Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Words have meaning, but names have power.

I understand that this is something is unlikely to change and I am fully aware that this is an opinion that´s way over in the realms of personal tastes, but honestly, I have to get this out of my chest: I´m talking about the names of the characters in the game.

Right now we met Shadowheart the trickery dark cleric of shar, Wyll the warlock, Gale the wizard, Astherion the vampire spawn, Lae´zel the gith battlemaster and of course Raphael the cambion.

So... What the heck, Larian? No, really, What in holy blue blazes?

I´m not even going to go deep into "Shadowheart" because every time I read the name out loud weird images of a crossover between D&D and My little pony comes to mind.

Usually they advise you to avoid names in modern fantasy that describe the personality of the character (because it sounds artificial to call a pyromancer "Cinder" or your BBEG "Bloodrain" or "Slithertongue" unless they´re made-up names).
So, we have Shadowheart, the dark cleric of Shar, goddess of shadows; and Gale, the wizard that casts gust and misty step. I suppose we will also met later Mortis the necromancer, Bandaid the healer, Pyro the fire mage, Elsa the frost mage, and Spicy the Maztican foodcart chef.

I also expect the main adversary of the game will be called Tyrannius McEvilpants the grannybeater or an ilithid named Trepanatorius Burrhead, just to be sure you get he´s going to be the BigBadEvilGuy.



It´s also a consensus for most fantasy writing guides that you may consider avoid names that belong to another iconic characters or pop figures from the real world, common names but changing one letter or two, names difficult to pronounce, names based in mythology from another world (or the real world) or names with apostrophes in the middle.
So.. for the holy udders of the most sacred cow, are you really going with Shadowheart, Wyll, Astherion, Lae`zel, Raphael and Gale the mage? Seems they´re going for a straight bingo. Really Larian, reaaaally?

Let´s take a moment to talk about "Raphael" the cambion. A name that it´s not only the name of a famous Christian mithological figure of the real world (an Archangel) and a famous artist of a world outside D&D but also the name of a Teenage mutant ninja hero turtle.
They´re going for a glorious double-tap with this name.

So... my question is: You´re doing this on purpose, right? riiiiight?


PD: Just to be clear, the tone of this post is jocose, don´t take it too seriously.

The ghost of Charles Dickens laughs at your fantasy writing guides. He’s noted for naming characters to fit their personality, and he’s considered one of literature’s greats.

https://writingcooperative.com/to-m...mes-from-the-master-dickens-3a417ab8b721

If you want a fantasy example, look no further than Merry and Pippin.

Does Gale specialize in air magic anyway? You only mention a couple of spells out of many. Without a clear tendency for air magic, Gale is just a name.

I see no reason not to have some names sounding like or even the same as real world names. It’s not exactly uncommon. It would only seem weird if it was overdone.

Avoiding iconic character names from other universes, methodology or the real world is obviously best avoided. But Raphael the painter isn’t recognizable as a character, only a name (and possibly a face from a self portrait), and the angel barely plays a bit part in the Bible. It’s not like putting a Han Solo or Moses in the story.

These guides are probably just to give novice writers some things to think about. They aren’t really any rules to this.

Basically this is all a bit of a stretch, with the exception of Shadowheart, and I strongly suspect that’s not her real name anyway. It was probably either given to her by her sect, or she chose it herself because she’s a bit of an edgelord. It’s just a shame there didn’t seem to be an option to laugh at her when she introduces herself.

Well, those are classic authors, with incredible ouvres, but not because they named their characters that way. They made incredible books even if they did it like that.
Correlation does not imply causation. They have intemporal ouvres even if they still have some particularities from the style of writing of that particular era that are not used in modern times. And not all people are Dickens or García Marquez so it´s better if you do not try to do the same as them because maybe you´re not genius enough to get away with it.
I follow some guides about modern writing made by people that know a lot more than me.

In the golden age of US comics it was usual to find names like "Lois lane" "Lana lang" "Lex luthor" " but that is something that is simply not done in modern graphic novels because it sounds silly and unprofessional and there are high chances your works would not be published that way(unless you are into comedy). Writing evolves.

Do you remember the episode of "The big bang theory" where Raj makes fun about the names of Stan Lee´s characters because they have the same first letter?

"Raj: Bruce Banner, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Steven Strange, Otto Octavius, Silver Surfer, Peter Parker, J. Jonah Jameson Junior, Dum Dum Dugan, Green Goblin, Matt Murdock, Pepper Potts, Victor Von Doom, Millie the Model, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Invincible Iron Man, Happy Hogan, Curt Connors and Fin Fang Foom"

It´s fun because that way of naming characters sounds weird in 2020. If you want your work to age well it´s advisable that you do not include a trend in your works that maybe would be out-of-fashion soon.



Anyway, as I said before it was just my preference on names, I do not meant to have the ultimate answer and preach that my opinion is above the tastes of the others.
but I still think Raphael is a teenage mutant hero turtle name and Shadowheart a little pony, ha ha ha.

I’m pretty sure Shadowheart isn’t her real name. Also, as an adult man, I’ve never seen My Little Pony, so that association isn’t an issue. XD

An adult man without kids, I assume. (if not, shame on you man )

Because I already watched the 7 seasons of "Dog Patrol" and "Miraculous Ladybug" & "Litlle pony: friendship is magic" at least twice.

Sure. Tolkien was generally great at naming things, being able to capitalize on association, without being too obvious.

As someone who is horrible at naming things, I don't really have a useful advice, except... yeah, I am with OP.

You are a brony, admit it.

A brony and a lot of things more that I will not share in public EVER since my tojinos were born, but that´s the way things are...

I was half joking about Dickens. Some character names were pretty good, but I could have also pointed out some downright silly ones. Such as these:

https://londonist.com/2016/04/odd-dickens-names

But none of the names we know so far stand out as being particularly odd or wrong to me. Except for Shadowheart, which stands out so much I think there must be a reason for it. Surely Larian didn’t think that was just a good solid name for a character?

I wonder if you’d think Wyll was out of place if you hadn’t read a guide saying not to name people things like Wyll?

Well, I´m not into names like "I´m Staci with an i" and stuff like that but maybe you´re right. I keep imagining the guy introducing himself
"Hi, I´m Wyll with an Y, and I´m very into warlocking and stuff. OMG, is that a holly molly tadpole in my eye?. That´s sooo last world-breaking crisis"

Maybe when I actually hear the guy the mental image will dissapear.

And yeah, I assume Shadowheart is a made-up name. At least I hope it is.

Haha!

Now I kind of want him to be like that.

I think we should take a step back and appreciate Larian. They could have made a father and son with the names Tywin and Tyrion. Imagine trying to keep those names straight, lol. Seriously though, I think it is good that the names are rather distinct. But I don't think there is a huge issue with Gale, as I believe he is a plain wizard and not a themed wizard. Maybe its just me, but I think Will is a good, fantasy name, like Sam. His parents are celebrities so they had to do something weird with it.

XD

No kids, yet, but in undergrad I worked as an assistant preschool teacher (figured it would be good to get some fatherhood training), and as a result I know way more about PAW Patrol than I really should.

Great discussion, Vic. I am with y'all that this will hopefully become a non-issue when we get a broader view of the BG3 take on Faerun.

As a father of two girls, totally get the MLP refs

Believe me you´ve never know enough of Paw patrol (is it PAW patrol in English? Makes sense, I suppose).

Opinion based of course, so there are no right answers, however I disagree with the idea that "names with apostrophes in the middle" are wrong. I know this is a rather widely debated subject, but there are many potential reasons for having an apostrophe in a name.

Most often in fantasy naming conventions this is used to set a break between syllables, showing where emphasis is placed. This is most similar to real world language examples typically used for transliteration, such as is commonly seen in Arabic or Japanese.

There are a few other potential reasons for this though, it can be used to show elision for unstressed vowels. This is commonly seen in Spanish and French, but can also be found in English (though we don't typically use the apostrophe to show this, it tends to come down to spoken accent and isn't really reflected in written speech here).

Another potential use for the apostrophe is for diacritic marks, such as indicating a glottal stop being used, which could also change the sound of the name.

In the case of Lae'zel it doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose, as the syllables seem to be fairly demarcated, however they still show emphasis in case anyone is uncertain, which is about the best we can expect until everyone (myself included) fully adopts IPA into their lives.

Uh, you´ve made your case, but I have to point out one thing:
I´m a spanish speaker, and there´s no apostrophe in modern Spanish. The sign you refer of is called "tílde" and it´s similar to it but it´s different to the "Apóstrofo" (what English speakers call apostrophe). it´s a common mistake. The "tilde" does not exist in English, the same as the "ñ" or the "ç". The closed translation I have for "tilde" it´s "accent mark"

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde - ¡Hola, señor Colón!

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrofo - ¡Hola, señor D`arcy!


The apóstrofo separes words or letters, the tilde is above the letter in the same word and it´s used for other things. There are different types. Several languages spoken in Spain and South-America like Catalá, Galego-português, Valenciá or Bable uses apostrophes, but modern Spanish does not use it anymore besides some arcaic uses.

I speak like two words of Spanish, so my information on the usage of apostrophe in regards to elision in Spanish could very well be mistaken, I just like learning about languages. However I'm not referring to the tilde above a letter.

Did some more investigating and it does appear to be antiquated now, so thanks! Always happy to learn something new. When reading back up on elision I had seen that there are use cases, for example, wherein "para" would be reduced to "pa" and is often written as Pa' to signal the deletion of "ra".

Elision

Looked more and found a reddit thread talking about elision where someone responded "Nowadays you only see it to represent the pronunciation of certain dialects: "p'allá", "pa' ti", etc."

Feel free to let me know if that's wrong as well though.

Still to my original point though, whether actively used or not there are potentially valid reasons to include an apostrophe in a name, in the specific case of Lae'zel to keep people calling her 'Lie-zel" instead of "Liez-ell", a small change to be sure but at least adds some consistency to how people say her name. Aesthetically it doesn't bother me either, though that's not really that important.

This is what a tilde is used for in spanish, not the apostrophe

Yeah, it´s true. It´s an arcaic use that in modern Spanish is used only in very informal conversations and hardly seen in written Spanish =)
"P`allá" it´s the shortened word for "to there" but also a slang for "crazy" XD

I mean, you hear some people saying "wassup" "Sup, bro" or "Yo!, dawg"... but you seldom see that in written English outside memes and chats.