Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Because You Asked: Fae Naming.

Yesterday I said that, to celebrate the upcoming release of Ashes of Honor, I would once again make five blog posts detailing the background aspects of Toby's reality. This is the first of those posts.

sasunarufan02 asks, "How do the fae go about naming their pure-blood kids/changeling kids?"

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.
Tags: continuity checking, toby daye
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  • 63 comments
Thanks so much for breaking this stuff down! I had noticed some of the naming chains and really like hearing your thinking about these traditions.
No problem! It's fun!
Damn ... you can't tell the players without a scorecard !!!
I have a wiki.

anne_d

August 21 2012, 18:40:47 UTC 4 years ago Edited:  August 21 2012, 18:41:51 UTC

This is fascinating. I love seeing the world-building behind the story, and it'll add a whole new dimension to my next reread of the series. Which will happen right after I procure and devour read 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!
Soon! So soon!

(Thank you.)
In Faerie, it's considered insulting to name someone directly after someone else

Is this a traditional folkloric belief about faerie/elves? I know Tolkien had it that the elves of Middle Earth didn't reuse names.
I'm not sure about folklore, but I know I've seen it in a few places now - for instance, in Jo Walton's lifelode, it's considered problematic to name someone after a living person. Obviously the implications of this tradition would be different for mortal and non-mortal societies.

scifantasy

4 years ago

chinders

4 years ago

ironed_orchid

4 years ago

seanan_mcguire

4 years ago

agrumer

4 years ago

bookzombie

4 years ago

Deleted comment

Gillian's name is a little bit about Julie, and a lot about "here is a way for me to bury a part of the calendar without feeling like I'm bowing to pressure." Gillian's middle name is Natasha, which was actually Amadine's name when she was living human.

And no, Toby's name is not why Sylvester is so fond of her.
Very interesting! As someone else mentioned, it reminds me pleasantly of Ashkenazi Jewish naming traditions (which I am not looking forward into running afoul of, as my family is full of juniors and if you yell "Barbara" at a family gathering half the women will come running up to you. This horrifies my in-laws. Naturally I am lately solving this dilemma by parenting cats and naming them after video game characters.)

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...
"Naturally I am lately solving this dilemma by parenting cats and naming them after video game characters."

^^^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-them-hate-you-later" name, you somehow end up on the same brainwave as other people and pick a top ten name for the year (Zoë). At least she won't be one of five or more Katniss' in her class.

aliciaaudrey

4 years ago

ducktape74

4 years ago

tsgeisel

4 years ago

aliciaaudrey

4 years ago

starmalachite

4 years ago

aliciaaudrey

4 years ago

ageekgrrl

4 years ago

mariadkins

4 years ago

ageekgrrl

4 years ago

anne_d

4 years ago

seanan_mcguire

4 years ago

"oh sweet Great Pumpkin she's talking about it again make her stop" topics!

No, no, this is a "Oh, hey, this is cool, keep her talking!" topic! O:D
What she said ^^^

vixyish

4 years ago

ducktape74

4 years ago

dornbeast

4 years ago

archangelbeth

4 years ago

vixyish

4 years ago

seanan_mcguire

4 years ago

Wow, I would have never put the thing about Gillian's name together but that's awesome. I did wonder why Toby chose that, of all names. Hurrah for answers!
I am much more analytical than people think.
So, I suppose this means that, in theory, there could be a Fae out there named Chlamydia.
Since there are humans out there named Chlamydia, I'd say it's not a bad supposition.

starmalachite

4 years ago

Hey! We got naming conventions with bonus Torquill background material. Win!
Thank you.
Welcome.
...already a Cu Sidhe named...

Cushie. Hee! Nice 'n sawft!

Hee.
I like this post, and now that I've seen the publisher blurb on Ashes of Hono(u)r, I can probably say without spoilers that while my first reaction was "Etienne has a kid!?!" my second reaction, based on the name Chelsea was "Etienne's kid is a changeling?!?"

And now I'm thinking his family might have a history of naming people after cities or places.
Your reactions mirror Toby's nicely.

starmalachite

August 22 2012, 07:05:58 UTC 4 years ago Edited:  August 22 2012, 07:08:44 UTC

The mermaids could give a shit if there's already a Cu Sidhe named "Bob."

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.
Heh.
I think I remember reading an interview where you told us that Julie was named after Tybalt in a Romeo and Juliet theme. Does that mean that members of his court avoid using Romeo to name a boy because of what happened in the play?

Is Raj named after the tiger in Aladdin?
No. His parents would never lower themselves to name a child after a human cartoon.
HAIL for the naming convention, explained!
Hail!
So... Tybalt changed his name? Do we know what it was before and I'm having memory fail?
Nope.
Fascinating stuff! And now I'm having the urge to reread all of the Toby books before the new one comes out, to make sure I remember the little continuity details.
Yay!

Just remember that sometimes things shift between the blog and the book. The book is the final arbiter of continuity.
...January had a wife?

(I'm sorry. That was the one that stuck out.)
Yes.
Both of our kids have two middle names, because we really wanted to. As it is, each kid has one name that honors two relatives, one that honors one relative, and one name that is all their own. Not necessarily in that order, and not originally for those reasons. But that's how it worked out.

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.
That's awesome.
This is so cool.

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.)
Aw, yay!