New story

I'm finally working on a new story.

Yes, it's a story. A fantasy. A long spinning tale that uses an entire book to make a few interesting points.

And yes, the grammar will suck until I get Brian to look over it. Hah!

So I ask you: do names in a fantasy book have to be weird? If you've ever heard of one of the names in a fantasy book (ie Amos, Tomas, or Pug from Riftwar, or Barak from Belgariad) does that diminish the experience for you?

Fantasy people are supposed to be speaking in languages we've never before conceived and yet we can come up with word play and jokes and oh-have-mercy PUNS that work in our language and never could in theirs and yet... we suspend skepticism of such things because we like it when fantasy characters speak English. We can't exactly use subtitles through the whole book, can we? It'd get tedious.

So, tell me in a comment. I want to know if you like names that are strange yet eerily familiar (Calin, Macros, Borric, Rincewind etc), the totaly bizaare (Gandalf, Bilbo, Xanthura, Zanados, etc) or the nice and mundane?

It seems to me that a weird name is the one concession that fantasy authors make concerning the not-so-obvious language barrier. Odd beasts, fantastic realms of demons, armor that is logistically hopeless, and "why do they say that the door is a jar? That's just absurd!" In another language the nuance would be completely lost but I'm sure it'd still get a groan just because the guy with that line will most certainly have had one like it before.

If we go with eerily familiar, I may just name someone Pickle. After all, parents sometimes name their kids after virtues, and in fantasy books we often find agrarian societies where the preservation of food is the greatest virtue of survival.

Once again,  it's too late and my brain is still half in fantasy land. Good night!