Lament #0018 - It's NOT Tom, Dick or Harry! Try harder!

My second rant of the day stems from a conversation with my sister last night, in which I was very heatedly lamenting a very strong pet-peeve of mine. It pertains to many fantasy novels, including those written by very prominent and respected names within the writing community. Before I proceed, I need to make it very clear that I admire and ardently respect these individuals, and that this is purely a personal preference--and that my own preference just makes more logical sense.

I will list four novels to use in reference to my pet-peeve, which is actually sort of a two-parter. Ready? Here they are:

• Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.
• Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy
  
• Christopher Paolini's Inheritance cycle
• Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's Enduring Flame trilogy

What do these four different series of epic fantasy novels have in common? Setting aside a whole lot, they are all novels depicting worlds separate from our own. First, I'm going to focus on the first three.

Richard, Simon and Angela. Oooh, what do these characters have in common? Well, names like ours of course! Something wrong with that? No, not precisely. But let's try three other names, each from a respective series: Kahlan, Miriamele and Eragon. What's the difference here? Well, they aren't names like ours. Oh, sure. Each author has an explanation in the form of different parts of the world, yada yada. But that's sort of stretching the truth, don't you think? Again, I'm not disrespecting the genius of the stories (nor am I placing these three books on the same level, by any means) but it seems quite a stretch that the only names from our own world are commonplace English names. I don't see a Shao, Maria or Akira within the pages of these works.

Now, we take the fourth example, the Enduring Flame Trilogy, where there isn't a single "English" name to be found. "Great!" says I, "A real other world with no laziness attached." Quite the contrary, in fact. They went so far as to rename coffee, camals and oranges! But, now, here's a different kind of trouble altogether. It takes reading about shotors several times before we have a clear understanding that these are camals, in effect; not something utterly different and found in Star Wars. This isn't always a bad thing, but here's my point.

Take my world B'korba, in contrast to these other books (again, not comparing genius, don't take offense). There are no characters within my fantasy world called Harry, Tom and Mary. Only Sai, Fayne and Mikena. On the other hand, there are horses, apples and raspberry tarts. How can this be? Here's how.

A fantasy work is generally regarded by fans, myself included, as chronicled histories (while fictional) of other worlds. As such, it is an unspoken rule that these works are "translated" into English for our enjoyment. It's like taking a Japanese manga and putting English in place of Japanese in the speech bubbles.

There's a series, referred to as Detective Conan in Japan, called Case Closed in America. It's an early translation job in which all the characters (like Shinichi Kudo) are given different, American names for "easy remembering," (Jimmy Kudo?!) although it takes away the authenticity of the Japan-based work. Since, manga translations have been much more accurate (although far from perfect).

So, looking at a fantasy novel as a historical, translated work, is the translator seriously going to take the time to rename Sai, Sam; Fayne, Frank; and Mikena, MaryAnne? However, if what the characters are, in essence, riding are horses, is the translator going to call them naafari because in Sai's language that's how the same creature is referred? I highly doubt it.

My point: It's a different world. Don't be lazy, make it real! Take time. If a character is called Richard, don't call his significant other Kahlan--call her Kate! Or, better still, call him something closer to Kahlan's name.

Even if the author can come up with an explanation for why half the characters have English names and the other half don't, it comes across to me as laziness. You can do better, novelists. We expect you're brilliant enough.