

Also worth mentioning, it’s not a pseudonym. She literally changed her name, because she wants to have a new life, and leave her old life behind. This is a part of her character I really like.

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For the names in my hackrom, I always search the region that each Fire Emblem nation is based of (most of them have a direct inspiration) and go through any page with “names from X country for babies” until I found something that sounds good enough. You often find names from official games there

Regardless, I personally don’t really care about names when playing hackroms. At most, I think “huh, funny name” but I never found an example so outrageous that my experience would be damaged.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to weird names in fiction, the best example being Dune with its Kwisatz Haderach named Paul and his master mercenary Mr Idaho which appears so much during the series that whenever I hear the word Idaho I no longer think of the US state.

The only time a name has sounded weird to me is whenever they introduced Linhardt. Everyone at the time said that his name was a combination of Lyn and Reinhardt which made it super awkward to hear (specially at that time, when Reinhardt was ultra popular in FEH)

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Something that burns me up in a lot of amateur fan works lie fanfiction is random Japanese names in setting that have nothing to with Japan or their Japan Equivalent™. Not even a ‘this name is from a land from far to the east’.

And something that annoys me in fire emblem projects specifically is characters named after food

It really throws me for a loop

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I like when the naming have some thinking behind it, be it for characters or places, to make the world more grounded ! In general, everything that gives a little history to the world is something I like to see

Also, I really love when hacks uses rarely seen cultures (in rpgs) as inspirations for names. Like for example, in my planned project, the protagonist and her brothers will be of iranian-like origins, with iranian names, and the region of the world where most of the story will happen is inspired by the caucasus. So many characters and places will have names inspired by the cultures of this region (like armenians, chechens, etc.) :smile:

But I can totally understand when people don’t put much time on it, because even if I love those kinds of details it’s still a very minor aspect of a project that many people probably won’t notice !

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Do you have any examples of te latter? I’ve never heard of characters being named after food, unless it’s like, really subtle (Like Timerra and Fogado in Engage)

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I love going to Wikipedia, searching list of [food type] and picking a random one.

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Vision Quest seems to be the gift that keeps on giving, eh? :333

The best examples I can think of off the top are Best Girl Mango, Best Boys Duck and Cashew, and Best Gremlin Honeydew :sparkling_heart: Now, keep in mind, I haven’t played VQ yet (for some reason :upside_down_face:), so if I get some things wrong about them names-wise, then let me know :two_hearts: Anyways, in-universe, I don’t believe it’s ever explained why they decided on those names exactly, but I do know that for Mango and Duck, their real names are Marjorie and Daryl respectively, and honestly I can see why they chose otherwise lol :laughing: I love that they’re named after foods, not just because Pandan’s a foodie and that’s awesome, but also because they make those characters stand out from the rest with such wild yet fitting names, what with mangos being feisty and flamboyant and ducks being gamey yet soft and easy :heart_decoration: Hell, Honeydew became so popular in this community that she spawned an entire archetype of her own: Women named after food that are hard to find yet so worth it when you do (unless you’re Kiwi from Doubled or Nothing, you’re just there :upside_down_face:) :orange_heart: (I know that’s not the sole reason why she became so popular, but it’s still a funny factor to think about :333)

Heck, in the sequel, Lengths of Time, not only did Duck, Cashew, and Honeydew return (though, sadly, no Mango rip :disappointed:), but we also got a character named Coriander, and she’s the best girl in that whole game :sunglasses:

In conclusion, food names are badass and help the cast feel so much brighter and livelier with their mere existence, and I love them for that :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: (unless your name’s, like, Pizza or something, then your parents hate you and you specifically ^UwU^).

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I agree, food names are cool, but it’s most odd when it’s just straight up a food name, rather than something more subtle that has the meaning of food.

Again, all the Solm characters in Engage are named after foods.

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Naming characters is something I often feel weirdly awkward doing. I always have it in the back of my head that a character’s name is big part of how a player will initially react to that character. The names of the characters in Deity Device and Deity Device: Saint’s Blood are a pretty mixed bag of allusions, references with no real point, and just names that I thought “felt right” for the character.

Helen and Arachne were some of the very first FE characters I conceptualized, and as the game’s Cain and Abel, I wanted names that were some sort of mythological reference, with one being a figure favored by the gods and the other being one spurned by the gods, so they were named after Helen of Troy and Arachne the Weaver from Greek mythology. For Saint’s Blood, I threw caution to the wind and named the Cain and Abel pair Adam and Eve. The repeated biblical reference is obvious, but the two are Cross Knights serving Prince Poseidon of Augustria (more on him later), and Lachesis’ Cross Knights in FE4 all have names that are variations of “Eve,” so huzzah, a duel-layered reference. And when I made Eve’s older sister, I named her Lilith after the first wife of Adam who appears in non-biblical stories.

A few times I’ve just referenced other works for no real reason. The characters from Rhine in Deity Device were some of the last ones I created for the game, and I had been reading Les Miserables, and I named the Prince and Princess Marius and Cosette, and they have a cousin named Eponine. Then in Saint’s Blood I have Annie and Clarabel who are a pair of twins named after Thomas’s coaches in the Railway Series.

The names meant to evoke a certain feeling are a bit more nebulous in origin and depend a lot more on the reader’s experiences for how they land. In my earliest notes, the character, Vesta, from Deity Device was named Miranda, but I eventually changed it because I wanted a name that sounded more mystical. There isn’t much of a reason behind Nathan’s name in Deity Device, but the way he’s consistently addressed as “Nathan” tends to give a sense of noble propriety. Carson is the only character who calls him “Nate,” which is meant to highlight their relationship as being different than Nathan’s with other characters. The setting in Saint’s Blood is modeled after a 19th century western society and most characters have typical, if in some cases old-fashioned, English names. For the character, Milton, who is a main protagonist, I specifically wanted a name that did not sound like a protagonist name and sounded more mundane-just a guy named Milton rather than a name that conveys something like “Center-of the Universe McDestiny.”

Saint’s Blood has a handful of characters who are foreigners from Jugdral who have more fantastical names (such as the already mentioned Adam and Eve, which are fairly mundane names on their own, but land differently in a pair). Under normal circumstances, I would feel silly naming a character Poseidon, but because he’s meant to be both a descendant of House Nordion (which had a Prince named Ares) and the royal family of Rhine (a water themed nation), I think it works. His sister, Lacus, has a name that is both similar to Lachesis and is the Latin word for “lake.”

Names can also be a subtle form of worldbuilding. The royal families of Celesia in Deity Device are all meant to be descendants of the central religious figure, Saint Leticia, and these characters have middle names that are derived from Leticia. At her wedding, the priest refers to Calista as “Calista Leta Flagross,” and Cosette has a tendency to give her full name of “Cosette Liscia Rhine” when acting officially. Poseidon and Lacus have seemingly inherited this trait with a tendency to identify themselves as “Poseidon Letos Nordion” and “Lacus Lissette Nordion.”

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Honeydew is a notorious one

and Mango

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On that note, I like to give funny easter egg names to unimportant bosses.

For example, I have a Shaman boss with Poison Strike named Fawles, and almost all the enemies in the map have poison weapons. It’s a reference to Ace Attorney.

I also have a boss that looks just like Wire from FE7, but his name is Cable.

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The name Honeydew makes me think first and foremost about a certain dwarf who is digging a hole.

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The way I see it, words and names have meaning. If the intention is to work on a specific setting, you use names that fit the setting. If you have an ancient Irish setting, I expect to see Irish names or names that sound phonetically close; an ancient Chinese setting would be expected to have Chinese names or names that sound phonetically close; and so on. If the setting involved people from multiple parts of the world, then it can work, so long as the backstory fits and these other countries were introduced or mentioned early on.

An example would be a war between the ancient Irish and the ancient Nords, so we’d see either both Irish and Nordic names or, depending on the which side is the protagonist’s side, Irish names and exonymic Irish names or Irish equivalents of the Nordic names for the Nordic invaders.

@Pink_Bunny To add to your example, we also get to have Tales of Phantasia, where the playable cast consists of Cress Albane (swordsman), Mint Adenade (cleric), Chester Burklight (archer), Claus F. Lester (summoner), Arche Klein (half-elf magician), and Suzu Fujibayashi (kunoichi). Yeah, which of these don’t fit here?! It also doesn’t help that where Suzu came from wasn’t even foreshadowed or anything. The country she’s from is randomly finally mentioned in the area she’s recruited, which means it was pretty shoehorned in, as she’s the last recruitable party member.
I’ve seen enough fanworks (also, admittedly written a few when I was younger) pushing random Japanese characters into European settings and making the Japanese characters “better”, because weaboo, and giving flimsy and contrived reasons as to why the characters are there or why they were named that way. “The great-granddaughter of Odin, Yumeko Fuabamato.” Like, why?

Anyway, I think another importance of names is to maintain immersion. By being internally consistent and introducing peoples (such as other countries or cultures) or their existence early, the loss of immersion isn’t as jarring or just doesn’t occur, when a character whose name isn’t consistent with the naming convention is brought in. Another way to get around this is by using exonyms or pseudonyms and putting in the character’s real name in the biographical information or in dialogue with specific characters.

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When I think of characters named after food, the first thing I am reminded of is Dragon Ball. Toriyama has a habit of making punny names. My favorites are how Frieza’s family’s members’ names, the Frieza force soldiers’ names (including the Saiyans) relate, in that Frieza (freezer), Cooler (alternate name for a refrigerator), and King Cold (self-explanatory) would be needed for the storage of the others-- Raditz (radish), Napa (nappa cabbage), Cui (kiwi), Napple (Pineapple, Ginyu (gyuunyuu, Japanese for cow milk), or Shisami (anagram of “sashimi”).

This might help for people considering to just make food pun names for characters.

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I name characters with good sounding names, and that will not feel out of place with the setting, so yeah no much more to say

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I don’t think I can add much that hasn’t been said but I’ll weigh in anyway.

I like to take names from obscure (and not so obscure) regions of the world. Then every character from that region needs to have a name that makes sense. If the region is named after some place in Spain, then I’m not giving its characters French or Japanese names, unless they’re implied to be foreigners in some other way.

I don’t like when writers use words that don’t exist, unless they sound real. I like when the name’s meaning fits the character, but obviously not every character can be like this. On the other hand, it’s better to avoid names that are too “on the nose” like those seen in Harry Potter (Remus Lupin… can you guess he’s a werewolf?).

All of this is assuming the story is meant to be taken seriously. But with all of that said, rules are made to be broken. Baldur’s Gate 3 has a character called Shadowheart that I shouldn’t be able to take seriously, but I do.

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