Names in Fusion Fics

[boogieshoes]

NAMING IN FUSION FICS:

Or: How To Be True To A Different World, While Not Confusing Your Readers.

 

 

Introduction

 

So, this essay was sparked by a conversation I had with Ael6 in the comments of my Dragonriders of Pern gendered ratio post. Ael6 wrote a Mag7/Pern fusion fic that has a really good premise, but which I thought had some technical issues, specifically, her character name ‘translations’. Now, translating a character’s name from one canon to another can be an extremely frustrating exercise for the author. To understand why, it might be a good idea to review the terms ‘cross-over’ and ‘fusion fic’. This exercise has several uses:1) it serves to make sure everyone’s working from the same beginning in considering my argument; 2) it often helps my own thought process to flow logically if I start from the definitions; 3) laying out the originating circumstances in the definitions often helps people to see generated issues more clearly. 

 

A crossover is a piece where the fan-author draws from two/more sources rather than just one in the telling of his/her tale. An example would be drawing from both the X-Files and Pretender shows. A fan-author who does this has the burden of recreating the characters, relationships, and conditions of both/ all sources they draw from, while constructing a meaningful storyline that fuses those sources together in a logical fashion. ‘Logically’ here means roughly ‘in a seamless fashion,’ instead of ‘as a product of the philosophy of linear thinking.’ The sources used can vary from canons that are as close as, say, NCIS and CSI, to canons that are wildly different such as ael6’s Magnificent 7 (set in the Old West) and Pern (science fantasy with dragons). I can tell you now that the further apart your canon sources are from each other’s reality, the harder it is to hold your story together, particularly if you assume both canons are ‘true’ for their respective characters. There are several ways to handle this, giving rise to several different sub-genres of crossover, including a ‘straight crossover’, ‘fusion-fic’, ‘tweaked timelines or facts’, ‘AU to both canons’, and more. We’re only going to look at fusion fic for this.

 

A fusion fic is a piece that takes the characters from (at least) one source and subjects them to the background universe of another source. An example would be an exploration of the Star Wars or Star Trek universe using the characters of Bonanza. In this instance, the common scenario would be that the Bonanza characters were born into the Star Wars universe and don’t ‘remember’ their own canon. Backgrounds are usually tailored to be similar in the characters’ original canon, but some details will almost certainly change. For example, if you’re working with Chris Larabee in the Star Trek universe, saying that his wife and child died on one of the Federation’s Outer Worlds is a bit disingenuous – even if it really was a house-fire, set by enemies, you have to explain why the Larabees would die in the face of advanced technology – even if it’s a tossed off line of belonging to a commune that didn’t believe in using technology past the 1850’s. Which details the author changes and how needs to be considered carefully, because the smallest things can cause larger questions to emerge in the readers’ minds than you’ve ever considered dealing with. For example, what kind of person refuses to consider advanced technology, and why? Especially technology such as modern plumbing and medicine, which make life in general oodles safer than the original 1850’s? How do these beliefs change a person’s character as a whole? In short, the maxim ‘be careful what you ask for, you may get it!’ is most applicable.

 

Any author that’s attempted a cross-over has at least a vague sense of how quickly all this can get out of hand. One of the difficulties of a fusion fic is that the genre makes a hidden assumption: That the characters you’re writing about fit into the human range of archetypes, and will, to some degree or other, respond in a rather predictable manner to situations the originals may never even have thought of. If the sources you’re working with are close in technical and historical detail, this may not be much of a problem. SG-1 and the Sentinel work pretty easily together for a fusion universe because the ‘rules’ of each universe are so close, and the background setting is ‘today’. Add to that, the Sentinel-verse has a lot of stretch built in to it when it comes to the things that make it the Sentinel-verse (the senses and the spirit guides and shamanic visions), because those things were never explained in a concrete ‘it’s only this way’ manner. 

 

However, if the sources are far apart in culture, language, habits, technology, magic, etc, making it sound like the character has always been there may be a bit difficult. I’ve come across a couple of Sentinel/ Valdemar fusion pieces that illustrate this difficulty rather well. (I’ve attempted to write a fusion along these lines and failed rather spectacularly, myself…) Valdemar is a ‘medieval fantasy’ type world.  The Sentinel is set in the modern USA. There are things that will never happen in a medieval fantasy, and have no actual corresponding circumstance. Airplanes and jumping out of them come to mind. So, actually, does Jim or any variation thereof, calling Blair a ‘neo-hippie witch-doctor punk’. You have to know what a hippie is in order to have a neo-hippie concept in your head. In a mostly-feudal society, the rebelliousness inherent in ‘hippie’ is almost impossible to contemplate, primarily because that sort of roving dreamerism is a good way to fall prey to robbers, cut-throats, and thieves. Plus, nothing’s for free in a feudal society, there’s no insurance, no medical doctors, nothing to mitigate your basic needs except you, yourself. Similarly, you must have a concept of a ‘doctor’ to understand what a ‘witch-doctor’ is; most feudal societies are familiar with healers, herbalists, mendicants, witches, hedge-witches/wizards, wise women/ men, but not doctors. And a punk is a long, thin piece of slow-burning wood, possibly treated with something, that you use to light candles with. In this context, the phrase ‘neo-hippie witch-doctor punk’ is rather ridiculous, because no one in Valdemar or the surrounding kingdoms would have clue one what it means. And if you run across a character who simply nods in assent to that phrase, you and your readers need to be asking serious questions about that guy.

 

And this issue highlights the main point of this meta: understanding the language of your story setting is important. It will change the actual words you use in the narrative (until Bell, nothing was ‘like a game of Telephone’, it was ‘like a game of I Have a Secret’); the phrases your characters use; it may change the ordering of those phrases; it may change the concepts and ideas your characters are familiar with and how your characters react to them; and it will change names. Most authors understand this, but the ability to apply understanding in a practical sense is varied. This is not something where you can compare professional writing to fan-writing for useful examples, so I understand that learning how to merge the linguistics of how different cultures speak, act, and think can be difficult at best. There are probably a ton of things that come up that require some creativity to deal with, but I am going to focus on names, here, because 1) name issues inspired the responses that inspired this meta, and 2) character names are a linguistically-related issue that often gets screwed up.

 

 

Example 1: Taking people from Modern America to Medieval Fantasy

 

Let’s look at setting Jim and Blair in Valdemar again. Presuming that the two have been born and lived all their life on this world, their first names, at least, will be different. How do I, as an author, know this? By looking at the analogs between Valdemar and the closest earth culture (which happens to be medieval Europe), and figuring out how things are similar, and how things are different. 

 

The first, most obvious, similarity is the cultural structure in Valdemar: it’s nearly the same as feudal Europe, but with a lot more class movement and overall higher literacy levels. More importantly, given name sources in medieval Europe in most of the dominant cultures drew from religious texts, mythology, occasionally local features or plants (but not often).   Female names were often feminized versions of male names – Joan/ John, Phillipa/ Phillip, for example. Names were often repeated in families, and most common names had local dialectal variations showing up within a few miles of each other, because movement of the common man was rather restricted.  Surnames were frequently taken from local towns, features, or jobs. Some cultures had surnames based on specific affiliations – clan names and ‘son of’ or ‘daughter of’ type names. Surnames were not usually used as given names in medieval Europe. Middle names are almost non-existant. If you’d like more examples of names and their variations across cultures and time periods, the Academy of St Gabriel has put together quite a number of resources for the Society of the Creative Anachronism¹.

 

Next we look at ‘Jim’ and ‘Blair’ respectively. ‘Jim’ is a short form of ‘James’, which is most definitely a Biblical name. However, Valdemar isn’t Christian in any sense of the word. This is an indicator that we may need to change this name, or at least tweak it a bit to make it fit. ‘Blair’ originated as a Scottish surname – this also means we may need to tweak this name a bit. 

 

So we take a look at the full canon names of the characters – James Joseph Ellison, and Blair J. Sandburg. (I don’t think Blair was ever given a middle name, but fanon tends to put it as Jacob.) I’m not sure James has a reasonable analog in Valdemar, and I’m completely reluctant to use it. In my own attempt at a fusion, I used Ellis, on the theory that since Ellison was literally ‘son of Elli(s)’, Ellis must have been a first name at one point. ‘Ellis’ fits well into the ‘odder names’ category – Tylendal, Vanyel, Sayvil, Tantras, etc. But the naming habits in Valdemar indicate using a variation of Josef would be fine as well. There are a number of names that appear Germanic in origin in Valdemar – Josef, Stefan, Rolan, Dirk, Kris, even Valdemar and Velgarth – that it’s entirely possible that Valdemar’s native language is a form of German. This means that for a native Valdemaran, looking for a variant of your character’s name that was used in medieval Germany is a good place to start. Other medieval fantasy books will give similar indicators of which languages you should look at when you decide to transplant characters there.

 

‘Blair’ presents a conundrum. It’s reasonable to give Blair’s character in Valdemar a background of being part of a traveling folk. This means that technically, his name should be given a little more latitude, because of a potentially ‘exotic’ base culture. The problem is that ‘Blair’ is a mixed-culture name. ‘Blair’ is a Scottish surname, and unsuitable as a first name for a medieval society. ‘Sandburg’ in Sentinel fanon is a variation of the German Sandberg, and pretty much means ‘city (or castle) of sand’. A variation would put the Blair character’s family originating in a desert or on a beach for traditional naming patterns. The only potential beach large enough to spawn that kind of name would be on Lake Evandim, and there’s no indication that the people there travel a lot. Valdemar has nothing in the way of desert, really, even high desert. The closest major deserts are several countries away to the south and west, in the Haiaghlai Empire. Jacob, the fanonical middle name, is a Biblical name that has the same eccentricity factor for Valdemar as James would have. (IE, it literally doesn’t sound right in context, YMMV, of course.)

 

It’s possible that Blair’s canon base culture might give us an idea – in fanon, he’s pretty much accepted to be Jewish based on various canon details. In medieval Europe, this culture was for the most part heavily ostracized. Jews were pretty much refugees who were only allowed in areas based on the crown’s sufferance, and they often had to have travel papers to move from one place to another. Valdemar, as a medieval fantasy, does not have good analog for these cultural issues at all. The most mono-cultural people in the local geopolitical map that might have similar issues are the Karsites. Talia’s people fled from the Karsites to avoid political and religious prosecution, but the people of Sensholding don’t appear to be anywhere near Jewish, culturally, and at any rate, are subject to much less persecution, if any, in Valdemar. 

 

Finally, I as an author look at Blair’s function in the Sentinel canon, and try to find analogs there. Blair’s function is shamanic in both Gifts of the ESP type, and guiding/ teaching/ leading Jim. Of all the extant cultures Lackey gives us, the two major cultures that have this function in their society are the Shin’a’in, and the Tayledras. The Tayledras only pick up and move every so often, but the Shin’a’in are a nomadic peoples, and their customs are likely to be very like ancestral Judaic customs for this reason. If I choose Blair to be a Shin’a’in, I know what his last name has to be. The Shin’a’in are comprised of clans, and their individual names are always Given-name shena Clan-name. Clan-names are animal names: Grass-cat, Deer, Hawk, Wolf. The two clan-names we know how to say in Shin’a’in are Tale’sedrin (Hawk), and Liha’irden (Deer).    

 

We know a few Shin’a’in first names: Tarma (female) and An’desha (male) come to mind. I am unable to find a name index through Google, so I’m not sure what the naming patterns are, but can make a few guesses based on the linguistics shown in the books. Apostrophes used in the manner of the Shin’a’in language indicates usually indicates that a glottal stop is being made. (That is, if you see an apostrophe in the middle of the word, you should complete the first sound before you start the second. There may even be a definite pause in between sounds.) The language appears to lend itself to the harder consonants (yutho’so’coro; she’enedra; etc) and the word elements are hard to slur. ‘Blair’ is a very soft-sounding name in comparison to the language, so I want to change it, but not so much the first name is not recognizable. After letting this stew in the back of my head for about 3 weeks (literally, in this case), I’m thinking ‘Blair’ may not be a great starting place. 

 

Again, I look at the whole name (Blair Jacob Sandburg), but what I see doesn’t look promising. I’m not seeing an obvious translation that’s both recognizable and a reasonable name in the home culture. My next step is to look at Blair’s function in the Sentinel canon on the chance that I can translate a functional role title into host culture’s language and claim this as a name. Blair functions as a 1) shaman/guide; 2) student; 3) the voice of others outside Jim’s experience; 4) the narrator of the story, in some senses. Options 1 and 2 are out: Shaman is a title among the Shin’a’in, ‘student’ is a word unlikely to be made into a name, unless it was an adoptee from another language. Option 3 might be a possibility, particularly since the Shin’a’in seem to have a tradition of formal names for specific concepts. On the other hand, naming someone ‘the voice of other cultures’ is probably equivalent to naming someone ‘she-enedra’: not really an option. All this means I’m in a tough position, and that I will probably have to go with something completely made up, and depend on my characterization abilities to tell people this person I’m talking about is supposed to be Blair².

 

At this point, I might decide to make up completely new culture for the Blair-character to come from, because there’s certainly room for it in a multi-cultural world like Valdemar and Velgarth. But if I do this, I need to make sure the culture has a logical home and customs. It will probably have its own language, religion, naming conventions, etc, and it is highly unlikely to be close to Judaism in nature or history. My work has just quadrupled, but depending on exactly how I want to write the story, this route may just be worth it.

 

According to this break-down, the possibilities for the Jim character’s name are some variant and/or combination of ‘Josef’ and ‘Ellis’. The possibilities for the Blair character’s name are ‘Anything that goes with’ shena Tale’sedrin or Liha’irden, or a new culture entirely.

 

 

Example 2: Working with Strictly Observed Naming Conventions

 

The above example took the characters from one world with fairly fluid naming conventions (modern-day America) to another world with fairly fluid, but entirely different, naming conventions. My next example will involve moving Jim and Blair to Pern. Again, we’re assuming the transplanted characters have lived all their lives on Pern and don’t have access to any knowledge they might have acquired in canon, except in a format findable on Pern.

 

Pern also hosts a primarily feudal society, with the primary difference being that it is a monolithic culture. It has no religion, by design. Like most medieval societies, the vast majority of people don’t move around a lot. It’s physically difficult unless you have a dragon, there’s deadly danger that comes from the sky every 6 or so days whether you like it or not, and in an effort to protect their populations, the Ancients basically instilled a fear in their successors of being outside without readily available shelter for days on end. Due to all these factors, last names appear to have fairly disappeared. Most people are known as ‘Given-name of Affiliated Craft, Weyr, or Hold’. Even the major bloodlines don’t really have their last names by the end of the first interval. So instead of ‘Paul Benden’ (leader of Fort Hold when the colonists fled there), you have ‘Paulin of Fort’; A’murry of Igen Weyr; Lessa of Ruatha; or F’lar of Benden Weyr.

 

In addition to a lack of last names, birth-names are almost always combinations of the parents’ names, and therefore, one-syllable names aren’t very common. There are examples, of course: Fax and Groghe in the 9^th Pass culture of the first trilogy. But names are more commonly two, three, or even four syllables long: Manora, Robinton, Kylara, Lessa, Brekke, Menolly, Sebell, Felessan, Kavan, Arabella, Tolocamp, and others. This practice rose fairly quickly after the events in Dragonsdawn, as evidenced by the mix of traditional and ‘Pernese’ names shown in DragonsEye (the beginning of the second pass). In DragonsEye, we meet Debera, Angie, Iantine, Zulaya, Franco, M’shall, (which probably started as a variation of Micheal), and K’vin (which was probably Kevin). But we also see Chalkin, B’nurrin, Azury, Bastom, Vergerin, Nadona, Ferina, Salda, and Danja. By the 6^th Pass (Moreta’s Ride) ‘normal’ names had disappeared completely. An example of the combination convention is shown by Lord Chalkin’s and Lady Nadona’s childrens’ names: Chaldon, Briskin, Luccha, and Lonada all have elements of one or both parent’s names in there. It’s reasonable to assume that the more children a couple has, the more likely they will begin to name them after aunts, uncles, and grandparents, especially if they have since passed away.

 

Two other naming patterns can be seen here: First, most of the women’s names after the first pass end in a short ‘a’; those that don’t usually still have a vowel sound as the final sound. Again, exceptions can probably be found (Mirrim), but they also probably sound exotic to the Pernese ear. Second, Pernese names seem to have a tendency for the softer sounds and more rolling consonants – the sounds we all seem to swallow when we’re speaking quickly. By and large, they lack the hard stops between syllables that the Valdemaran names above seem to have. Go ahead and say the names in these two universes out loud. Valdemaran names have a ‘hardness’ and ‘hiss’ to them that’s caused by the way we make those sounds together, just like the Pernese names’ softness is a result of the mechanics of making those sounds.

 

Finally, consider the honorifics names, reserved for the male dragonriders: K’vin, M’shall, Sh’gall, B’nurrin, T’ron, F’lar, F’nor, Cr’not. The apostrophe in these names all stand for a schwa³ sound in place of the letters taken out. This is kind of important, because it means that you’re slurring one or more distinct syllables to get the honorific. You’re also shortening the name to some extent. All of the honorific names start with at least two syllables and are then modified.  If a boy Impresses who was not gifted with an easy-to-slur name at birth, or he simply doesn’t like his name, it’s common to change his name completely. In DragonsEye, we see ‘Thomas’ tell Weyrleader K’vin that he’d like to be called ‘S’mon’, instead of ‘T’mas’, which would be the logical honorific form of his birth name.

 

Pern fusions often mean that the visiting characters end up with dragons. This is the result of the archetypical characters assumption mentioned above. In Pern, the dragonriders are recognized as the heroes – they’re the equivalent to our world’s cops, firefighters, search-and-rescue workers, and military, all rolled into one – so it completely makes sense that an author would want the visiting characters who are heroes in their own universe to Impress. Hey, I’d do it, too. However, Pernese dragonriders follow a very strict naming convention, as seen in the paragraph above. If we take our beloved Sentinel characters, Jim and Blair, and make them dragonriders, it’s easy to see Jim’s given name will not work at all. ‘Jim’ and ‘James’ both have serious problems if one were to attempt to turn them into dragonrider honorifics. The most obvious problem is that they’re single-syllable names, meaning that they can’t be shortened – there’s simply no place to do it. This would be the primary indicator that other things should be looked at.

 

Again, I would first look at their entire names and see if I could pick parts and pieces to use. Jim’s full name is James Joseph Ellison. I have lots of choices from this name. ‘J’sef’ is a good idea, but Jim’s middle name may not be well-known across fandom, or to new readers. I am more likely to go with a reworking of the last name, again. ‘El’son’ is a usable name, and not hard to pronounce, and is decently recognizable as being related to ‘Ellison’.   I could start doing weird things and theorize that his given name was actually ‘Jajosell’, for example, which is a perfectly ‘realistic’ Pernese name to have. The resulting honorific could be either ‘J’jos’ or ‘J’sell’.

 

Blair’s full name is Blair Jacob Sandburg. The possibilities here are also numerous. Unlike ‘Jim’ or ‘James’, ‘Blair’ has the advantage of almost having the schwa sound present between the ‘B’ and the ‘L’, anyway. Go ahead and say it out loud and see what it sounds like. What this means is that you could reasonably get away with B’lair as a dragonrider honorific. This would mean that the Blair-character was born something like ‘Beylair’, though, so keep this tidbit in mind. If using the middle name solely, the honorific would be ‘J’kub’, allowing for spelling evolution over the years. As with ‘J’sef’, people may not recognize this as being a Blair-name, however, and as an author, I’d be tempted to go with something else. For syllable mix-‘n’-match, we could start with ‘Blasan’, ‘Jasan’, ‘Jaberg’, but probably not ‘Blaburg’, because seriously, would you name your kid that?  

 

As an author, who is trying both to use Pernese naming conventions as well as give my characters a proper identifier, one that signals who they’re supposed to be, I’d choose to use ‘El’son’ and ‘B’lair’ for the names. These names are easy to pronounce, closely identified with the original, and sound like they fit into the world of Pern. That last – the fitting in part – is just as important, if not more so, than the other two needs an author has to meet while ‘translating’ a character’s name from one universe to another, and certainly should not be ignored.

 

So, to sum up…

 

Given the two examples above, I’ve come around to a point where I can redact some general rules/ guidelines I would use to translate names from one canon to another. I will enumerate below:

 

1)      First, you need to understand your original character’s culture and his or her name.

a.       Understand the history of surnames in your character’s home culture. Determine where in the evolution of names that culture is, and how close your character’s last name is to a social and economic signifier. 

b.      Understand the history of given names in your character’s home culture, and if your character’s given name falls into a particular sub-group or category of names (like religious names, hero-names, etc).

c.       Understand the function of your character in his home canon. Notice that I’m not worried too much about his function in his home culture. This is because the character’s canon function is going to be a more significant identifier than his/her cultural function. Culturally, Chris from the Magnificent 7 is a leader, not just of the 7, but also of the town. He has a natural charisma and decisiveness that attracts people to follow him.  In terms of the story, though, he’s also the ‘tarnished hero/ fallen angel’, the ‘dark, mysterious man’, the ‘lost and angry soul’, etc. Fans, being fans, tend to identify a character more by his or her story function than his or her home cultural function.

2)      Then, you need to understand the culture you’re moving your character too.

a.       Try to find analogs in this culture in our history or across our modern world, and study up on the analog culture. Understand how these analogs are alike and different to the host culture. List the differences out if you have to.

b.      Understand the kind of population density the host culture has; this is often an indicator where in the evolution of names that culture is. Generally speaking, the higher the population density of a given area, the more likely they are to add identifiers to their given names. 

c.       Understand how the host culture gets the names they use for given names.

d.      Write out a list of names in the host culture you’re writing about, and say them out loud – listen to the sound of the names. Are they short and punctuated by harsh sounds? Long and rolling? Lots of vowels, or lots of consonants? Hard to pronounce? Are there categories of names that follow certain conventions? If so, try to figure out those conventions based on the empirical evidence before you.

3)      Finally, after you’ve done your mini-cultural analysis (and don’t kid yourself, this could be a lot of work if you’re not someone who tends to taxonomize every damned thing she comes across, like I do), you’re ready to translate.

a.       Whatever you do, don’t tweak the host culture’s naming conventions. Tweaking naming conventions makes the reader – or at least me – wonder why these names sound so weird. The host culture’s naming system has some kind of consistency to it – follow that consistency.

b.      Don’t force the character’s first name to fit; if the given name doesn’t work, look at the whole name for useable pieces, and even the function of the character in his canon, if necessary.

c.       Make sure you support your chosen translation with good back-story, although you don’t have to write it into the story you’re telling. Make sure you know it in your own notes, though. 

d.      Finally, don’t lean on the name to identify your character. If the characterization isn’t there, it doesn’t matter what the actual name is, readers will wonder who the heck this person you’re writing about is supposed to be.

 

 

I would like to take a moment to emphasize that this method of coming up with a useable name for a character transplanted to another culture is only one of many, many, many different ways. The key to making a translation work, really, is the name fitting in with the sounds of other names. Our Heroes don’t usually have names that are out of place with their society; they’re heroes not because of their names, after all, but because of their deeds. If your name translation doesn’t sound ‘normal’ in the host culture, you’ll draw attention to the name of your character, not the deeds, and that’s actually the inverse of what you want. You really do want the character’s name to ‘disappear’ into the background of your story. It won’t if it’s at odds with the other names around it.

 

At any rate, I hope this helps authors who are trying to figure out how to meld two wildly different universes in the future. As always, comments, critiques, and rotten tomatoes thrown at this post are all welcome.

 

1.        The Society for the Creative Anachronism studies and imitates all aspects of life in the world known to mideval Europe. The Academy of St. Gabriel was founded by Society heralds and other interested parties as a resource for people who are trying to register their Society names on the rolls.
2.        Oh, dear.
3.        Wikipedia entry for ‘Schwa’. 

 

-bs