@@WorldAnvil Indeed! CGP Grey went on not one but two deep dives about "Tiffany" as a historical name; first about the core research he did, then another video about an interruption in the research because one historian in the chain dropped made-up nonsense into the records that took months off his life to disprove. They're both delightful videos and worth the watch. One point from the primary video speaks to your point about just changing up the word to make it sound more olde timey: The earliest Tiffany on record was a Theofanu rather than a Tiffany proper, back in the Byzantine empire.
@@SamBrownBaudot Oddly enough, to me Tiffany doesn't sound nearly as much as a modern name as Brad does. I'm not sure why, maybe my subconscious knows of a historical person named Tiffany?
@@Frir10 That or you didn't get exposed to much of the media that basically cemented Tiffany as being either a california-girl or high society lady in pop culture.
Town names in France include Pussy, Condom, Vatan (Go Away), Trécon (Very Dumb), Bourg-la-Reine (Stuff the Queen), Deux-Verges (Two dicks), and my personal favorite: Y
I run a D&D group and I've learned not to stress about this because it doesn't matter what I name something, the players are going to make fun of it anyway
@@IceMetalPunk Nah, totally go for it. As long as you play with a non-English speaking players, it's totally fine. For you English game masters, here are some funny French funny names which will NOT make your English players laugh (except if they are perfectly fluent in French, and still can ear the pun despite your accent, which is very unlikely). Jean Aimarre. Lea Ricovair. Nicole Niskotch. Laure Loge. Jean Sérien. Jack Ouche. Judas Nana. Sophie Fonfek. Jessica Serolle. John Deuf. Jeanne Ultou. Beth Tiole. Debby Scott. Kelly Diotte. Lara Leuze. Yves Atrovite. Axel Aire. "J'en ai marre" (I don't care) "Les haricots vert" (the green beans) "Ni colle ni scotch" (neither glue or scotch tape) "L'horloge" (the clock) "J'en sais rien" (I have no clue) "J'accouche" (I'm delivering) "Jus d'anana" (Ananas juice) "Saufifon fec" "Saucisson sec" (dry sausage, but said when you have a lisp) "J'ai six casserole" (I have six pans) "Jaune d'oeuf" (egg yolk) "J'annule tout" (I cancel everything) "Bestiole" (creature/bug/critter) "Des biscottes" (some rusk) "Quelle idiote" (what an idiot) "La râleuse" (the whiny/petulant/cranky...) "Y va trop vite" (He's too fast) "Accélère" (accelerate) All fun and games, but in a book, you'll look like a total idiot if you use those, of course ;-)
I allow my players to name one NPC in every location, then roll with whatever they choose. Sometimes I play up the name/stereotype, and other times I play it totally straight ("Greetings travellers, Paula Abdul at your service... sir! whatever dost thou mean by thy sniggering?"). Either way, my own chosen names don't get a lot of mockery because they get it out of their systems. As a bonus, this adds comic relief to an otherwise dark campaign.
In Terry Pratchetts Discworld novel 'Interesting Times' the story takes place in a Chinese/Japanese country. They are ruled by five powerful families. Every time they're mention its always the same: "The Hongs, the Sungs, the Tangs, the McSweeneys and the Fangs." "the McSweeneys?" "very old established family." And that's it! You only know them as an 'very old established family' and speak of it no more. Giving the reader something of a mystery that's never solved.
I think I remember reading that it was an allusion to James Clavell’s Asian Saga, which follows the fortunes of a family of Scottish merchants in China
And don't forget that the main character of the original Star Wars trilogy is named "Luke", a name that honestly always stood out to me for being rather out of place among the other space-style names.
If wonder if there is an opposite problem, like things that feel like they should be ancient, but are actually rather modern concepts. I suppose like potatoes and tomatoes showing up in medieval fantasy settings.
The doorknob didn’t exist until 1879, trousers didn’t have belt loops until the 1920s which was also when sunglasses were invented, and while explosives are ancient, dynamite specifically wasn’t invented until 1867 and took many more years to catch on.
"Ah John Placeholder, welcome! I've been looking forward to some placeholder dialogue." - Mary Character "Well, this is the thing I say here." - John Placeholder
I once had written placeholder in my GM notes so often, that when we actually got playing, I still had no name and showed the demons name on a document... It was placeholder written backwards
I always found it funny that Herod the Great, king of Judea in biblical times, had a wife named Doris. When I hear that name, I picture a modern-day grandmother knitting a sweater for her cat, not a Middle-Eastern queen. Bonus fact: Richard Gere's middle name is Tiffany.
Ha ha. Thanks for that, I love it. It indeed makes for a great mental image. A wise, statuesque ruler wearing a toga sitting in serious contemplation of Matters Of Great & Historic Importance next to his dumpy cat lady wife with her knitting needles going tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick. 😁 (In accordance to the laws of Narrative Inevitability it's obvious who the real leader is in this scenario.)
@@milesgould8288 That won't do at all mate, not at all. Working a hand-loom, or any loom at all, looks like dull domestic work. A woman quietly knitting on the other hand can, with carefully arranged lighting and a feeling for theatrics, look like she's picking apart a corpse with needles. And that quiet sound. When she's ostensibly not paying attention a few well timed pauses between those tick-ticks can reduce a mighty warrior to a nervous wreck.
Most biblical names have this problem associated with it. Most biblical names have either become so commonplace we don't think about them anymore (John, David, etc) or they were popular in a specific time frame and call to mind that time instead of the biblical period (Doris or Deborah for the 50s-60s, Jebediah for the 19th century, etc)
Technologies as well: glasses to correct vision (13th C), clocks (13th C), flushing toilets (16th C), pocket knives (Iron Age), keyboard musical instruments (3rd Century BCE Greece), chewing gum (pre-historic), syringes (Ancient Greece), large cities (populations of 10s of thousands in the Bronze Age, 100s of thousands in the Iron Age), paper money (8th C), explosives (9th C), and many more.
Rome, Chang'an, or Baghdad might have reached 1 million inhabitants before the 9th century, but by the early modern period multiple cities in China did.
The Tiffany Problem is self-perpetuating because writers try too hard to avoid it. I would rather throw in something that sounds out of place and then cite sources when some know-it-all decides to make an issue of it.
It's more that you can only throw too many of these in before the immersion is ruined and authors might want to use that on things other than character names
Agreed. The problem continues to exist because ppl play into it too much and often dilberately. Personally, I like the lean into it and/or adjust accordingly solutions. I think if you introduce certain things early enough into your setting, you can ease the immersion problem that can potentially crop up.
The issue isn’t people making “an issue” with it. Your goal as a writer isn’t to be 100% historically accurate all the time, it’s to create something that the reader likes. If you throw in something whose cultural connotations clash with the tone of the work you’re creating, readers may rub up against it and struggle to stay interested. “Um actually”ing your audience isn’t respecting their take or intelligence as a reader That isn’t to say “don’t do it, continue the cycle,” please, for the love of god help break the cycle. But don’t do it by debating with your readers, that sucks.
New Port and Red Hill both sound like perfectly fine fantasy towns. Not big cities maybe, but doesn't strike me as odd to have small towns and villages with simple descriptive names.
The interesting thing here is that we, as modern people, are used to the idea of not understanding the etymology of most place names, and we take that understanding to fantasy worlds where most place names are simply a pleasing arrangement of vowels and consonants without any greater meaning. In the real world, the vast majority of place names are rather aimple descriptors of the place, but they were done in older versions of the modern language, or were names by people who were conquered or culturally displaced, so the meaning is lost to us. Naming everything in your fantasy world names like 'Hill Top' or 'Black Forest' or 'Big City' might seem boring and unimaginative but its the most realistic method you can employ. I use a mixed approach, myself. Most of the place names in my world are based off of medieval Greek, Old Norse, and various Old Slavic languages. Most names translate to simple concepts like 'city over the winding river', but the language is not anything my players can immediately parse
I think the problem with the name Tiffany isn't that it sounds like a modern name--for example no one would likely blink at medieval peasants named John and Mary, since these are names that have been common since the spread of Christianity--but that Tiffany was a rare name in recent memory until the latter half of the 20th century, explicitly brought to popularity by a movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. This means it's a name that evokes a specific recent time period, as opposed to seeming more evergreen like, for example, Elizabeth, or Henry. Being able to point to a well-known historical example in a similar context to that you wish to evoke can help a lot, as it does in the four counterexamples I've listed (all names used by royals).
@@benjaminbatema6963i believe the Tiffany lamp brand is related to the breakfast location. It was (and may still be) a luxury department store in Manhattan
I have a character who was supposed to be named Tiffany, but I stuck with the name Tifaine, a slightly later variant of the name. It's more similar to typhoon, and she's a wind mage. And the royal version of her name is, of course, Theophania.
One of the first NPCs I created as a teenager was an innkeeper named Ozzie (yes, named after _that_ Ozzy, although I misspelled it). He owned an establishment called Ozzie's Taverna, which my players frequented for a couple of sessions until it was destroyed by a dragon. But Ozzie survived, and still exists as a recurring NPC to this day, more than three decades later. Somewhere along the way I decided that "Ozzie" was short for "Osmar", except that no one ever calls him that. There's also a running gag that he has over a dozen daughters, all named after flowers (Rose, Lily, Violet, Holly etc). In a similar vein, one of my players has a long-running dwarf character named Tarf. She explained to me how she came up with that name at one point, but I've long-since forgotten. On another occasion I jokingly suggested that "Tarf" could be short for "Tarfolomew" (total Spaceballs reference) and she liked the idea enough that it became canon.
And I said, "what about - breakfast at Tiffany's?" She said, "Do you mean the - book or the film?" And I said, "I meant - the song that I'm singing," And she said, "Lots of - things have that name..."
One fun example for me is that Pompeii (and by extension, other cities of the time) had fast food restaurants, serving things like snails and the like. And of course there's the "Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir", written in Ur during 1750 BCE ish, which is basically a customer complaint letter - something that, while makes sense regardless of time, 'feels' a little odd since it seems so mundane and obvious.
Hang on, I've heard that name before. Didn't he get in trouble with several people for things like delivering beer and copper of poor quality? Edit: Googled it. There are (at least) three tablets with complaints about mr Ea-Nasirs copper deliveries.
the warranty deed was invented to handle the problem of potentially-defective... 'enslaved people'. Lots of that in Central Asia. The Bactrian archive has a few of these.
I think that's a more general phenomenon: we tend to focus on the noble, the exceptional, and the spectacle of the distant past, so we don't often think of the mundane activities or speech. When we find out how relatable ancient peoples were to our modern everyday, it can feel weird. Plenty of ancient writings that were between people, rather than literary or religious writings, showcase mindsets and ideas and personality traits that are timeless, and we're just not used to thinking that way.
Reminds me of Roman gladiators having had product sponsors, which was going to be a subplot in the movie Gladiator, but it was removed for being "too unrealistic sounding."
Some good points. The goal of worldbuilding, and indeed of a narrative in itself, is immersion. Terry Pratchett could of course get away with a lot of what might have seemed anachronistic in other people's stories because he first of all built a world that is so fantastical, so different to the real one, and yet built on so many foundations of myth, legend and culture that relate and clearly comment on ours, that pop-cultural references would actually, almost parodixically, make it _more_ immersive, not less. I don't think anyone else will ever be able to do it the way he did without seeming like a hack.
I think he got away with it simply by giving it all context. He named his character Tiffany, and then added a bit of lore about how old the name was, where it came from, and what it meant to ancient people-- "land under wave." And he weaved that meaning into the character's story. He could just as easily done that with any name by making up lore for it, but something tells me that he actually did his research.
This is why HBO Rome is such a cool show, because it shows a lot of these 'modern' things that were present in Ancient Rome. Examples: The news (guy on a streetcorner shouting really loud almost every other episode), advertisements (the same guy advertising 'True bread, for true Romans'), scandal and political grafitti, fastfood. It also has amazing details that are historically accurate but generally unknown, like slaves being present everywhere (even when people do the dirty, to wave palm leaves at them), painted statues (so much colour in general compared to the modern idea of a white, sterile, marble Rome) and a complex sewage industry. There's a bunch more I believe but these are all very present in the show and really help with grounding it for me, whereas other shows or movies like Gladiator or even the new 'Those who are about to die' don't have this immersion as much.
A lot of those parallels are simply because basic human needs, especially in a more urbanized or more densely settled environment had not changed all that much in a few thousand years. What's changed is the technology available and some of its social impacts on certain areas of daily life, but the basics are not all that different. You can say the same thing about medieval cities, even if they might seem messier - many of the concerns and daily chores are actually remarkably "modern". You'd be amazed at some of the detailed innovations created by humans already in the Mesolithic, even with the much simpler technology, resources and materials people had available back then.
Town criers are a staple in historical fiction tho, it's not a modern thing, it's a thing you only see in oldie times movies... Also how is slaves being everywhere in antiquity unknown? Also, sewage system, aqueducts and baths are THE thing people associate with Rome. Like you think Finland, you think sauna, you think Rome, its their baths.
I think it was pompei where a petty roman bro wrote on the walls of the tavern that he banged the girl who worked at the tavern, adding to that, that someone else (someone he clearly disliked) also wanted to bang the same tavern girl but didn't succeed, he then proceeds to make fun of the other guy while continuing to brag about how he banged the girl.
Additional tips for names, especially for RPG Dms. People in the past were seldom original with their names. -50% of all roman citizens shared one of these three first names: Gaius, Marcus, and Lucius. -In medieval France, a peasant revolt was called a "Jacquerie" since so many peasants were called "Jacques". A similar thing exists in english: A Jack of Plates is a low-cost armor, called "Jack" because of the prevalence of the name in non-noble classes. When designing a campaign world, or just for worldbuilding in general, select three to four social classes/order. -Peasant, Artisan, clergy, nobility. -For each of these classes, choose or create three names for men and three names for women. -Have 90% of the population conform to those three names. If you want to go deeper, have those names have a signification in the language they've been created in. Like Marcus meaning "Of Mars (the god of war)", Lucius meaning "of light", and Gaius meaning "of the earth (gaia)". Or how names that have been common in french for centuries, like "Mathieu" and "Jean" are the "writers" of the Gospel, and "Pierre" and "Thomas" are apostles of Jesus, so people are named after important religious/historical figures.
The Roman naming convention is a legacy of their pre-imperial (pre-expansionist) clan society. The only time you would use only your praenomen was when talking to your immediate family. While interacting with people outside of your family, you would use your praenomen and clan name (nomen) often followed by a secondary name (cognomen) and sometimes even a nickname (agnomen). Praenomina were also very often passed down within a family, as they had religious significance). At some point during the republican period, Roman society lost the custom of giving praenomina to their daughters and women would then use agnomina as personal names. Another fun naming convention is to have names build from two or three meaningful parts that are somewhat significant in a society and give each group in society a thematic preference. Look to ancient Greek names and old Germanic naming conventions for reference. Also consider cultural exchange and influence, ie people adapting names from prestigious foreign cultures, changing native names to sound more foreign (and vice-versa) or combining native and foreign naming conventions. And last but not least, one person having multiple names for use in different contexts
@@pawel198812 Thank you for the precision to my comment. (I didn't dare adding those points you made because it would have made my tips a bit on the heavy side, but with another person giving the details (you, in this case), now everything is complete.)
I remember laughing when reading the Magna Carta's preamble because like 50% or more of the listed nobles were just 'William of someplace'. Meanwhile a lot of Dutch nobles were called Willem and the German empire has its fair share of Wilhelms
Or you could watch the segment from Horrible Histories about strange Victorian names, where people had names like "Happy," "Toilet," "Baboon," or "Minty Badger" and realize that maybe "Tiffany" or "Brad" aren't so bad.
In my Headcannon, Buffy (yes, the vampire slayer) is Elizabeth. Joss Whedon has actively dismissed this, saying her given name was Buffy, because it fits into his story image of San Fernando Valley Girls going from ditzy to serious when the Hellmouth opened. But IRL, Buffy is a diminutive given to toddlers who coudn't quite pronounce their name right, _Ewizabuff_ and for some people it sticks, giving them history and familiarity. It's the same way that we get Bills and Bobs (William and Robert) or Jimmy Carter who has a very unpresidential first name, but everyone who knew him called him _Jimmy_ and it stuck. (It also helps make him feel accessible to the common public.) Brad comes from Braddock and Bradley and countless other variations, and knowing where it came from helps define that person as more than merely a name.
Two names whose providence really surprised me were Victoria and Gloria. After some consideration I realised that it was totally like the Romans to give their daughters names of theings they held so highly such as Victory and Glory!
This is comical, given how many "medieval" fantasy world-builders include New World plants and animals (potato, tomato, cactus, maize...). They talk about visiting the "general store" and staying at an inn in a village.
TBH, if it's supposed to be Medieval, this always destroys my suspension of disbelief when I'm reading. I had this issue with pumpkins in Game of Thrones.
@@WorldAnvilbut it's not earth anyway. Is that too hard to suspend your disbelief and accept that maybe in that setting, pumpkins are native to the known world?
If it's a completely different fantasy world, why would the distribution of landmasses and the resulting fauna and flora need to somehow come out the same as ours?
Terry Pratchett always had layers of meaning and hidden jokes in every aspect of his works. He could pull off a quadruple entendre without breaking a sweat. Aside. Tiffany Aching is one of my favorite characters in the entire series. In the top three of a very broad field.
In the Fred The Vampire Accountant series by Drew Hayes there was a scene where Fred meets a vampire who introduces herself as Deborah and a representative of "the blood council", when he asks an older vampire friend of his about it she says the blood council is made up of the oldest, most powerful vampires, and he's like "well she can't be THAT old, Deborah is a fairly modern name" to which she informs him that "There are Deborahs in the BIBLE". I thought that was an interesting way to address the issue. Also, solid recommendation for that series and everything else by Drew Hayes, even the stuff I haven't read, if anyone is hooked by that bit, or even just the title, go check it out. It's a comedy first and foremost, but the depth of characters, world building, action scenes, and emotional arcs are all 10/10, just with both clever and cheesy humor thoroughly interlaced throughout every page.
@@3nertia He is, his first series had some new writer errors, so it can be a clunky read for some people, but outside of that everything I've read of his is amazing, if sometimes niche in genre, and I've heard similar things about the little of his stuff I haven't read.
@@3nertia I only recognize that name from XKCD comics, I was unaware he was an author as XKCD depicts him as some kind of computer programming ethics activist? So I have no idea if that is an apt comparison.
@@jacobbissey9311 They're not mutually exclusive lol; he's all of the above The two books of his I've read were delightful; "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and "Makers" Maybe a bit clunky but brilliant nevertheless. Though, admittedly, probably not really the same genre we were discussing but all the same, brilliant
I feel compelled to contribute a tangent from SAO Abridged: "If I might interject..." -"And who the hell are you?" "Me? I am known my many names! Mountain Slayer, Thunder Lion! The Chocolate Axe - but you? You may call me, Tiffany." -"Tiffany, huh? That's a, uh, pretty manly name." "Shouldn't be; It's a woman's name!" -"Okay, I don't know how to talk to you..." "Good, then you can shut up and listen!" Not the same Tiffany problem, for sure, but what came to mind when seeing the title. I will say, though, my bigger grief in world building tends to be the assumption that modern ideas are exclusively modern. Kind of like an anti-flintstones phenomenon where, rather than crafting an ancient analogue for modern conveniences to the point of absurdity, any idea people had a version of modern convenience in their time is sanitized from the world or treated as something only a modern mind could conceive of. The ancients had evaporative cooling systems which could freeze water, as an example. While these were obviously infrastructure pieces, not appliances - the concept of freezing something outside of a freezing climate would not be incomprehensible to a number of civilizations.
Yep, and one of the base technologies used in those ice houses was a form of passive air conditioner that was installed in pretty much every sufficiently wealthy establishment in every region the technology was present, right through until the past century or two.
The "Tiffany problem" can be pretty common in non-English-language fantasy (set in something like medieval England, of course) when it gets translated back to English. In the localization of Dragon Quest 11, one of main antagonists and most important characters in the story is named Hendrik, a fittingly strong and serious name. While on the Japanese language setting, I was watching a dramatic cutscene when I was stuck by laughter after hearing his original name. It's Greg.
Almost as if the world has almost 200 countries that aren't England, and here Greg or Gregory sounds like a knight's name from Byzantine Empire or something.
Mate, Suikoden game had vampire lord who commanded army of dead called Neclord. That was his actual name in English. Greg sounds a lot more serious when compared.
I feel like Dune is the inverse of this challenge; you'll get classical Roman, Arabic, Yiddish, and Chinese names that got pulled from ancient history and repopularized "in the future", like Leto or Gaius Mohaim, there's contemporary foreign names that have been fully integrated into common use, like Shaddam and Alya, while other names are regular words in English that "evolved into" proper names, like Gurney; and then there's also classical English names that survive into the future like Paul, Jennifer, and Duncan. Sounds like a silly out-of-place mix, but then you find out everyone's childhood trauma, class pressure, and social anxieties, and suddenly Duncan Idaho becomes more than just his silly name
Gurney's name is just the old "surname surname" style of naming, still popular in North America though antiquated in Britain, where it originated. Gurney is a less common surname (see: James Gurney, et al), so Gurney Halleck is no stranger a name than Harrison Ford (a man) or Brooke Adams (a lady) from the present day.
What exactly is the problem with New Port and Red Hill? There's a hill. It's red. Of course we call it Red Hill. There's a port. It's new (well, newer), so it's called New Port. These names should not derail anyone. I've lived in Connecticut. It has a bunch of things named after cities in England because it's in New England (see how that works there?). Connecticut famously has New Haven. But there's also East Haven, North Haven, and West Haven. Because people moved from New Haven and named the new town after the old, but with a directional modifier. And I only picked Haven because it's the most prolific. They also have Windsor and South Windsor, you know? and other cities and towns like that.
@@WorldAnvil New Port might or might not be fancy. Depends on how long ago it was built and what's happened since. But "ports' are usually the fancy parts of town. Same with any other city name depends on the history and your world building.
I favor the adjust accordingly and lean into it solutions personally. You can introduce at least some anachronistic elements early in your story to set reader/player expectations and minimize potential breaks in immersion. Its one thing to throw in a Tiffany after half a book of [insert old timey fantasy name], but weaving in a passing Brad or Chad early on will make it easier to accept more "modern" elements later on.
I simply use the archaic version/archaic sounding version. In my story, there's a Lady Teophanie. (halfway between the modern name and the Byzantine Theofanu from which it's derived)
I wish you would've also addressed the other kinds of the Tiffany problem that you mentioned at the beginning. Having weird names is one thing but explaining vending machines in a world based on ancient roman culture is another
A solution I've found for common names is to take a surname that ends in 'son' and remove the 'son' part. Morris and Ander are two examples, they sound a bit unusual but still sound like names.
the Raymond Feist novels are the Epitome of this. He had a major character called Kevin... you get used to it, but if there's a chapter without him, as soon as he returns, it rips you out of your suspension of disbelief.
The irony is that when you said Tiffany, my first thought was of Sir Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching - and so the name now feels totally appropriate in a medievalesque fantasy setting. Pratchett solved the Tiffany problem! :)
As someone actually named Chad, I have some more properly medieval sounding names that might work if Chad sounds too intimidatingly modern. Cuthbert, Alain, Artillac, Hellenbrecht, Radu, and Theoprastus are all cool Chad-approved names from various medieval cultures.
I had the opposite issue - I was running a game set in a Roman Empire parallel. Had a general who was elevated from the ranks of the common man, and he was an orphan to boot. He was given the surname "Publius" (roughly, "of the People." Not a direct or necessary "correct" translation, but appropriate.) You can imagine how quickly that name got out of hand.
I could totally buy a fantasy villager being named Brad. A member of a fantasy parliament maybe not. As for Tiffany - rightfully that name is the perfectly ancient-sounding Theophania. We only got to Tiffany by way of one of humanity's millions of goofy linguistic telephone games. Either way it does not feel that jarringly modern IMO.
GRRM does this well, where Westerosi names sound closer to modern or old English, but Targaryen names have a distinctive feeling to it. So when hear names like Aerys, Rhaegar, Daenerys, Viserys etc. we know they are "special" in this story - as they are Valyrian names.
Yup, this is great. I hate when names in a fictional world seem to have completely random names. Like one might pass for the name of an orc, another for an English speaker, while another might sound like a flesh eating bateria. Unless you live in a space/fantasy equivalent of London in 2024, it doesn't make sense for your fictional race to have such wildly different names.
Who came up with 'Harry Strickland' then? Sounds more like he should waltz into a modern office building with a briefcase than command a medieval army.
When your character starts going around calling herself Perditax. I think one of the ways Pratchett's naming works so well is that his world is so strange and different from ours in so many big ways, but then you read "Nobby Nobbs" or "Jeremy Clockson" and it's like "OK, so at least the _people_ are normal".
You should also talk about Cultural Tiffany Problem: when something seems out of place from its cultural context, but isn't. For example: if i have a character named Sasha, most western audience would assume it's a female character, but eastern/russia audience would assume it's a male. Or how the last name Lee, Song, and Park are all native to europeans and eastern asians
4 books into the Tiffany Aching series, and I never figured out the extremely obvious pune of Miss Tick's name. I could tell *something* was there, but my brain just refused to find the actual wordplay there for some reason...
“My name,” she said at last, “is Miss Tick. And I am a witch. It’s a good name for a witch, of course.” “You mean blood-sucking parasite?” said Tiffany, wrinkling her forehead. “I’m sorry?” said Miss Tick, coldly. “Ticks,” said Tiffany. “Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine-” “I meant that it sounds like ‘mystic,’” said Miss Tick. “Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words,” said Tiffany. “In that case it would be even better if you were Miss Teak, a dense foreign wood, because that would sound like ‘mystique,’ or you could be Miss Take, which would-” “I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire,” said Miss Tick. “There may be no survivors.” - on witchy names | Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
You are not alone. It took me years to fully get the pun in the name of the dwarven womanizer Casanunda. I mean, I did see the obvious connection to Casanova, but I didn't get the part with -ova and -unda being like a sloppily pronounced over and under.
Thanks! I think (3) covers my concern. Context: Busy kitchen in a 4th century Romano-British villa. I have a servant from the village they call "Jenni" for short (from Cornish: Jenifer, Welsh: Gwenhwyfar), and I was worried she might feel like a Tiffany, but your idea to consistently use such names to distinguish the locals (in my case, Celtic tribes-people) should work well.👍
You might spell it "Ienni" instead, as this is how romans would have pronounced it. (only much later, in 1524, the J and the I got separated and associated with distinct sounds, "dsh" and "ee" respectively)
@@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ Dunno, wasn't the shift from *w- to gw- quite late too, 10th century? My gut feeling is it might have been something like 'Shenni', similar to the modern Welsh diminutive 'Siani', giving a plausible bridge to the later Cornish 'Jeni', esp. as the Breton 'Jenifer' seems to be pronounced with an initial ʒ (zh) sound.
@@markovichamp I am not a specialist in this area, so I may be wrong, but as far as I know this shift from Proto-Celtic *w- to gw- happened in all Brythonic languages (in Welsh, Cornish and Breton), so it probably had happened before those languages separated, so at least before the 6th century. The shift from gw- to j- in Cornish happened later, and in Breton, as far as I know, the name is still written as Gwenivar (the form Jenifer may be a modern borrowing from English or French).
Thank you for the insight about this. I didn't know there was such a thing. One piece of feedback that I received on my fantasy writing was that some of the names were hard to pronounce or remember. As a work around, I've started using names from other cultures. This I found works for me and had some added bonuses: First, it helped me create some continuity in my cultures. Second, it helped show someone was a foreigner without too much exposition. I.E. Bjorn in an area with a lot of Tom's, Dick's and Harry's, it is pretty clear Bjorn ain't local.
Reminds me of the recent kerfuffle on social media about some D&D artwork including tacos and sushi in a feast. Both foodstuffs actually existed in the equivalent time period, but some folks took issue with their inclusion, believing them to be too modern. Yet, the same folks had no problem with potatoes, despite them coming from South America and not existing in medieval Europe.
The thing with potatoes is that, at a glance, its a very 'normal basic bitch European vegetable'. Its so cheap and commonplace in basic and poor European meals that unless you're even just roughly versed in the historical origin of foods its very easy to take it for granted as being something that just 'always existed'. Compare this to sushi (which require refrigeration in its modern form) and hard shelled tacos (also a modern invention). Yes potatoes, tomatoes and corn are just as inaccurate to a pre-colonial expansion and discoveries European diet but somehow they don't. This is especially true of potatoes because they don't FEEL exotic, having been grown in places like Ireland.
There's a place in England called Torpenhow Hill. Each part of the name (Torr, Penn, hoh, hill) all mean "hill", and etymologists believe it could be an example of quadruple-tautological name. Essentially, each new wave of people asks the locals "what's that place?" and the locals say "hill", and it becomes part of the new name for it.
I've gotten this reaction multiple times in real life regarding my name, just in reverse. 'Walter' sounds much too old fashioned, or that it's 'an old man's name' (got that when I was 22), or the consistent quirk of teachers and employers reversing my first and last name because the latter sounds more like a first name to everyone apparently.
That's really interesting, because as a "Janet", I have EXACTLY the same thing! When I was growing up, most Janets were grey-haired old ladies who baked cookies!
@@WorldAnvil(goes to Office of National Statistics website) Janet was last in the UK top 100 names for newborns in the 1960s, and peaked in the forties and fifties.
@@WorldAnvil To me, now, "Janet" just makes me think of The Good Place 😁 Which is a huge compliment, as Darcy Carden's portrayal has to be my favorite character on that amazing show.
The protagonist of the classic fantasy novel The Well at the World's End is named Ralph - an instance of the Tiffany problem since it's a completely valid Medieval name.
In a certain non-literary fantasy thing I'm working on, the two protagonists, commoners, are named Toby and Agnes. Perfectly ordinary names in a late-medieval or early modern setting. Agnes in particular used to be a much more popular name centuries ago, nowadays seen as rather quaint and old-fashioned. Similarly with Toby.
A Practical Guide to Evil gives people from the main character's home country familiar, "normal" names,, and people from other places more unusual names. That's a neat way of sort of putting us in her shoes by making things that are familiar to her also familiar to us.
I just like the idea of a person in the 12th century going like: “Kids these days! So many weird names! What nonsense is this naming your kid “Tiffany”! Give them a REAL name!!!”
Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)...Kevin the Bard. I kind of want to write a story now called The Tiffany Problem where every character is in a medieval village, they all have these modernistic names that are actually quite old, and, of course, they don't know what to do about Tiffany!
In the film 'The King' Henry V was shown to siege Harfleur with trebutchets, where in reality, he had cannons with him (early 15th C). Apparently, it was a conscious decision by the film makers, as they were concered that the audience would perceive cannons to be historically innacurate.
Our DM once gave us a main adversary in Wirework Oriental Adventures. Monk Ho had received a nickname of renown "Meteor" at some point. He was a master of the "Filthy Fist" style. And with that Filthy Meteor Ho was born.
I never would have thought of Tiffany as an exclusively modern name. It feels like an old name that got rediscovered to me. I never batted an eye at that name appearing in Pratchett book, though he does use anachronism to great effect anyway.
I think for me it’s that I always think of the glass. Tiffany glass was made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and because it’s *so* well known, I always assume that the name is there because of the glass, like people were naming their daughters after something valuable and beautiful. Not much different from “Ruby” as a name, really. I know that the glass was in turn named after the creator’s *last* name, so it didn’t originate there, but still, the glass is the first thing I think of.
Real life history is absolutely overflowing with weird nonsense and silly-sounding words and names. So in the interest of being true-to-life, my worldbuilding is too- for a world that is harsh, and littered with dystopian elements. To me, a setting lacking any of this feels inherently contrived and artificial- not like an actual, lived-in world. The funny, absurd or crazy-bs nature of a subset of the phonetics, names, rumors, current events, myths & legends etc. does nothing to decrease the threat-level of the ongoing conflicts in the story, and I think I make that clear enough in the first 2 or 3 chapters. I hope that has the effect of encouraging readers to just roll with it, taking the world we find it, as we often must do irl
Another aspect of the problem to consider is that what comes off as "fantastical" or "mysterious" to one cultural can simultaneously be "out of place" or "inmersion-breaking" to another. In the Japanese release of Final Fantasy 6, one of the key protagonists was named "Tina". That name was picked to make her feel mysterious, foreign, and out of place. But when they wanted to port the game to English audiences, that name wouldn't do. It was counterproductive since Tina was just a commonplace name. So her name was changed to "Terra" in the English translation. That was not only unusual and mysterious as a name, but double-dipped in mystery by allegorically connecting her to a name associated with the Earth, itself.
Hiya WA, I was just going to thank you for teaching me something I didn't know, but you ended it on that jewels / witches set of books, darn it's been so long! Thanks so much for that reminder as well!
I mean, I usually just go with the " f*ck it, not an actual problem" solution. Though, I usually do write stories with either a slightly comedic tone or that deal with themes like " not everything is what it seems"; which makes the use of the Tiffany problem as a literary device fairly easy. Exemple: Imagine the following, a medieval fantasy story in which most of the plot is centred, let's say, around uncovering a royal conspiracy covered up by corruption and propaganda; the main characters will need to do research and discover that the things that they thought they knew about the kingdom,and treated as indisputable facts, were actually lies, made up by the conspirators; the main character of this story will be named " Tiffany Chad ". Some readers may be put off by it, but the most curious ones will search on the Internet, the name "Tiffany," and discover that ,despite what they originally thought, it was, in fact , an historically accurate name, that what they thought they knew was, not how things actually were ; this not only makes for excellent trolling, but also strengthens the themes of the story.
This happened when they were filming gladiator IIRC. Apparently Gladiators doing brand sponsorships, while incredibly common in history, sounded to anachronistic to Ridley Scott et al to include in the film.
The perceived "out-of-place" nature of a name or other similar connotations will also vary from country to country and region to region. Names like Thaddeus or Hedwig sound awfully old-fashioned and rare in contemporary English, or most European languages, but they're considered well-worn traditional names in Poland (Tadeusz, Jadwiga), to the point of clichéd.
I have a character in my upcoming book named Jasen. It's meant to be based on the Slavic word for ash tree. My husband worried if it's too close to Jason, and according to him, "Jason sounds too modern." I stared at him for a moment before replying, "Jason and the Argonauts." That was all the argument I needed to prove to him that it's definitely NOT a modern name, although it was very popular when we were growing up.
This is one of my biggest problems with the show "Evil" already incredibly campy, with a seemingly halloween concept of what's "scary" it's populated by evil characters with names such as Leland, and if Leland doesn't sound so bad, bear in mind that the first seemingly supernatural occurance in the show is the main character being antagonized by a demon... named George.
@@WorldAnvil Not to me It consistently has between 90-100% on Rotten Tomatoes for whatever that's worth. I'd recommend Black Sails. Doesn't have anything supernatural or fantastical in it, like Evil does, it's just about pirates, but it's pretty much the only show I've watched that I would not only consider underrated, but criminally underrated.
Here's another good one. One of the most famous Roman emperors of the Byzantine period was probably Justinian I, who presided from 527 to 565. He is far, far more famous than his immediate predecessor, although I've heard it argued that his predecessor was a better emperor than "Justinian the Great" himself. Justinian's predecessor was his uncle Justin. Specifically, Justin I, who ruled from 518 to 527. I've always wondered if his name had something to do with his being not nearly as famous now.
"Justinian the Great? Can't be that great if I never heard of you. Who was ruler before you?" "My uncle, Justin." "What's his title, then? Justin the Not So Insecure As My Nephew?"
@@danielmclellan1522 You're not too far off. They call him "Justin the Thracian" because his name was Thracian, and he was from Illyricum (which included Thrace).
John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (16 September 1906 - 8 March 1996) was a British Army officer. Nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", he fought in the Second World War with a longbow, a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword, and a set of bagpipes.
I don't regard the following as examples of the Tiffany Problem anymore, but not that long ago I did: Naptha [ c. 2nd century BC ] Spectacles/Eyeglasses [ c. 1270~1300 AD/CE Safety Pins [ c. 10th century BC ]
One problem that comes up is translating words from a different culture. For example, in ancient China, there were official "Police Detectives" who investigated crimes. But because a dedicated police forces came later on in Europe, those titles (Commissioner, Inspector, Detective) sound very "modern". Similarly, Latin political terms like Senate, Republic, Federation, Assembly, Representative, Lobby, Client, Sponsor etc. sound very "modern" due to modern-day American influence - when in reality, they were used in ancient Rome, and continued some usage in medieval Europe.
We usually think of the name "Jenny" as a nickname for Jennifer, a name that famously was relatively obscure until exploding in popularity during the 20th century. However, if you look at names from centuries earlier, you'll find quite a few Jenny and Jennie in records, but basically no Jennifer. That's because Jenny was originally a diminutive for Jane, not Jennifer.
I perform at Renaissance Festivals and one Tiffany problem that comes to mind involves facial hair styles; having a mustache with a clean-shaven beard was definitely worn by men in the Renaissance but it looks so modern that it's typically not done.
Fascinating video thank you, I've always found names can make or break game immersion so easily, and your observations and advice will be very useful. And after DM-ing (sorry .. GM-ing) for 40+ years it always good to learn something new!
Trying to avoid Tiffany problem can cause another problem when names are so over fantasised that it starts to sound like "random fantasy name generator".
The place name, Burton Lazers, is actually Burton Lazars (01:45) which is still a weird place name. I happened to be driving through it last weekend and had to stop ask where the name came from. Apparently it had something to do with a leper colony that was once on the sight.
@@thirstyguy4652 The original use of that storage area was for somewhere to put the bodies of rich folk who had died at sea. Poor folk were just thrown overboard. It's origins are from the name Lazarus who dies (and got brought back from the dead).
@@WorldAnvil I can think of two Bobs related to Rowan Atkinson, and they're both in Blackadder - one in Blackadder the Second (where he hires 'Kate' the manservant, and when he points out that 'that's a girl's name' she claims it's 'Short for "Bob"') and the other time in Blackadder Goes Forth, when General Melchett's driver, also called Bob, also played by Gabrielle Glaister, also pretends to be a man. It's not a case of anachronism or out of place naming as such, more of a Twelfth Night gender disguise plot, at least in the first example. (Time to re-watch some Blackadder, see if it has stood the test of time. Some of it probably has.)
My favourite example is good king Bob with his best friend Ed, and Ed's sons Robbie and John. Or, phrased differently, Robert Baratheon, seventeenth ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and Eddard Stark with his sons Robb and Jon
Does this work in reverse too? Dune takes place 20,000 years in the future, after the rise and fall of technology, after humans became so separated by interstellar travel that unique cultures and ethnicities sprang up on many dozens of worlds. Languages would have obviously changed as well and the legendary main character of the whole story has the equally legendary name of... Paul.
Someone else mentioned Dune too, and it's a really interesting question! I guess it depends on your meta, and how much you want YOUR world to be connected to OUR world. Jean Luc Picard works in star trek, as does Captian Janeway, because they have earth heritage. If you want your setting to feel non-earth, then you definitely need non-earth like names!
@@WorldAnvil Not necessarily. Remember that in Dune, while they have some of the details wrong (in some part because they are seeing it through the lens of their own sociopolitical structure), they do know of events and the names of people involved that far. It wouldn't be that bizarre for names to last a very long time in that context. Just to use one example off the top of my head, there are still people called "David" and "Saul" even though those names, if the Biblical characters really existed, are at least 3000 years old and don't seem particularly odd to us. "Helen" is 4000 years old. Some of the names attested to in the oldest known written Chinese on oracle bones dating back 3500 years or so are still in common use today. We still commonly use Alexander, Marcus, Julia, Julius, don't blink twice at someone named Lucius. The prophet Samuel's mother was named Hannah. Then there's Sarah and Rebecca, Eli, Samson, etc and so on, which are at least 2500 years old. For a more futuristic version, what I'd expect to see is more of what's happening now, where a name shows there's been a historical mixing of cultures so what a person is named doesn't necessarily tell you anything about them in either appearance of background. For instance, NASA astronaut Franklin Ramón Chang-Díaz. There's an Inuit woman I know named Siobhan Arnatsiaq-Murphy. And in this, Dune actually hits it. Paul's father is named Leto. Jessica's mother was named Tanidia. Vladimir Harkonnen's brother was Abulurd.
@@oz_jones Saul is still in use (ie "Just Call Saul") so the whole Paul/Saul thing is irrelevant to the point. "David" in Biblical Hebrew is pronounced [daːˈwiːd] "daw-weed". The letter vav can be pronounced as a /v/, /w/, /o/, or /u/ depending on context, and has changed over time, thus why David changed from [daːˈwiːd] (Dahh-weed) to the modern Hebrew [da: 'vid] (Dah-veed). The change to English [ˈdeɪvɪd] (Day-vid) is simply a difference in pronunciation of phonemes, not a translation.
I don't know if this is related but the first recorded man of African descent to live in England was named Reasonable Blackman. He was a tailor who worked with many theater groups and was knowing for offering well made costumes at affordable prices, hence his name.
"The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" has lots of non-European-sounding names, often based on Sanskrit, but also has Kevin and Trevor. I recently named a D&D dwarven character "Khevin", for a laugh.
Phuket is one of the southern provinces of Thailand. It consists of the island of Phuket, the country's largest island, and another 32 smaller islands off its coast. Phuket lies off the west coast of mainland Thailand in the Andaman Sea. Phuket is an ancient name, as well as one you can't say out loud on TH-cam without getting demonetized. And if you name a town or island in your setting after it, there is a large chance that your players will make jokes like "You can take this island and Phuket!" constantly.
I'm writing a somewhat-tongue-in-cheek science fiction novel where several of the incredibly powerful sapient AI starships have ridiculous or commonplace names for themselves.
@@WorldAnvil A 20-mile-diameter alien dreadnought who can slag a world decided that it (he) liked the name Pootle. (evokes "poodle") The 30-mile diameter, galaxy-traveling super-dreadnought/exploration ship the New Beginning (so-named by its flesh-and-blood alien exile co-captain) has decided that for official purposes (and communing with the robot co-captain ZED-42955), it prefers to go by the name Ferd. (evokes "Fred")
I really like what Iain M. Banks did with The Culture and their ship names. "Lack of Gravitas", "So Much for Subtlety", "Fine 'Till You Came Along", "Lapsed Pacifist", "Inappropriate Response", "Determinist", "Gunboat Diplomacy", etc.
Speaking of players finding names amusing; I had a group who had to face a monstrous foe, who was supposed to be a real threat. However, once they realized his title was The Gate Tender, they could not stop laughing. It was so amusing, once they defeated him, they wanted to resurrect him to keep the joke going!
As a guy I'm jealous of Jen's earrings. They would look odd on me, but on Janet they look great and act as a more subtle nod to who she is. They wouldn't feel out of place with a nicer outing-outfit despite being nerd gear which is rare among nerd accessories.
Don't forget the most glaring omission from real naming conventions. Every second person in your village is named Tom. The only reason for that is that the other half are women and they are all named Rebecca.
Y'know, now I want a sitcom called "The Tiffany Problem" and it's a medieval sitcom that is just full of this stuff, like Tiffany meeting with a guard Brad Pitt (with whom he has one form or another of relationship that people think is a modern thing and not something medieval young people did), and he tells her about the time he spent on Bacon End after leaving Burton Lazers. And that the whole show is in fact accurate for the time, just constantly shoveling as many anachronistic elements as it can together. I feel like Monthy Python either did something like this, or should have.
Personally, I probably wouldn't think too much of modern sounding names in medieval fantasy. There's wizards and dragons, why can't there be modern names too? Granted, I could be just too used to Star Wars where you have characters like Lando and Obi Wan next to characters just named Luke.
As soon as I saw the video title, I immediately thought of Tiffany Aching. 😁Heck, my current wild magic sorcerer is 100% Pratchett inspired. I named him Ponder Ridcully, after Ponder Stibbons and Munstrum Ridcully. In his backstory, he's the bastard son of Arch Chancellor Ridcully and Granny Weatherwax, albeit I slightly changed their names to Mortimer Ridcully and Emma Weathertop (yes, I had to throw in a Lord of the Rings reference).
@@WorldAnvil I have nearly every book he ever wrote including The Long Earth series and the Nomes trilogy. I'm rereading Discworld books at the moment (though not in order).
@@TimvanderLeeuw I just restarted TLE! I dislike how so much of the beginning is basically just worldbuilding. Probably should have been a set of short stories.
Ah Tiffany, brings back fond memories of watching CGP Grey's near breakdown during his search for the earliest recorded use of the name.
I remember that video. I didn’t think anybody could make the historical account of a name. Interesting.
OH NO! I have to say, I was SUPER excited about the Brad Pitt example - I hadn't seen anyone quote that before :D
@@WorldAnvil Indeed! CGP Grey went on not one but two deep dives about "Tiffany" as a historical name; first about the core research he did, then another video about an interruption in the research because one historian in the chain dropped made-up nonsense into the records that took months off his life to disprove. They're both delightful videos and worth the watch.
One point from the primary video speaks to your point about just changing up the word to make it sound more olde timey: The earliest Tiffany on record was a Theofanu rather than a Tiffany proper, back in the Byzantine empire.
@@SamBrownBaudot Oddly enough, to me Tiffany doesn't sound nearly as much as a modern name as Brad does. I'm not sure why, maybe my subconscious knows of a historical person named Tiffany?
@@Frir10 That or you didn't get exposed to much of the media that basically cemented Tiffany as being either a california-girl or high society lady in pop culture.
"Historically accurate city names in Ireland include Slutsend, Bastardstown, Fannystown, Nobber, Cockhill, Horetown, and Kilcock."
😆
In Argentina's Patagonia is a town called "Cajón de Ginebra Chico" ("Little Box of Gin"), next to "Cajón de Ginebra Grande ("Great Box of Gin").
There's a town in Holland called Donkerbroek which can mean either “dark brook” or “dark trousers”.
Town names in France include Pussy, Condom, Vatan (Go Away), Trécon (Very Dumb), Bourg-la-Reine (Stuff the Queen), Deux-Verges (Two dicks), and my personal favorite: Y
Not a city but Ratass Church is a classic
I run a D&D group and I've learned not to stress about this because it doesn't matter what I name something, the players are going to make fun of it anyway
Very true.
D&D fact
Just don't name your characters Mike Hunt, Mike Hock, or I. M. .
@@IceMetalPunk Nah, totally go for it.
As long as you play with a non-English speaking players, it's totally fine.
For you English game masters, here are some funny French funny names which will NOT make your English players laugh (except if they are perfectly fluent in French, and still can ear the pun despite your accent, which is very unlikely).
Jean Aimarre. Lea Ricovair. Nicole Niskotch. Laure Loge. Jean Sérien. Jack Ouche. Judas Nana. Sophie Fonfek. Jessica Serolle. John Deuf. Jeanne Ultou. Beth Tiole. Debby Scott. Kelly Diotte. Lara Leuze. Yves Atrovite. Axel Aire.
"J'en ai marre" (I don't care)
"Les haricots vert" (the green beans)
"Ni colle ni scotch" (neither glue or scotch tape)
"L'horloge" (the clock)
"J'en sais rien" (I have no clue)
"J'accouche" (I'm delivering)
"Jus d'anana" (Ananas juice)
"Saufifon fec" "Saucisson sec" (dry sausage, but said when you have a lisp)
"J'ai six casserole" (I have six pans)
"Jaune d'oeuf" (egg yolk)
"J'annule tout" (I cancel everything)
"Bestiole" (creature/bug/critter)
"Des biscottes" (some rusk)
"Quelle idiote" (what an idiot)
"La râleuse" (the whiny/petulant/cranky...)
"Y va trop vite" (He's too fast)
"Accélère" (accelerate)
All fun and games, but in a book, you'll look like a total idiot if you use those, of course ;-)
I allow my players to name one NPC in every location, then roll with whatever they choose. Sometimes I play up the name/stereotype, and other times I play it totally straight ("Greetings travellers, Paula Abdul at your service... sir! whatever dost thou mean by thy sniggering?"). Either way, my own chosen names don't get a lot of mockery because they get it out of their systems.
As a bonus, this adds comic relief to an otherwise dark campaign.
In Terry Pratchetts Discworld novel 'Interesting Times' the story takes place in a Chinese/Japanese country. They are ruled by five powerful families. Every time they're mention its always the same:
"The Hongs, the Sungs, the Tangs, the McSweeneys and the Fangs."
"the McSweeneys?"
"very old established family."
And that's it! You only know them as an 'very old established family' and speak of it no more. Giving the reader something of a mystery that's never solved.
GNU Sir Terry.
Colour of Magic is one of the most funny fantasy novels I have read.
Nice.
I think I remember reading that it was an allusion to James Clavell’s Asian Saga, which follows the fortunes of a family of Scottish merchants in China
And PTerry's own Tiffany Aching...
I assume McSweeneys are Japanese since the other families are Chinese, correct?
I always liked that Dune is set like 8000 years in the future but the main characters are called Paul and Jessica
That's a really good point! I hadn't even considered futuristic names.... :o
And don't forget that the main character of the original Star Wars trilogy is named "Luke", a name that honestly always stood out to me for being rather out of place among the other space-style names.
@@danielcharland1374 Funny thing is Han is just a regular German name with an s dropped.
The names David and John are probably that old as well.
@@danielcharland1374 It makes more sense when you realize his name is Luke S.
If wonder if there is an opposite problem, like things that feel like they should be ancient, but are actually rather modern concepts. I suppose like potatoes and tomatoes showing up in medieval fantasy settings.
anachronism
The doorknob didn’t exist until 1879, trousers didn’t have belt loops until the 1920s which was also when sunglasses were invented, and while explosives are ancient, dynamite specifically wasn’t invented until 1867 and took many more years to catch on.
Lots of things, like Hamburgers, Daily Mail, and Bag Ice are Roman . We just don't know that too much today.
I don't know if it really seems like it should be "ancient" but people didn't think to put wheels on luggage until almost the 1970's
@@futurestoryteller That's because it was luggage, not rollage.
"Ah John Placeholder, welcome! I've been looking forward to some placeholder dialogue." - Mary Character
"Well, this is the thing I say here." - John Placeholder
🤣 A very objective discussion.
"Catch phrase!"
I once had written placeholder in my GM notes so often, that when we actually got playing, I still had no name and showed the demons name on a document...
It was placeholder written backwards
"Greeting, my name is Chad, of the Placeholder dynasty; an old noble house in the kingdom of Farlandia."
@@derkrischa3720 That's a great demon name by chance lol
I always found it funny that Herod the Great, king of Judea in biblical times, had a wife named Doris. When I hear that name, I picture a modern-day grandmother knitting a sweater for her cat, not a Middle-Eastern queen.
Bonus fact: Richard Gere's middle name is Tiffany.
Ha ha. Thanks for that, I love it. It indeed makes for a great mental image.
A wise, statuesque ruler wearing a toga sitting in serious contemplation of Matters Of Great & Historic Importance next to his dumpy cat lady wife with her knitting needles going tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick. 😁
(In accordance to the laws of Narrative Inevitability it's obvious who the real leader is in this scenario.)
@@exharkhun5605knitting hadn't been invented then, so it would probably have been a hand-loom :-)
@@milesgould8288 That won't do at all mate, not at all. Working a hand-loom, or any loom at all, looks like dull domestic work.
A woman quietly knitting on the other hand can, with carefully arranged lighting and a feeling for theatrics, look like she's picking apart a corpse with needles.
And that quiet sound. When she's ostensibly not paying attention a few well timed pauses between those tick-ticks can reduce a mighty warrior to a nervous wreck.
Most biblical names have this problem associated with it. Most biblical names have either become so commonplace we don't think about them anymore (John, David, etc) or they were popular in a specific time frame and call to mind that time instead of the biblical period (Doris or Deborah for the 50s-60s, Jebediah for the 19th century, etc)
Ha! That's awesome.
Technologies as well: glasses to correct vision (13th C), clocks (13th C), flushing toilets (16th C), pocket knives (Iron Age), keyboard musical instruments (3rd Century BCE Greece), chewing gum (pre-historic), syringes (Ancient Greece), large cities (populations of 10s of thousands in the Bronze Age, 100s of thousands in the Iron Age), paper money (8th C), explosives (9th C), and many more.
Not to mention that the ancient Greeks had automatons more than 2000 years ago.
Rome, Chang'an, or Baghdad might have reached 1 million inhabitants before the 9th century, but by the early modern period multiple cities in China did.
It works if you don't treat it as common. Maybe as a new invention everybody is stunned of. Unless your story demands otherwise.
Really good examples here! Am I gonna have to do another video on Tiffany Technologies? :o
@@WorldAnvil Yes, please, and thank you! ☺️
The Tiffany Problem is self-perpetuating because writers try too hard to avoid it. I would rather throw in something that sounds out of place and then cite sources when some know-it-all decides to make an issue of it.
It's more that you can only throw too many of these in before the immersion is ruined and authors might want to use that on things other than character names
Agreed. The problem continues to exist because ppl play into it too much and often dilberately.
Personally, I like the lean into it and/or adjust accordingly solutions. I think if you introduce certain things early enough into your setting, you can ease the immersion problem that can potentially crop up.
Fair point.
There's always the handwave of "other local languages exist, we're just ignoring them for the sake of practicality".
The issue isn’t people making “an issue” with it. Your goal as a writer isn’t to be 100% historically accurate all the time, it’s to create something that the reader likes. If you throw in something whose cultural connotations clash with the tone of the work you’re creating, readers may rub up against it and struggle to stay interested.
“Um actually”ing your audience isn’t respecting their take or intelligence as a reader
That isn’t to say “don’t do it, continue the cycle,” please, for the love of god help break the cycle. But don’t do it by debating with your readers, that sucks.
New Port and Red Hill both sound like perfectly fine fantasy towns. Not big cities maybe, but doesn't strike me as odd to have small towns and villages with simple descriptive names.
Or just translate it. A ridiculous number of Greek cities were just called Neapolis, from Naples to Nablus.
The interesting thing here is that we, as modern people, are used to the idea of not understanding the etymology of most place names, and we take that understanding to fantasy worlds where most place names are simply a pleasing arrangement of vowels and consonants without any greater meaning.
In the real world, the vast majority of place names are rather aimple descriptors of the place, but they were done in older versions of the modern language, or were names by people who were conquered or culturally displaced, so the meaning is lost to us.
Naming everything in your fantasy world names like 'Hill Top' or 'Black Forest' or 'Big City' might seem boring and unimaginative but its the most realistic method you can employ.
I use a mixed approach, myself. Most of the place names in my world are based off of medieval Greek, Old Norse, and various Old Slavic languages. Most names translate to simple concepts like 'city over the winding river', but the language is not anything my players can immediately parse
Fair
@@thejustlawofshamash Most Rivers are named River in a local dialect or language ... Avon, Trent, Mississippi, Ohio ... all mean River or Big River
I used to live between Newport Blvd and Redhill Ave, near the city of Newport Beach.
I think the problem with the name Tiffany isn't that it sounds like a modern name--for example no one would likely blink at medieval peasants named John and Mary, since these are names that have been common since the spread of Christianity--but that Tiffany was a rare name in recent memory until the latter half of the 20th century, explicitly brought to popularity by a movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. This means it's a name that evokes a specific recent time period, as opposed to seeming more evergreen like, for example, Elizabeth, or Henry.
Being able to point to a well-known historical example in a similar context to that you wish to evoke can help a lot, as it does in the four counterexamples I've listed (all names used by royals).
There are definitely a lot of factors at play.
What if you stopped the session briefly to explain the oddity before introducing it?
Tiffany was also a brand name for a company that made lamps in the United States back in the 1890's.
I think I remember that film. I recall we both kind of liked it.
@@benjaminbatema6963i believe the Tiffany lamp brand is related to the breakfast location. It was (and may still be) a luxury department store in Manhattan
I have a character who was supposed to be named Tiffany, but I stuck with the name Tifaine, a slightly later variant of the name. It's more similar to typhoon, and she's a wind mage. And the royal version of her name is, of course, Theophania.
I LOVE that! very historical, too !
What a great name choice 👍
One of the first NPCs I created as a teenager was an innkeeper named Ozzie (yes, named after _that_ Ozzy, although I misspelled it). He owned an establishment called Ozzie's Taverna, which my players frequented for a couple of sessions until it was destroyed by a dragon. But Ozzie survived, and still exists as a recurring NPC to this day, more than three decades later. Somewhere along the way I decided that "Ozzie" was short for "Osmar", except that no one ever calls him that. There's also a running gag that he has over a dozen daughters, all named after flowers (Rose, Lily, Violet, Holly etc).
In a similar vein, one of my players has a long-running dwarf character named Tarf. She explained to me how she came up with that name at one point, but I've long-since forgotten. On another occasion I jokingly suggested that "Tarf" could be short for "Tarfolomew" (total Spaceballs reference) and she liked the idea enough that it became canon.
Fun!
Yeah, soooo a tabaxy named Kat, short for Catholomiaw, (total spaceballs reference) exists. Names are fun!
Ah, of course, _that_ Ozzy being Ozymandias, Greek name for the Pharaoh Ramesses II 🙃
And I said, "what about - breakfast at Tiffany's?"
She said, "Do you mean the - book or the film?"
And I said, "I meant - the song that I'm singing,"
And she said, "Lots of - things have that name..."
LOL!
Bravo.
To be fair.. they both kind of liked it...
@@fakshen1973 That's the one thing they've got!
Nice to see an old College Humor/Drop Out reference out in the wild
Now I wanna write a fantasy story based around Tiffany Problem examples.
DOOO IIIIIIIIT!
Dewit
@@daniellagos8584 Duet
@@BIGSEGGSWTHQUASO last duet
Sir Chadwick Bradley and Lady Theophany
An elegant couple forsooth.
And a *YOINK!* Thank you.
One fun example for me is that Pompeii (and by extension, other cities of the time) had fast food restaurants, serving things like snails and the like. And of course there's the "Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir", written in Ur during 1750 BCE ish, which is basically a customer complaint letter - something that, while makes sense regardless of time, 'feels' a little odd since it seems so mundane and obvious.
Hang on, I've heard that name before. Didn't he get in trouble with several people for things like delivering beer and copper of poor quality?
Edit: Googled it. There are (at least) three tablets with complaints about mr Ea-Nasirs copper deliveries.
the warranty deed was invented to handle the problem of potentially-defective... 'enslaved people'. Lots of that in Central Asia. The Bactrian archive has a few of these.
@@zimriel Oof.
People have always liked food, and have always been impatient. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think that's a more general phenomenon: we tend to focus on the noble, the exceptional, and the spectacle of the distant past, so we don't often think of the mundane activities or speech. When we find out how relatable ancient peoples were to our modern everyday, it can feel weird. Plenty of ancient writings that were between people, rather than literary or religious writings, showcase mindsets and ideas and personality traits that are timeless, and we're just not used to thinking that way.
Reminds me of Roman gladiators having had product sponsors, which was going to be a subplot in the movie Gladiator, but it was removed for being "too unrealistic sounding."
A fact that they use in Disneys Hercules, but instead for comedic effect :D
@@MiniHarpist And it should be Herakles. Hercules is the Latinized version of the name. And yes, I am fully aware that I am acting acoustic now.
@@oz_jones Acoustic? Or pedantic? xD
The NASCAR drivers of their day!
One thing about writing novels is that you can work in little explanations for shit like that.
Some good points. The goal of worldbuilding, and indeed of a narrative in itself, is immersion. Terry Pratchett could of course get away with a lot of what might have seemed anachronistic in other people's stories because he first of all built a world that is so fantastical, so different to the real one, and yet built on so many foundations of myth, legend and culture that relate and clearly comment on ours, that pop-cultural references would actually, almost parodixically, make it _more_ immersive, not less. I don't think anyone else will ever be able to do it the way he did without seeming like a hack.
Yes -he did something very unique and although there were definitely imitators, I don't think anyone's gotten close
I think he got away with it simply by giving it all context. He named his character Tiffany, and then added a bit of lore about how old the name was, where it came from, and what it meant to ancient people-- "land under wave." And he weaved that meaning into the character's story. He could just as easily done that with any name by making up lore for it, but something tells me that he actually did his research.
@@rottensquid This is The Way!
This is why HBO Rome is such a cool show, because it shows a lot of these 'modern' things that were present in Ancient Rome. Examples: The news (guy on a streetcorner shouting really loud almost every other episode), advertisements (the same guy advertising 'True bread, for true Romans'), scandal and political grafitti, fastfood. It also has amazing details that are historically accurate but generally unknown, like slaves being present everywhere (even when people do the dirty, to wave palm leaves at them), painted statues (so much colour in general compared to the modern idea of a white, sterile, marble Rome) and a complex sewage industry. There's a bunch more I believe but these are all very present in the show and really help with grounding it for me, whereas other shows or movies like Gladiator or even the new 'Those who are about to die' don't have this immersion as much.
There are some hilarious graffiti found in Pompeii. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Overwhelm the audience with details, and no single one seems that weird!
A lot of those parallels are simply because basic human needs, especially in a more urbanized or more densely settled environment had not changed all that much in a few thousand years. What's changed is the technology available and some of its social impacts on certain areas of daily life, but the basics are not all that different. You can say the same thing about medieval cities, even if they might seem messier - many of the concerns and daily chores are actually remarkably "modern". You'd be amazed at some of the detailed innovations created by humans already in the Mesolithic, even with the much simpler technology, resources and materials people had available back then.
Town criers are a staple in historical fiction tho, it's not a modern thing, it's a thing you only see in oldie times movies... Also how is slaves being everywhere in antiquity unknown? Also, sewage system, aqueducts and baths are THE thing people associate with Rome. Like you think Finland, you think sauna, you think Rome, its their baths.
I think it was pompei where a petty roman bro wrote on the walls of the tavern that he banged the girl who worked at the tavern, adding to that, that someone else (someone he clearly disliked) also wanted to bang the same tavern girl but didn't succeed, he then proceeds to make fun of the other guy while continuing to brag about how he banged the girl.
Additional tips for names, especially for RPG Dms.
People in the past were seldom original with their names.
-50% of all roman citizens shared one of these three first names: Gaius, Marcus, and Lucius.
-In medieval France, a peasant revolt was called a "Jacquerie" since so many peasants were called "Jacques". A similar thing exists in english: A Jack of Plates is a low-cost armor, called "Jack" because of the prevalence of the name in non-noble classes.
When designing a campaign world, or just for worldbuilding in general, select three to four social classes/order.
-Peasant, Artisan, clergy, nobility.
-For each of these classes, choose or create three names for men and three names for women.
-Have 90% of the population conform to those three names.
If you want to go deeper, have those names have a signification in the language they've been created in. Like Marcus meaning "Of Mars (the god of war)", Lucius meaning "of light", and Gaius meaning "of the earth (gaia)". Or how names that have been common in french for centuries, like "Mathieu" and "Jean" are the "writers" of the Gospel, and "Pierre" and "Thomas" are apostles of Jesus, so people are named after important religious/historical figures.
The Roman naming convention is a legacy of their pre-imperial (pre-expansionist) clan society. The only time you would use only your praenomen was when talking to your immediate family. While interacting with people outside of your family, you would use your praenomen and clan name (nomen) often followed by a secondary name (cognomen) and sometimes even a nickname (agnomen). Praenomina were also very often passed down within a family, as they had religious significance). At some point during the republican period, Roman society lost the custom of giving praenomina to their daughters and women would then use agnomina as personal names.
Another fun naming convention is to have names build from two or three meaningful parts that are somewhat significant in a society and give each group in society a thematic preference. Look to ancient Greek names and old Germanic naming conventions for reference.
Also consider cultural exchange and influence, ie people adapting names from prestigious foreign cultures, changing native names to sound more foreign (and vice-versa) or combining native and foreign naming conventions. And last but not least, one person having multiple names for use in different contexts
@@pawel198812 Thank you for the precision to my comment.
(I didn't dare adding those points you made because it would have made my tips a bit on the heavy side, but with another person giving the details (you, in this case), now everything is complete.)
I think I'd like to make a list of 10 common names for each region/race and use those like 75% of the time xD
I remember laughing when reading the Magna Carta's preamble because like 50% or more of the listed nobles were just 'William of someplace'. Meanwhile a lot of Dutch nobles were called Willem and the German empire has its fair share of Wilhelms
Super interesting!
Or you could watch the segment from Horrible Histories about strange Victorian names, where people had names like "Happy," "Toilet," "Baboon," or "Minty Badger" and realize that maybe "Tiffany" or "Brad" aren't so bad.
Yeah, the victorians really were nuts....
It's funny how "Happy" sounds odd to Anglo-American ears, but "Joy" doesn't, and how "Happy" doesn't sound strange at all in countries like Nigeria.
Don't forget Cabbage!
Ooh, Book of Heroic Failures had some. Uz, Tram, Bugless...
@@SteveFoerster Now there's an interesting point that will probably never leave my brain lol
In my Headcannon, Buffy (yes, the vampire slayer) is Elizabeth. Joss Whedon has actively dismissed this, saying her given name was Buffy, because it fits into his story image of San Fernando Valley Girls going from ditzy to serious when the Hellmouth opened.
But IRL, Buffy is a diminutive given to toddlers who coudn't quite pronounce their name right, _Ewizabuff_ and for some people it sticks, giving them history and familiarity. It's the same way that we get Bills and Bobs (William and Robert) or Jimmy Carter who has a very unpresidential first name, but everyone who knew him called him _Jimmy_ and it stuck. (It also helps make him feel accessible to the common public.)
Brad comes from Braddock and Bradley and countless other variations, and knowing where it came from helps define that person as more than merely a name.
the late Queen Elizabeth was known in the family as Lilibet as she struggled to pronounce her own name while young.
This all has some serious backstory potential! *furiously scribbling notes*
Worth thinking about.
I've also seen Buffy as a nickname for Mary since so many girls were named Mary back in the day.
Diminutive forms of names can often become proper names. Actor Jimmy Smits wasn't named James. Jimmy is actually his given name.
Two names whose providence really surprised me were Victoria and Gloria. After some consideration I realised that it was totally like the Romans to give their daughters names of theings they held so highly such as Victory and Glory!
Very true.
This is comical, given how many "medieval" fantasy world-builders include New World plants and animals (potato, tomato, cactus, maize...). They talk about visiting the "general store" and staying at an inn in a village.
TBH, if it's supposed to be Medieval, this always destroys my suspension of disbelief when I'm reading. I had this issue with pumpkins in Game of Thrones.
And, yet, a distinct lack of monasteries, abbeys, and other religious infrastructures that served the purpose of acting as lodgings for travellers.
@@WorldAnvilbut it's not earth anyway. Is that too hard to suspend your disbelief and accept that maybe in that setting, pumpkins are native to the known world?
I mean... it's a different world entirely. If you're questioning the availability of potatoes in a world with dragons there's a bigger issue.
If it's a completely different fantasy world, why would the distribution of landmasses and the resulting fauna and flora need to somehow come out the same as ours?
Terry Pratchett always had layers of meaning and hidden jokes in every aspect of his works. He could pull off a quadruple entendre without breaking a sweat. Aside. Tiffany Aching is one of my favorite characters in the entire series. In the top three of a very broad field.
In the Fred The Vampire Accountant series by Drew Hayes there was a scene where Fred meets a vampire who introduces herself as Deborah and a representative of "the blood council", when he asks an older vampire friend of his about it she says the blood council is made up of the oldest, most powerful vampires, and he's like "well she can't be THAT old, Deborah is a fairly modern name" to which she informs him that "There are Deborahs in the BIBLE". I thought that was an interesting way to address the issue.
Also, solid recommendation for that series and everything else by Drew Hayes, even the stuff I haven't read, if anyone is hooked by that bit, or even just the title, go check it out. It's a comedy first and foremost, but the depth of characters, world building, action scenes, and emotional arcs are all 10/10, just with both clever and cheesy humor thoroughly interlaced throughout every page.
Sounds like brilliant writer!
@@3nertia He is, his first series had some new writer errors, so it can be a clunky read for some people, but outside of that everything I've read of his is amazing, if sometimes niche in genre, and I've heard similar things about the little of his stuff I haven't read.
@@jacobbissey9311 That description reminds me a bit of some of Cory Doctorow's stuff lol
@@3nertia I only recognize that name from XKCD comics, I was unaware he was an author as XKCD depicts him as some kind of computer programming ethics activist? So I have no idea if that is an apt comparison.
@@jacobbissey9311 They're not mutually exclusive lol; he's all of the above
The two books of his I've read were delightful; "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and "Makers"
Maybe a bit clunky but brilliant nevertheless. Though, admittedly, probably not really the same genre we were discussing but all the same, brilliant
I feel compelled to contribute a tangent from SAO Abridged:
"If I might interject..."
-"And who the hell are you?"
"Me? I am known my many names! Mountain Slayer, Thunder Lion! The Chocolate Axe - but you? You may call me, Tiffany."
-"Tiffany, huh? That's a, uh, pretty manly name."
"Shouldn't be; It's a woman's name!"
-"Okay, I don't know how to talk to you..."
"Good, then you can shut up and listen!"
Not the same Tiffany problem, for sure, but what came to mind when seeing the title.
I will say, though, my bigger grief in world building tends to be the assumption that modern ideas are exclusively modern. Kind of like an anti-flintstones phenomenon where, rather than crafting an ancient analogue for modern conveniences to the point of absurdity, any idea people had a version of modern convenience in their time is sanitized from the world or treated as something only a modern mind could conceive of.
The ancients had evaporative cooling systems which could freeze water, as an example. While these were obviously infrastructure pieces, not appliances - the concept of freezing something outside of a freezing climate would not be incomprehensible to a number of civilizations.
Evaporative coolers would also be a cool worldbuilding technology element for a solarpunk setting... 🤔
Yep, and one of the base technologies used in those ice houses was a form of passive air conditioner that was installed in pretty much every sufficiently wealthy establishment in every region the technology was present, right through until the past century or two.
Sir Chad is absolutely making
An appearance in my game! :)
YAAAAAAS! Let me know how it goes!
Is he competing for the heart of Dame Stacy with his rival, Sir Tyrone? 😂
Chad of Chadwick, first of his house.
@@cosmicprison9819 I understood that reference.
Sir Chad the Brad of House Nottafad.
The "Tiffany problem" can be pretty common in non-English-language fantasy (set in something like medieval England, of course) when it gets translated back to English. In the localization of Dragon Quest 11, one of main antagonists and most important characters in the story is named Hendrik, a fittingly strong and serious name. While on the Japanese language setting, I was watching a dramatic cutscene when I was stuck by laughter after hearing his original name. It's Greg.
tbh, Greg sounds like an accountant.
Almost as if the world has almost 200 countries that aren't England, and here Greg or Gregory sounds like a knight's name from Byzantine Empire or something.
@@KasumiRINA Thats a rather silly framing, considering Japan loves aping Western and especially Medieval English culture for their fantasy stories.
Mate, Suikoden game had vampire lord who commanded army of dead called Neclord. That was his actual name in English.
Greg sounds a lot more serious when compared.
@@andrzejnadgirl2029 I'm wondering if that's where Jon gets his title of Necrolord Prime in The Locked Tomb series...
I feel like Dune is the inverse of this challenge; you'll get classical Roman, Arabic, Yiddish, and Chinese names that got pulled from ancient history and repopularized "in the future", like Leto or Gaius Mohaim, there's contemporary foreign names that have been fully integrated into common use, like Shaddam and Alya, while other names are regular words in English that "evolved into" proper names, like Gurney; and then there's also classical English names that survive into the future like Paul, Jennifer, and Duncan.
Sounds like a silly out-of-place mix, but then you find out everyone's childhood trauma, class pressure, and social anxieties, and suddenly Duncan Idaho becomes more than just his silly name
There is a saying in Finland that translates to "the name does not worsen the man if the man does not worsen the name".
@@oz_jones Anyone who says that clearly never grew up in a family of rabblerousers or outcasts xD
Interesting points.
Gurney's name is just the old "surname surname" style of naming, still popular in North America though antiquated in Britain, where it originated. Gurney is a less common surname (see: James Gurney, et al), so Gurney Halleck is no stranger a name than Harrison Ford (a man) or Brooke Adams (a lady) from the present day.
What exactly is the problem with New Port and Red Hill? There's a hill. It's red. Of course we call it Red Hill. There's a port. It's new (well, newer), so it's called New Port. These names should not derail anyone.
I've lived in Connecticut. It has a bunch of things named after cities in England because it's in New England (see how that works there?). Connecticut famously has New Haven. But there's also East Haven, North Haven, and West Haven. Because people moved from New Haven and named the new town after the old, but with a directional modifier. And I only picked Haven because it's the most prolific. They also have Windsor and South Windsor, you know? and other cities and towns like that.
Most things are named for what they actually are.
New York. Or New Amsterdam as it was previously.
Fun Fact: Kentucky also has a New Haven lol. 'New Haven' seems to be like 'Sterling' - every state has one xD
They're not "fancy" city names.
@@WorldAnvil New Port might or might not be fancy. Depends on how long ago it was built and what's happened since. But "ports' are usually the fancy parts of town.
Same with any other city name depends on the history and your world building.
@@WorldAnvil Yeah but why would they have to be? What's the Tiffany Problem with that?
I favor the adjust accordingly and lean into it solutions personally. You can introduce at least some anachronistic elements early in your story to set reader/player expectations and minimize potential breaks in immersion. Its one thing to throw in a Tiffany after half a book of [insert old timey fantasy name], but weaving in a passing Brad or Chad early on will make it easier to accept more "modern" elements later on.
"Weaving in a passing Brad or Chad" has created an ... interesting mental image. 😆
I simply use the archaic version/archaic sounding version. In my story, there's a Lady Teophanie. (halfway between the modern name and the Byzantine Theofanu from which it's derived)
Nice!
I wish you would've also addressed the other kinds of the Tiffany problem that you mentioned at the beginning. Having weird names is one thing but explaining vending machines in a world based on ancient roman culture is another
A solution I've found for common names is to take a surname that ends in 'son' and remove the 'son' part. Morris and Ander are two examples, they sound a bit unusual but still sound like names.
Nice!
Well, it helps that they more or less are.
Morrison - "Maurice's son", and Anderson - "Anders'/Andrew's son".
the Raymond Feist novels are the Epitome of this. He had a major character called Kevin... you get used to it, but if there's a chapter without him, as soon as he returns, it rips you out of your suspension of disbelief.
LOL - yeah, it's just right there, isn't it? Somehow it doesn't seem very epic!
"So, Kevin, where were you during the last chapter?"
"Home."
"Alone?"
"No: I own it outright...."
Stephen Donaldson had Kevin Landwaster. I made the mistake of reading this series after, not before, school in the UK.
The irony is that when you said Tiffany, my first thought was of Sir Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching - and so the name now feels totally appropriate in a medievalesque fantasy setting. Pratchett solved the Tiffany problem! :)
As someone actually named Chad, I have some more properly medieval sounding names that might work if Chad sounds too intimidatingly modern. Cuthbert, Alain, Artillac, Hellenbrecht, Radu, and Theoprastus are all cool Chad-approved names from various medieval cultures.
"Chad approved" 😆
Radu is a pretty common name in my country
Tyrion Cuthbert Attorney of the Arcane
@@real_nosferatu and a cool sounding name, too!
Cuthbert and Alain huh? Charyou tree.
I had the opposite issue - I was running a game set in a Roman Empire parallel. Had a general who was elevated from the ranks of the common man, and he was an orphan to boot. He was given the surname "Publius" (roughly, "of the People." Not a direct or necessary "correct" translation, but appropriate.) You can imagine how quickly that name got out of hand.
there wasn't a Nottius Maximus, but Silius was a real life poet
oh no
Pubert was Morticia and Gomez new baby in Addams Family Values. Would fit well with Uncle Fester and Aunt Dementia.
that's where you cheat and just use a modern pronunciation so they only think he's a drunk
or call him General Publish (US English pronunciation).
Me, if I were in that game: "So, uh... I quickly jot down something on a napkin and hand it to him. It's an ad for Manscaped..."
I spake, 'What of our morn repast at Tiffany's?'
She replied, 'Methinks I recall the play.'
And as I remember, we both found it pleasing.
I could totally buy a fantasy villager being named Brad. A member of a fantasy parliament maybe not. As for Tiffany - rightfully that name is the perfectly ancient-sounding Theophania. We only got to Tiffany by way of one of humanity's millions of goofy linguistic telephone games. Either way it does not feel that jarringly modern IMO.
YMMV for sure
But as she pointed out, it was not a commoner's name that got recorded.
GRRM does this well, where Westerosi names sound closer to modern or old English, but Targaryen names have a distinctive feeling to it. So when hear names like Aerys, Rhaegar, Daenerys, Viserys etc. we know they are "special" in this story - as they are Valyrian names.
Totally agree with you on GRM r.e. naming - he does a really good job on this!
@@abyrupus another guy did an Episode about those Valerian names and how when we hear them we know....
Yup, this is great. I hate when names in a fictional world seem to have completely random names. Like one might pass for the name of an orc, another for an English speaker, while another might sound like a flesh eating bateria.
Unless you live in a space/fantasy equivalent of London in 2024, it doesn't make sense for your fictional race to have such wildly different names.
Targaryens are definitely special.
Who came up with 'Harry Strickland' then? Sounds more like he should waltz into a modern office building with a briefcase than command a medieval army.
When your character starts going around calling herself Perditax.
I think one of the ways Pratchett's naming works so well is that his world is so strange and different from ours in so many big ways, but then you read "Nobby Nobbs" or "Jeremy Clockson" and it's like "OK, so at least the _people_ are normal".
True😆😆
That Agnes what calls herself Perditax. 😄
You should also talk about Cultural Tiffany Problem:
when something seems out of place from its cultural context, but isn't.
For example: if i have a character named Sasha, most western audience would assume it's a female character, but eastern/russia audience would assume it's a male.
Or how the last name Lee, Song, and Park are all native to europeans and eastern asians
That's a whole other video
4 books into the Tiffany Aching series, and I never figured out the extremely obvious pune of Miss Tick's name. I could tell *something* was there, but my brain just refused to find the actual wordplay there for some reason...
To be fair, the puns come fast and furious in those books. Easy to miss one.
“My name,” she said at last, “is Miss Tick. And I am a witch. It’s a good name for a witch, of course.”
“You mean blood-sucking parasite?” said Tiffany, wrinkling her forehead.
“I’m sorry?” said Miss Tick, coldly.
“Ticks,” said Tiffany. “Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine-”
“I meant that it sounds like ‘mystic,’” said Miss Tick.
“Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words,” said Tiffany. “In that case it would be even better if you were Miss Teak, a dense foreign wood, because that would sound like ‘mystique,’ or you could be Miss Take, which would-”
“I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire,” said Miss Tick. “There may be no survivors.”
- on witchy names | Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
You are not alone. It took me years to fully get the pun in the name of the dwarven womanizer Casanunda. I mean, I did see the obvious connection to Casanova, but I didn't get the part with -ova and -unda being like a sloppily pronounced over and under.
Thanks! I think (3) covers my concern. Context: Busy kitchen in a 4th century Romano-British villa. I have a servant from the village they call "Jenni" for short (from Cornish: Jenifer, Welsh: Gwenhwyfar), and I was worried she might feel like a Tiffany, but your idea to consistently use such names to distinguish the locals (in my case, Celtic tribes-people) should work well.👍
Hooray! So glad it was helpful! You could also use "Jeni" to make it seem a bit less modern!
You might spell it "Ienni" instead, as this is how romans would have pronounced it. (only much later, in 1524, the J and the I got separated and associated with distinct sounds, "dsh" and "ee" respectively)
Gwenhwyfar would probably be shortened to Gwen or Gwenna, "gw" turned into "j" pretty late in Cornish (after 1500 A.D., if I am not mistaken).
@@АнтонОрлов-я1ъ Dunno, wasn't the shift from *w- to gw- quite late too, 10th century? My gut feeling is it might have been something like 'Shenni', similar to the modern Welsh diminutive 'Siani', giving a plausible bridge to the later Cornish 'Jeni', esp. as the Breton 'Jenifer' seems to be pronounced with an initial ʒ (zh) sound.
@@markovichamp I am not a specialist in this area, so I may be wrong, but as far as I know this shift from Proto-Celtic *w- to gw- happened in all Brythonic languages (in Welsh, Cornish and Breton), so it probably had happened before those languages separated, so at least before the 6th century. The shift from gw- to j- in Cornish happened later, and in Breton, as far as I know, the name is still written as Gwenivar (the form Jenifer may be a modern borrowing from English or French).
Thank you for the insight about this. I didn't know there was such a thing.
One piece of feedback that I received on my fantasy writing was that some of the names were hard to pronounce or remember. As a work around, I've started using names from other cultures. This I found works for me and had some added bonuses: First, it helped me create some continuity in my cultures. Second, it helped show someone was a foreigner without too much exposition. I.E. Bjorn in an area with a lot of Tom's, Dick's and Harry's, it is pretty clear Bjorn ain't local.
Pronunciation is a big stumbling block for some folks, true.
Reminds me of the recent kerfuffle on social media about some D&D artwork including tacos and sushi in a feast. Both foodstuffs actually existed in the equivalent time period, but some folks took issue with their inclusion, believing them to be too modern. Yet, the same folks had no problem with potatoes, despite them coming from South America and not existing in medieval Europe.
The thing with potatoes is that, at a glance, its a very 'normal basic bitch European vegetable'. Its so cheap and commonplace in basic and poor European meals that unless you're even just roughly versed in the historical origin of foods its very easy to take it for granted as being something that just 'always existed'. Compare this to sushi (which require refrigeration in its modern form) and hard shelled tacos (also a modern invention). Yes potatoes, tomatoes and corn are just as inaccurate to a pre-colonial expansion and discoveries European diet but somehow they don't. This is especially true of potatoes because they don't FEEL exotic, having been grown in places like Ireland.
@@Skritz-mt9zb Sushi doesn't require refrigeration though, it just has to be prepared fresh.
There's a place in England called Torpenhow Hill. Each part of the name (Torr, Penn, hoh, hill) all mean "hill", and etymologists believe it could be an example of quadruple-tautological name.
Essentially, each new wave of people asks the locals "what's that place?" and the locals say "hill", and it becomes part of the new name for it.
Also included are "Island island island" (Saaremaa island), Mount Great Mountain (Mount Maunganui), and New Town New Town (Newtownballynoe)
Very cool!
Tom Scott has a video on that place.
The Sahara Desert is another one, as "Sahara" means "desert".
I've gotten this reaction multiple times in real life regarding my name, just in reverse. 'Walter' sounds much too old fashioned, or that it's 'an old man's name' (got that when I was 22), or the consistent quirk of teachers and employers reversing my first and last name because the latter sounds more like a first name to everyone apparently.
That's really interesting, because as a "Janet", I have EXACTLY the same thing! When I was growing up, most Janets were grey-haired old ladies who baked cookies!
@@WorldAnvil(goes to Office of National Statistics website)
Janet was last in the UK top 100 names for newborns in the 1960s, and peaked in the forties and fifties.
@@WorldAnvil To me, now, "Janet" just makes me think of The Good Place 😁 Which is a huge compliment, as Darcy Carden's portrayal has to be my favorite character on that amazing show.
i love name walter
@@demihau Thanks!
The protagonist of the classic fantasy novel The Well at the World's End is named Ralph - an instance of the Tiffany problem since it's a completely valid Medieval name.
Interesting!
In a certain non-literary fantasy thing I'm working on, the two protagonists, commoners, are named Toby and Agnes. Perfectly ordinary names in a late-medieval or early modern setting. Agnes in particular used to be a much more popular name centuries ago, nowadays seen as rather quaint and old-fashioned. Similarly with Toby.
Ralph is like Beethoven - anyone named that is either from olden times, or a dog.
A Practical Guide to Evil gives people from the main character's home country familiar, "normal" names,, and people from other places more unusual names. That's a neat way of sort of putting us in her shoes by making things that are familiar to her also familiar to us.
I just like the idea of a person in the 12th century going like:
“Kids these days! So many weird names! What nonsense is this naming your kid “Tiffany”! Give them a REAL name!!!”
Fun idea!
Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)...Kevin the Bard. I kind of want to write a story now called The Tiffany Problem where every character is in a medieval village, they all have these modernistic names that are actually quite old, and, of course, they don't know what to do about Tiffany!
Love this
I immediatly thought of Tiffany Aching when i saw this title.
❤️
In the film 'The King' Henry V was shown to siege Harfleur with trebutchets, where in reality, he had cannons with him (early 15th C). Apparently, it was a conscious decision by the film makers, as they were concered that the audience would perceive cannons to be historically innacurate.
Oh, wow!
Our DM once gave us a main adversary in Wirework Oriental Adventures.
Monk Ho had received a nickname of renown "Meteor" at some point.
He was a master of the "Filthy Fist" style. And with that Filthy Meteor Ho was born.
:o Oh wow. Your table went full Blue Anvil! :o
I never would have thought of Tiffany as an exclusively modern name. It feels like an old name that got rediscovered to me. I never batted an eye at that name appearing in Pratchett book, though he does use anachronism to great effect anyway.
I think for me it’s that I always think of the glass. Tiffany glass was made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and because it’s *so* well known, I always assume that the name is there because of the glass, like people were naming their daughters after something valuable and beautiful. Not much different from “Ruby” as a name, really. I know that the glass was in turn named after the creator’s *last* name, so it didn’t originate there, but still, the glass is the first thing I think of.
It's all somewhat subjective.
Real life history is absolutely overflowing with weird nonsense and silly-sounding words and names. So in the interest of being true-to-life, my worldbuilding is too- for a world that is harsh, and littered with dystopian elements. To me, a setting lacking any of this feels inherently contrived and artificial- not like an actual, lived-in world. The funny, absurd or crazy-bs nature of a subset of the phonetics, names, rumors, current events, myths & legends etc. does nothing to decrease the threat-level of the ongoing conflicts in the story, and I think I make that clear enough in the first 2 or 3 chapters. I hope that has the effect of encouraging readers to just roll with it, taking the world we find it, as we often must do irl
Sounds like you've got a method that works for you!
Another aspect of the problem to consider is that what comes off as "fantastical" or "mysterious" to one cultural can simultaneously be "out of place" or "inmersion-breaking" to another.
In the Japanese release of Final Fantasy 6, one of the key protagonists was named "Tina". That name was picked to make her feel mysterious, foreign, and out of place. But when they wanted to port the game to English audiences, that name wouldn't do. It was counterproductive since Tina was just a commonplace name. So her name was changed to "Terra" in the English translation. That was not only unusual and mysterious as a name, but double-dipped in mystery by allegorically connecting her to a name associated with the Earth, itself.
Nice example
I think an extension of this is that certain names sound like they belong to people of a certain chronological age too.
Very true.
Hiya WA, I was just going to thank you for teaching me something I didn't know, but you ended it on that jewels / witches set of books, darn it's been so long! Thanks so much for that reminder as well!
I mean, I usually just go with the " f*ck it, not an actual problem" solution. Though, I usually do write stories with either a slightly comedic tone or that deal with themes like " not everything is what it seems"; which makes the use of the Tiffany problem as a literary device fairly easy. Exemple:
Imagine the following, a medieval fantasy story in which most of the plot is centred, let's say, around uncovering a royal conspiracy covered up by corruption and propaganda; the main characters will need to do research and discover that the things that they thought they knew about the kingdom,and treated as indisputable facts, were actually lies, made up by the conspirators; the main character of this story will be named " Tiffany Chad ".
Some readers may be put off by it, but the most curious ones will search on the Internet, the name "Tiffany," and discover that ,despite what they originally thought, it was, in fact , an historically accurate name, that what they thought they knew was, not how things actually were ; this not only makes for excellent trolling, but also strengthens the themes of the story.
Comedy covers a lot.
This happened when they were filming gladiator IIRC. Apparently Gladiators doing brand sponsorships, while incredibly common in history, sounded to anachronistic to Ridley Scott et al to include in the film.
They were the NASCAR drivers of their day!
Ok, yeah, I’m definitely using the vending machines. Especially in a magical setting, that could be a lot of fun
Yay!
The perceived "out-of-place" nature of a name or other similar connotations will also vary from country to country and region to region. Names like Thaddeus or Hedwig sound awfully old-fashioned and rare in contemporary English, or most European languages, but they're considered well-worn traditional names in Poland (Tadeusz, Jadwiga), to the point of clichéd.
Globalisation is another consideration, for sure.
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
I have a character in my upcoming book named Jasen. It's meant to be based on the Slavic word for ash tree. My husband worried if it's too close to Jason, and according to him, "Jason sounds too modern." I stared at him for a moment before replying, "Jason and the Argonauts." That was all the argument I needed to prove to him that it's definitely NOT a modern name, although it was very popular when we were growing up.
This is one of my biggest problems with the show "Evil" already incredibly campy, with a seemingly halloween concept of what's "scary" it's populated by evil characters with names such as Leland, and if Leland doesn't sound so bad, bear in mind that the first seemingly supernatural occurance in the show is the main character being antagonized by a demon... named George.
Ooo, I haven't checked that show out! Is it worth it?
@@WorldAnvil Not to me
It consistently has between 90-100% on Rotten Tomatoes for whatever that's worth.
I'd recommend Black Sails. Doesn't have anything supernatural or fantastical in it, like Evil does, it's just about pirates, but it's pretty much the only show I've watched that I would not only consider underrated, but criminally underrated.
Here's another good one. One of the most famous Roman emperors of the Byzantine period was probably Justinian I, who presided from 527 to 565. He is far, far more famous than his immediate predecessor, although I've heard it argued that his predecessor was a better emperor than "Justinian the Great" himself.
Justinian's predecessor was his uncle Justin. Specifically, Justin I, who ruled from 518 to 527. I've always wondered if his name had something to do with his being not nearly as famous now.
😯😯😯
"Justinian the Great? Can't be that great if I never heard of you. Who was ruler before you?"
"My uncle, Justin."
"What's his title, then? Justin the Not So Insecure As My Nephew?"
@@danielmclellan1522 You're not too far off. They call him "Justin the Thracian" because his name was Thracian, and he was from Illyricum (which included Thrace).
What are your FAVOURITE examples of the Tiffany Problem? 💗
John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (16 September 1906 - 8 March 1996) was a British Army officer. Nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", he fought in the Second World War with a longbow, a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword, and a set of bagpipes.
I don't regard the following as examples of the Tiffany Problem anymore, but not that long ago I did:
Naptha [ c. 2nd century BC ]
Spectacles/Eyeglasses [ c. 1270~1300 AD/CE
Safety Pins [ c. 10th century BC ]
One problem that comes up is translating words from a different culture. For example, in ancient China, there were official "Police Detectives" who investigated crimes. But because a dedicated police forces came later on in Europe, those titles (Commissioner, Inspector, Detective) sound very "modern".
Similarly, Latin political terms like Senate, Republic, Federation, Assembly, Representative, Lobby, Client, Sponsor etc. sound very "modern" due to modern-day American influence - when in reality, they were used in ancient Rome, and continued some usage in medieval Europe.
We usually think of the name "Jenny" as a nickname for Jennifer, a name that famously was relatively obscure until exploding in popularity during the 20th century. However, if you look at names from centuries earlier, you'll find quite a few Jenny and Jennie in records, but basically no Jennifer. That's because Jenny was originally a diminutive for Jane, not Jennifer.
I perform at Renaissance Festivals and one Tiffany problem that comes to mind involves facial hair styles; having a mustache with a clean-shaven beard was definitely worn by men in the Renaissance but it looks so modern that it's typically not done.
It feels very odd to modern folks, true.
The Blues faction in Rome (the chariot equivalent of a NASCAR/Football fan club) had a hairstyle distinct to them, that's basically a mullet.
_".... 'Problem'? I see no 'Problem'?"_
Tiffany Tempus Saltáré [[ Temporal Marauder extraordinaire... ]]
I LOVE THIS!
Fascinating video thank you, I've always found names can make or break game immersion so easily, and your observations and advice will be very useful. And after DM-ing (sorry .. GM-ing) for 40+ years it always good to learn something new!
I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
Trying to avoid Tiffany problem can cause another problem when names are so over fantasised that it starts to sound like "random fantasy name generator".
Valid
I love how anything can be a name. For example FF VII's Red 13. After a bit, it feels perfectly normal
One of my favorite fantasy names, "Miss Anne Thrope"
🤣🤣🤣 Or "Helena Anne Basquet"
The place name, Burton Lazers, is actually Burton Lazars (01:45) which is still a weird place name. I happened to be driving through it last weekend and had to stop ask where the name came from. Apparently it had something to do with a leper colony that was once on the sight.
😬
I wonder if that explains the use of the word Lazarette for a strorage area at the stern of a yacht.
@@thirstyguy4652 The original use of that storage area was for somewhere to put the bodies of rich folk who had died at sea. Poor folk were just thrown overboard. It's origins are from the name Lazarus who dies (and got brought back from the dead).
Through the mists emerges our protagonist.
Bob.
Bob always will be a hiarious name. There's a whole Rowan Atkinson sketch about it, I think
Short for Bobert.
All hail Bob!
Jedi Bob
(OG Lego fans will understand)
@@WorldAnvil I can think of two Bobs related to Rowan Atkinson, and they're both in Blackadder - one in Blackadder the Second (where he hires 'Kate' the manservant, and when he points out that 'that's a girl's name' she claims it's 'Short for "Bob"') and the other time in Blackadder Goes Forth, when General Melchett's driver, also called Bob, also played by Gabrielle Glaister, also pretends to be a man.
It's not a case of anachronism or out of place naming as such, more of a Twelfth Night gender disguise plot, at least in the first example.
(Time to re-watch some Blackadder, see if it has stood the test of time. Some of it probably has.)
My favourite example is good king Bob with his best friend Ed, and Ed's sons Robbie and John.
Or, phrased differently, Robert Baratheon, seventeenth ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, and Eddard Stark with his sons Robb and Jon
Does sound a little Brady Bunch in that first sentence.
Don't forget little Ricky/Rickon
Does this work in reverse too? Dune takes place 20,000 years in the future, after the rise and fall of technology, after humans became so separated by interstellar travel that unique cultures and ethnicities sprang up on many dozens of worlds. Languages would have obviously changed as well and the legendary main character of the whole story has the equally legendary name of... Paul.
Someone else mentioned Dune too, and it's a really interesting question! I guess it depends on your meta, and how much you want YOUR world to be connected to OUR world. Jean Luc Picard works in star trek, as does Captian Janeway, because they have earth heritage. If you want your setting to feel non-earth, then you definitely need non-earth like names!
@@WorldAnvil Not necessarily. Remember that in Dune, while they have some of the details wrong (in some part because they are seeing it through the lens of their own sociopolitical structure), they do know of events and the names of people involved that far. It wouldn't be that bizarre for names to last a very long time in that context. Just to use one example off the top of my head, there are still people called "David" and "Saul" even though those names, if the Biblical characters really existed, are at least 3000 years old and don't seem particularly odd to us. "Helen" is 4000 years old. Some of the names attested to in the oldest known written Chinese on oracle bones dating back 3500 years or so are still in common use today. We still commonly use Alexander, Marcus, Julia, Julius, don't blink twice at someone named Lucius. The prophet Samuel's mother was named Hannah. Then there's Sarah and Rebecca, Eli, Samson, etc and so on, which are at least 2500 years old.
For a more futuristic version, what I'd expect to see is more of what's happening now, where a name shows there's been a historical mixing of cultures so what a person is named doesn't necessarily tell you anything about them in either appearance of background. For instance, NASA astronaut Franklin Ramón Chang-Díaz. There's an Inuit woman I know named Siobhan Arnatsiaq-Murphy. And in this, Dune actually hits it. Paul's father is named Leto. Jessica's mother was named Tanidia. Vladimir Harkonnen's brother was Abulurd.
@@keith6706 Huh, I could have sworn that David was a translated name, like Paul the Apostle is Saul in Hebrew.
@@oz_jones Saul is still in use (ie "Just Call Saul") so the whole Paul/Saul thing is irrelevant to the point. "David" in Biblical Hebrew is pronounced [daːˈwiːd] "daw-weed". The letter vav can be pronounced as a /v/, /w/, /o/, or /u/ depending on context, and has changed over time, thus why David changed from [daːˈwiːd] (Dahh-weed) to the modern Hebrew [da: 'vid] (Dah-veed). The change to English [ˈdeɪvɪd] (Day-vid) is simply a difference in pronunciation of phonemes, not a translation.
Didn't know one of the only sponsors I've ever trusted had a TH-cam channel.
I don't know if this is related but the first recorded man of African descent to live in England was named Reasonable Blackman. He was a tailor who worked with many theater groups and was knowing for offering well made costumes at affordable prices, hence his name.
He is my favourite Funny Historical Name.
😲
I'm going to be thinking about this man a lot.
"The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" has lots of non-European-sounding names, often based on Sanskrit, but also has Kevin and Trevor.
I recently named a D&D dwarven character "Khevin", for a laugh.
Khevahn, if you really wanted to get fancy.
I would think steampunky worlds might be a good compromise for Tiffany-type techno anachronisms.
Yeah, that could totally work! Also tiffany-techno is a new genre I need to see in the world!
Phuket is one of the southern provinces of Thailand. It consists of the island of Phuket, the country's largest island, and another 32 smaller islands off its coast. Phuket lies off the west coast of mainland Thailand in the Andaman Sea. Phuket is an ancient name, as well as one you can't say out loud on TH-cam without getting demonetized. And if you name a town or island in your setting after it, there is a large chance that your players will make jokes like "You can take this island and Phuket!" constantly.
Homophones are a whole other issue.
I'm writing a somewhat-tongue-in-cheek science fiction novel where several of the incredibly powerful sapient AI starships have ridiculous or commonplace names for themselves.
OMG I love this idea. Examples, PLEASE!
@@WorldAnvil A 20-mile-diameter alien dreadnought who can slag a world decided that it (he) liked the name Pootle. (evokes "poodle")
The 30-mile diameter, galaxy-traveling super-dreadnought/exploration ship the New Beginning (so-named by its flesh-and-blood alien exile co-captain) has decided that for official purposes (and communing with the robot co-captain ZED-42955), it prefers to go by the name Ferd. (evokes "Fred")
I really like what Iain M. Banks did with The Culture and their ship names. "Lack of Gravitas", "So Much for Subtlety", "Fine 'Till You Came Along", "Lapsed Pacifist", "Inappropriate Response", "Determinist", "Gunboat Diplomacy", etc.
@@crowe6961 Yeah, I'm specifically parodying them as a shout out.
@@WorldAnvil So, thoughts on that?
It is worth noting for the name Tiffany specifically, that originally it was a nickname for another, much more medieval name: Theophania.
Fair point
Very Inspiring! Thank you for sharing this!
You're so very welcome!
"Tiffany is a Medieval name"
CGP Gray having a mental breakdown about Medieval Tiffanys.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Speaking of players finding names amusing; I had a group who had to face a monstrous foe, who was supposed to be a real threat. However, once they realized his title was The Gate Tender, they could not stop laughing.
It was so amusing, once they defeated him, they wanted to resurrect him to keep the joke going!
Lean into the ridiculousness!
Can someone explain this to non native speakers?
As a guy I'm jealous of Jen's earrings. They would look odd on me, but on Janet they look great and act as a more subtle nod to who she is. They wouldn't feel out of place with a nicer outing-outfit despite being nerd gear which is rare among nerd accessories.
Don't forget the most glaring omission from real naming conventions.
Every second person in your village is named Tom. The only reason for that is that the other half are women and they are all named Rebecca.
Stranger than fiction.
Y'know, now I want a sitcom called "The Tiffany Problem" and it's a medieval sitcom that is just full of this stuff, like Tiffany meeting with a guard Brad Pitt (with whom he has one form or another of relationship that people think is a modern thing and not something medieval young people did), and he tells her about the time he spent on Bacon End after leaving Burton Lazers. And that the whole show is in fact accurate for the time, just constantly shoveling as many anachronistic elements as it can together.
I feel like Monthy Python either did something like this, or should have.
10/10 would watch
Personally, I probably wouldn't think too much of modern sounding names in medieval fantasy. There's wizards and dragons, why can't there be modern names too? Granted, I could be just too used to Star Wars where you have characters like Lando and Obi Wan next to characters just named Luke.
It's the mix and match solution!
As soon as I saw the video title, I immediately thought of Tiffany Aching. 😁Heck, my current wild magic sorcerer is 100% Pratchett inspired. I named him Ponder Ridcully, after Ponder Stibbons and Munstrum Ridcully. In his backstory, he's the bastard son of Arch Chancellor Ridcully and Granny Weatherwax, albeit I slightly changed their names to Mortimer Ridcully and Emma Weathertop (yes, I had to throw in a Lord of the Rings reference).
Wild magic is an inherently Pratchettian concept. Is that a word? If not it should be.
GNU Sir Terry.
Those names sound awesome.
Tiffany Aching, my first association with the name Tiffany. Not Breakfast at Tiffany's or something like that. 🙂
BEST tiffany :D I've been reading pratchett since childhood and I think I need to go back to it!
@@WorldAnvil I have nearly every book he ever wrote including The Long Earth series and the Nomes trilogy. I'm rereading Discworld books at the moment (though not in order).
@@TimvanderLeeuw I just restarted TLE! I dislike how so much of the beginning is basically just worldbuilding. Probably should have been a set of short stories.
You would not believe the shock when I first heard the name of the 2000+ year old leader of the Argonauts