The supply of true overlap names with distinct Indian and western senses is sharply limited and mostly female: Maya, Leela…
And most names are not easily anglicized. Siddharth can become Sid. I knew a Shanmuganathan who turned into a Nathan. But most names won’t adapt easily.
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If you have an ear for Indian languages you can pick out the made-up names easily. It’s the mix of too-easy pronounceability when spelled in English and a certain lack of auditory heft. A fragility that you know is not backed by long-term historical survival.
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An interesting reverse aspect is that many Christian communities in India have the reverse practice of a Hindu first name with Western-Christian middle and last names, or Christian first and Hindu last name.
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Typically:
Full Christian Portuguese name = usually Goan
Hindu first/Christian last = usu Kerala, old pre-colonial Christians… mix of Roman Catholic, Syrian etc.
Christian first/Indian last = relatively recent, likely converted through Jesuit outreach during British era.
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One reason I’m very interested in naming is that I find naming characters for fiction very hard. Since names *are* compressed historical baggage, you can’t just make up words. If you succeed you get a vaguely lightweight effect. If you fail, your sources get too transparent.
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If you’re writing realistic fiction it’s fine, since your character will have a realistic backstory and baggage from real history. But with science fiction, you either get weighed down by baggage that doesn’t fit the story OR names that lack heft. What you want is faked baggage.
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I notice 4 strategies:
1. Half-assery— Asimov’s names are just lazy western morphs: Harry — Hari, Daniel — Daneel, Doris — Dors.
2. Owning it — Dune. The Fremen are transparently middle-eastern
3. Incorporate into plot: Dark Materials
4. Nerd-out: LOTR
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The Dark Materials strategy is the most imaginative. Obvious gypsies are called gyptians, reflecting an (incorrect) in-world origin-theory tracing them to Egypt. This turns to be be a meaningful plot element via parallel universe shennanigans.
But this limits plots.
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Argentinian freemium names 🤣
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In Argentina back in the day one usually had to sue (pay) to have a foreign first name, ergo Edgardo. No such restriction now, so you too can have "Jhon" (I don't get it. Jhonatan, Braian, etc). twitter.com/vgr/status/141…
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Basically a real name is an entire set of built worlds. It strongly constrains almost ever other bit of cultural furniture you might use in a story. A set of character names = world is in the intersection of the individual name-worlds. If you pick randomly, this may end up null
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Hypothesis: naming is a narrative complete problem. A good naming strategy will finish more of the story than structural scaffoldings like Campbell’s hero’s journey. If you know all the proper nouns that appear in your story, you know your story.
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Thank you for this. I write contemporary realistic fiction for kids, and I always run all my Indian names by multiple friends from different regions and religious backgrounds for many of the above reasons. But you've provided loads of context they could not have unpacked for me.
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The range is roughly similar to Western Europe so if you keep that in mind you won’t go wrong. A random sample of 10 euro or Indian names will have roughly equal diversity range.
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Unnecessarily blamey closing to an otherwise great article. "The posh Indian demographic, however, doesn’t do this. They seem happy to change their nomenclature itself." Indo-European languages being the fabric for these names, easier to europeanize them than other shenanigans.




