Fae naming! Hooray! One of my favorite "oh sweet Great Pumpkin she's talking about it again make her stop topics!"
Let's face it: when the majority of your population can reasonably expect to live for centuries, if not forever, names like "John" and "Mary" stop working for you real, real fast. There's not enough turn-over, and nicknames only go so far. Also, you're going to have an influx of changelings whose mortal parents insisted on "John" and "Mary," which puts even more pressure on the long-lived to avoid common names. Plus, nothing will ever really go out of fashion, since names don't "age out" when the people who have them insist on continuing to walk around and do stuff, rather than politely dying and allowing trendy new names to come into fashion. So what do you get?
You get theme naming.
In Faerie, it's considered insulting to name someone directly after someone else, as it implies either that you're hoping to replace them, or that you expect them to die soon. You can, however, give names to honor or acknowledge specific people. So October, for example, is named partially to honor September Torquill, who was a close friend of Amandine's. October comes after September. September herself was named to honor her father, Septimus, as were her two brothers, Simon and Sylvester. It's a very "S"-y family. (Yes, there are reasons that October was named after a Torquill, no, I won't go into them yet, no, Sylvester is not her father.)
Another example of same-letter naming is the Lorden family, where Patrick and Dianda named their sons Peter and Dean. Both of these are relatively common names, but the Undersea is distinct enough from the land that they have a wider range of names they haven't used yet. The mermaids could give a shit if there's already a Cu Sidhe named "Bob."
Back to October: her name is part of a chain of month names that honor by meaning, not by sound. So September named her own daughter "January," in part to honor the baby's Tylwyth Teg father (since they're often associated with ice and the winter in this setting), and in part after herself, at the urging of her husband. When January had a daughter of her own, she named her "April," both in honor of her mother, and as an acknowledgment to the Chinese holiday of Qingming, to honor her wife. (As a Dryad, April didn't really have a name. So naming her was appropriate and necessary.)
As for Toby's daughter, Gillian...I have had exactly one person email to ask if I was aware that "Gillian" is a form of "Julius." Yes. Yes, I was. While Toby didn't want to outright name her daughter "July," or even "Julia," the fae tendency toward referential naming is very strong, and so she found a name that could be traced back to "July" without actually being "July." Because old habits are hard to break.
Fae families will literally have children named "Antigone" growing up next to children named "Tom," and maybe children named "Duvet," because they like the sound of those names, and they fit into some obscure set of familial naming chains. Oh, and a lot of fae change their names as they age, either to achieve a fresh start, or for social reasons (Princes of Cats change their names when they become Kings, for example). This can trigger a whole new set of referential names.
And now you know.
August 21 2012, 18:33:03 UTC 4 years ago
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August 21 2012, 18:40:47 UTC 4 years ago Edited: August 21 2012, 18:41:51 UTC
devourread the new book.Unless I need some comfort reading before then. I'm also getting the urge to reread Discount Armageddon, and I still haven't done a reread of the Newsflesh series after the third volume, because I haven't felt strong enough, but that's another thing anyway...
ETA: And I was unaware of the Gillian-Julius connection. Very, very cool. You are such a good writer!
August 21 2012, 18:42:38 UTC 4 years ago
(Thank you.)
August 21 2012, 19:13:40 UTC 4 years ago
Is this a traditional folkloric belief about faerie/elves? I know Tolkien had it that the elves of Middle Earth didn't reuse names.
August 21 2012, 19:42:05 UTC 4 years ago
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August 21 2012, 20:00:24 UTC 4 years ago
And no, Toby's name is not why Sylvester is so fond of her.
August 21 2012, 21:10:05 UTC 4 years ago
And now I really want to know why it is significant that Toby is named after a Torquill, aside from the fact that I frankly wish Sylvester would adopt *me.* Except for, y'know, the ax-crazy daughter, and the occasionally unbalanced wife with racial identity issues, and the homicidal identical twin and...
Duvet made me nearly spit tea all over the screen, because let us face it, Duvet isn't that far of a stretch from Cody and Cody has been trendy on and off...
August 21 2012, 21:23:35 UTC 4 years ago
^^^And this nearly made me spit tea! :)
These days when you try to give a human child an "interesting-but-not-so-weird-as-to-have-t
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August 21 2012, 21:11:17 UTC 4 years ago
No, no, this is a "Oh, hey, this is cool, keep her talking!" topic! O:D
August 21 2012, 21:24:07 UTC 4 years ago
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August 22 2012, 02:31:27 UTC 4 years ago
Thank you.
August 22 2012, 16:04:01 UTC 4 years ago
Pardon me, my inner 12 yr old escaped, again.
August 22 2012, 03:12:56 UTC 4 years ago
Cushie. Hee! Nice 'n sawft!
August 22 2012, 16:04:10 UTC 4 years ago
August 22 2012, 06:17:10 UTC 4 years ago
And now I'm thinking his family might have a history of naming people after cities or places.
August 22 2012, 16:09:11 UTC 4 years ago
August 22 2012, 07:05:58 UTC 4 years ago Edited: August 22 2012, 07:08:44 UTC
TtTo "Pride of Chanur:
"I am the Cu Sidhe named Bo-o-ob, My family calls me a slo-o-ob..."
Edited for formatting fail.
August 22 2012, 16:09:19 UTC 4 years ago
August 22 2012, 13:17:48 UTC 4 years ago
Is Raj named after the tiger in Aladdin?
August 22 2012, 16:09:39 UTC 4 years ago
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August 24 2012, 16:59:43 UTC 4 years ago
Just remember that sometimes things shift between the blog and the book. The book is the final arbiter of continuity.
August 24 2012, 11:55:41 UTC 4 years ago
(I'm sorry. That was the one that stuck out.)
August 24 2012, 16:59:52 UTC 4 years ago
August 25 2012, 03:24:17 UTC 4 years ago
The girl's unique name is Ælfleda. Because that's a nicer version of Æthelfled, and lends itself to the nickname of "elfling." For some reason, the only nickname that springs to mind right now is "imp", but that could be because she's two.
September 16 2012, 05:35:50 UTC 4 years ago
September 2 2012, 22:41:17 UTC 4 years ago
Also: I bought my first Toby Daye book a few days ago when you started doing this series of posts. I've just finished my third. *grin* I am loving them. (I just finished the third one; the bit at the end of the Hunt, where her friends show up? AWESOME OMG.)
September 16 2012, 05:34:31 UTC 4 years ago