We can see Crowley’s, though a little wider, snake pupils here. He was comfortable enough to have his portrait taken by Leonardo like this. Actually, I’d bet that it was Leonardo himself who made these glasses for him.
Why is that?
It’s because Crowley and Leonardo were friends! Crowley has a sketch of Mona Lisa in his appartment:
and from the bts detailed picture:
we know that the inscription is:
Al mio amico Antonio dal tuo amico Leo da V. meaningTo my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V.
So we know Crowley and Leonardo were friends :). (also there is a short deleted scene with them in some versions of the Good Omens Script Book)
Crowley’s is the apple, the forbidden fruit, his reminder of the Garden of Eden, where he tempted Eve. You can also check a long article about the symbolism of an apple here. :)
Aziraphale’s is a scroll: Symbol of life and time. Both ends rolled up indicates a life that is unfolding like a scroll of uncertain length and the past and future hidden. Often held by a hand representing life being recorded by angels. Can also suggest honour and commemoration. (x) and An emblem of wisdom and an early emblem of the Apostles.(x) I believe there is a multiple meaning, while it is an object often held by angels with meanings such an honour or wisdom, it’s also personal object for Aziraphale, of his love for knowledge and books (which are the human invention, so perhaps even the humanity itself).
Ombra e Luce:
When you put the two portraits together, you find out that they are actually one large picture!
And what is the one object that is the in both portraits, that is connecting them and that they are both touching?
It’s a book:
The book’s name is OMBRA E LUCE, italian for: SHADOW AND LIGHT. Symbols for Crowley and Aziraphale.
The background of Crowley’s potrait
The background of the demon’s potrait is the same as Mona Lisa’s!
@tsilvyreply: It might be redundant, but I’d like to point out that Leonardo da Vinci made an art of combining shadow and light, ‘ombra e luce’, in his chiaroscuro and sfumato techniques, which became a trademark of his art, as we can see in the Monna Lisa and many of his other works.
Now maybe I’m a romantic, but I love the idea that Leonardo saw how perfectly Crowley and Aziraphale, shadow and light, fit together, and got inspired by them to try that in his art as well.
@thegoodomensdumpsterreply: I love all of this, but the question I’m asking myself is: were Crowley and Aziraphale independantely in touch with Da Vinci and had their portraits done separately, and Leonardo, this old jokster, had totally connected the dots between them and joined their portraits on purpose… or did they go ask Da Vinci together for a double portrait ?
@poetic—-nonsensereply: Honestly, my headcanon for this is perhaps a little out there: just from looking at these pictures, I tend to think da Vinci never met Aziraphale, or at least hadn’t by this time.
Crowley’s portrait looks pretty much spot-on, with a look I can entirely believe he would’ve been sporting around that time. When we look close-up, the details and shadows of his face, his expression, and, yes, his eyes, are really finely detailed and accurate, in a really instantly recognizable way.
By contrast, Aziraphale’s picture (to me at least) looks really… unsettlingly off. When put up with the other one, yeah, I can see that’s Aziraphale, the hair and clothes and general demeanor are distinctive, but it’s definitely nowhere near as natural-looking as Crowley’s portrait. Look at it: the neck is too long, the face too narrow and elongated, the expression is plastic, the body proportions are off, the hairline’s in the wrong place, and the facial features (eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth) seem to float, heavily drawn and shaded, on a face otherwise devoid of detail and line and all those five zillion little creases and shapes on Michael Sheen’s face that have enraptured all of us.
(I mean, I imagine Michael’s reeeeeeeally difficult to draw properly, but this is da Vinci we’re talking about. And portraiture was kind of his thing. I imagine if he’d actually had Aziraphale in front of him, he’d have positively attacked it.)
It’s almost like da Vinci was working off a description Crowley had given him, of someone he had never seen.
Especially since loads of the people who met da Vinci mentioned that he was really good at memorizing faces – I think it was Vasari that said he used to go out and wander around the city, and then come home and sketch all the interesting-looking people he’d seen, with almost disturbing accuracy.
So, yeah, by my reckoning either Crowley commissioned a lover’s diptych to stare at longingly (and cry over), or da Vinci decided to make it as a present to Crowley, confident that he could sketch a pretty good approximation of this Aziraphale fellow after all the time his good friend Antonio had spent talking about him. And Crowley no doubt had a bit of a Moment upon reciept of it.
(There’s a really good post I saw ages ago when I was lurking about how this was a very specific style of portraiture that saw its day for a few decades as a popular way to paint lovers; I’ll see if I can find it again!)
Probably unnecessary EDIT: For reference, I submit this picture that I just pulled off a Google search, where Aziraphale’s at mostly the same angle (and also I just like his expression).
Aziraphale’s was done from imagination, after Crowley spent FIVE DAYS describing him in intense detail that NO ONE ASKED FOR.
(Or, yeah, I can actually just imagine excited Crowley telling Aziraphale he can introduce him to just the cleverest most interesting human JUST YOU WAIT ANGEL and then maybe asked Leonardo to do it from memory afterwards?)
Either way, Aziraphale has no idea this double portrait exists.
@noglingreply: Personally, my favorite part of this bit of artwork is that Leonardo’s Aziraphale looks a bit like Sir Terry, and his Crowley looks a bit like Neil Gaiman.
@marisferasiopcomment: These portraits were very popular among the wealthy I Da V’s time because one partner could have the other’s portrait in their rooms/home/etc but when they got together they could hang them side-by-side and have a full couple’s portrait already done. So either Da V did this as a little joke and gave them both to Crowley (my personal HC is that Antony was his “little devil” lover we can read about in his journals) or that they did it on purpose because it was a dad and Only Crowley knew WHY it was a fad and he desperately wanted that little bit of visible proof of their friendship/relationship which could be e easily hidden if need be
@somecleverreferencereply: I like to think it’s a double portrait and they cut it in half after the fact out of embarrassment and fear of their bosses finding out that they’d been doing portrait sittings together. They both moped about it for ages afterward.
I have never noticed how Aziraphale’s instinctive reaction to being called Crowley’s friend is to smile at him:
This is the moment right before Aziraphale remembers that they’re not supposed to be seen together and starts explaining that they have never met before. So, even in Shakespearean times he already considered Crowley to be his friend. Which makes the bandstand scene and the “We’re not friends” even more ridiculous. This angel is so good at lying to himself.
Also, as I’ve already said somewhere, Crowley then proceeds with the famous Age does not wither nor custom stale his infinite variety. By saying this, he’s playing on Aziraphale’s ridiculous excuses about having never met before and not knowing each other. Basically Crowley is emphasizing the fact that, firstly, they are friends indeed and, secondly, that each of their meeting is like discovering each other anew.
In other words, he says Yes, Aziraphale, one could really say that we’ve never met before because your infinite variety makes each of our meetings feel like the first one.
Also I just realized the other day… This sentence that Will plagiarizes ends up in Antony and Cleopatra. Like I knew that before, because @drawlight pointed it out, but I suddenly made the connection “Oh, so Anthony wasn’t a random choice for a first name then, huh.” Like wow. Naming yourself after the titular character in a play that didn’t exist yet but you contributed to on one of your dates. How sentimental!!! (Especially when you consider the terms on which they parted… Happier memories… I wonder if the name is a sort of apology/olive branch. ‘let’s start over/dial it back, remember the good times?’)
God I just can’t stop thinking about this now!! Crowley, waking up after his extended nap. Getting back in the saddle, maybe still spending a few years apart from Aziraphale depending on when you think exactly he woke up. Suddenly he’s busy and he needs a name…. And maybe enough time has finally passed that he regrets the argument they had. He knows why they can’t come to terms, and he won’t ask for it again, but he misses his angel. So what better way to signal to him, “If you hear about me, please, I’m ready to talk. I’m ready to make up. Please, I’m going to build up a reputation until you can’t ignore me. I want to meet you again and discover how you changed in my absence” than to pick the name Anthony???
“Remember when I said that about you? When I talked about meetings and knowing? I’m ready for that again.”
Except. He went by some version of Tony with Da Vinci didn’t he?
…… That I think is true (I think it was Antonio maybe??? Idk if that’s a book reference or something they added for one of the special editions), but consider… Anthony and Cleopatra did exist. And their romance was defined, as much as one can glean any truth about such mythologized figures, as an arrangement becoming something more. Something real. Being on their own side against a great power that ultimately vanquished them.
And I also don’t think that necessarily precludes Crowley advertising himself as Anthony as a means of communicating all these feelings to Aziraphale. (In any case, Aziraphale doesn’t seem to know about the moniker prior to 1941….)
Select additional comments:
@ambular-dcomment: So does that mean when Aziraphale said ‘Anthony??…I’ll get used to it’ at the church, he was implying 'Wait, you’re seriously casting me as Cleopatra?? … all right, well, if that’s really how you feel about it then who am I to contradict’
@a-ginger-in-blackreply: The Roman dude’s name was Antony, not Anthony, though in British English they’re pronounced the same.
In the novel, there’s mention of the Mona Lisa cartoon being dedicated to Antonio, so he was using the name by 1503 at the latest.
@joan-daardvarkreply: This makes me wonder why this alias didn’t come up until 1941. Not to Aziraphale, in any case.
joan-daardvarkreply: Upon further consideration and discussion with @forbiddenmadrigals… What if he’d already taken this alias in Rome? He could have witnessed Antony and Cleopatra’s romance and heard Antony say these same words to her in real life. So he didn’t come up with Age does not wither, but rather repeated it. He thought that this description suited the angel well and then uttered it at a convenient time (at the Globe). All that was left was to nudge Shakespeare to write a play about the events which Crowley had actually seen himself.
Another thing excites me though. The details below confuse me more than actually clarify anything but I think they’re worth mentioning anyway:
Original sin, serpents… May I go completely nuts and suggest that Crowley could, in fact, be Cleopatra? This doesn’t explain why he chose Antony as an alias but still it’s a fun thought. Or maybe he was present at her court? Who knows but it’s curious nevertheless.
Also, knowing my obsession with solar/lunar symbolism (Aziraphale = Sun, Crowley = Moon), I found this so very endearing:
Helios meaning sun and Selene meaning moon, ofc.
@liquidlyriumreply: Yes! I saw that in my frantic wiki reading as well!!! This is all extremely good!!!! (Also if we’re being honest Crowley is not the soldier of the two)
I mean let’s also consider that we know that they view each other far better than they see themselves yes? At the trials, Crowley plays Aziraphale as brave and strong under pressure… Yes he is Cleopatra clearly, but maybe he took that name because of what he sees in Antony (Aziraphale) in the hopes that he’d take on some of those qualities 0:
But he never let on until 1941 I’m still dying at all these Implications
joan-daardvarkreply: …in the hopes that he’d take on some of those qualities
You mean, like, as if they were able to… become each other?? *le gasp*
liquidlyriumreply: but also counterpoint: Crowley adopted the name so that his initials would be AC so that way he could always see them next to each other. Esp when he thought it would never happen because SIDES and all
joan-daardvarkreply(): Knowing his propensity to symbolism, I don’t see why not. We’re talking about a person bringing stone lecterns to his house in memory of his forbidden love, he could absolutely do that.
I am also convinced he sees it as something stylish.
Parents Picking Their Child’s Name: Eh, I like the way it sounds. Sure.
Writers Picking Their Character’s Names: What genre is it? How old are they? Active or passive? Blood type? Country of origin? Is it a family name? What does the name mean? Is it pretentious? Is it not pretentious enough? Can it be used as a metaphor? What position was the planet to the stars at the exact moment of their birth? Is the name gay enough?
Alternatively-
Writer: Looks around room. Spots a can of Lysol on a table.
“The great king Lyson, ruler of the nation of Tablelria…”
Bonus list: robots! Sometimes the names are based on people I know or things I’ve been inspired by. All of these are named in some way after some of the (limited) anime I’ve watched with robots or cool sci-fi premises to them. Some of them are easy, but can you guess where each of them is from?
SLUG-09
APPLESEED-88
EVA-95
WREN-91
CLOWNS-88
MAJOR-95
BUBBLEGUM-81
NUECROSS-82
BEBOP-98
I hope your sci-fi games kick butt and you can used any of these names in the infinite worlds you create! :)
- Mo!
PS: someone reblogged and asked me about Splatoon namecards. I have no idea what you mean (I’ve never played Splatoon before - I don’t have a Switch), I just come up with names that have a good mouth-feel and as often as possible sound like words that people don’t cram together very often. In some cases where the names have the same last name it means they’re related in my story, or me workshopping someone’s name a few times until I get it right (for example, Mojo Thrall).
UPDATE: omg I’m so dumb. The post was tagged with Splatoon Namecards, LOL. It was a mistake - I posted it at 2am and was tired and misclicked. I’ve removed it now. Thanks for pointing it out!
The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.
Somebody’s third eye is WIDE the fuck open??!!!!!!!
okay so there’s actually a reasonbehind this that isn’t just “white people are terrible and really really boring!” it’s to do with Mormon culture. specifically: the fireworks you get when sexist expectations and terrible petty drama collide.
most of Those White People Baby Names are originally Mormonbaby names. they’re chosen (or invented) by women in Utah; they tend to filter out to the rest of the world through things like “mommy blogs” and “baby name books” and “parent forums.”
you know how every culture has a “hey, welcome to the world, lil baby!” ritual? the mormon version of that is called a baby blessing. the baby’s father, and a handful of other men in the family, go up in front of the congregation during a Sunday service and say a special prayer. it begins by reciting the baby’s fullname and then saying “I give you a name and a blessing.” It’s not something you can avoid doing- if you try, people will think that you’re trying to hide something. baby blessings are mandatory, and everyone in the congregation willwatch and judge you.
becauseof this, your baby’s name gets a good bit more of a spotlight in Mormon culture than it does in secular culture, and that’s sayingsomething.
Mormon women start picking out names for their hypothetical future kids in fourth or fifth grade and snipe at each other for picking “weird” or “bad” ones. it’s something that’s supposed to be in the back of your head longbefore you have a kid. and because people willjudge you if you pick a name that’s “too boring” or “too weird”, it is already an intricate dance of finding something that’s “interesting” enough to pass muster but not so “interesting” your kid won’t survive kindergarten.
and that dance becomes even more intricate when Baby Name Drama gets involved.
see, because you’re supposed to put so much time into your baby’s name, a lot of women get… overinvested, let us say. the perfect name they picked for their baby is THEIR baby’s name and NO ONE ELSE’S. if you so much as dare to BREATHE that you’re naming your baby/pet/favourite laptop the same thing, you have STOLEN their BABY’S NAME.
so here’s the thing… say you really wanted to name your daughter Amy. You love the name, it’s classic, it’s cute, it’s perfectfor your little girl-to-be… and then your sister-in-law gets pregnant and LOUDLY ANNOUNCES thatshe’snaming her baby Amy! and you know for a factthat she’s the type of person to throw a massive petty shitfit over you STEALING her BABY’S NAME. your family will take sides. herfamily will take sides.
if you want to avoid the drama, and you’re dead-set on naming your daughter-to-be Amy… well, then you name your daughter Aimee, or Aimi, or Aimy. It’s not the same name, it’s pronounced the same but it’s not the exact same name, so you can shut up, sis-in-law.
from what I understand a lot of the Crazy Name Spellings came from this root- “it’s not Kaylee, it’s Kayleigh, I swearI didn’t steal your idea”- and then once it became a trend, people named their kids that to be ~trendy~ just like they did with every other stupid trend.
but the root cause of Terrible Trendy Misspelt Baby Names has very little to do with white people being boring and conformist, and certainlynothing to do with capitalism. it’s a good old fashioned case of a) sexist expectations warping women’s behaviour into really really stupid shapes and b) Petty Small Community Drama.
This is a terrific addition to this post that I don’t think actually contradicts my main idea all that much
Anonymous asked: Hi there, I was wondering if you had advice on how to rename a longtime character? I have an OC I’ve RPed for a couple years on the same site, but I’ve quit the site. I really like the character, but every time I think of the name, it reminds me of bad memories from this site. I’ve been looking through Behind the Name but it’s a bit overwhelming. Thanks so much for the help!
There’s a couple of methods I’d like to suggest. I’ll pop this under a cut as per usual, but a short gist: base it off what you already have, or randomize it in various ways. Just like naming it the first time, you just get a second shot at at. Maybe you had a second place name you sorta wanted and picked the first one instead, I mean, that name didn’t come out of a void and it doesn’t leave a void you can’t work off.
Kittycorner Meaning: Name the character the same name meaning but a different etymological relationship. What does your current character’s name mean? Where did it come from? Can you make the name more precisely match the character’s background/timeline somehow by changing it to something from a different region? Peter for instance means stone in Greek. Throw in an English background, and you could just call him Stan! Or Alan, or Bedros. They all mean stone, or something similar, so you can come out with the same deep meaning, but have a different name.
Similar Nickname: What nickname did you use for them? Names commonly have the same nickname in common, so you could find the same nickname, but then pick a different main name. Cassius, Castiel, Casey, Caster… They all start with Cas, so if your character is normally called Cas, you could step one to the right and pick a new name! Will, Bill, William. Dick, Richard, Fredrick. It’s pretty easy to do.
Clean Strip: Entirely wipe the character’s name, and go through the process of naming them from scratch. Start with where they grew up, their family genealogy, and the time period and research common names relating to that time period. Work them over, and pick ‘deeper meanings’ if you like to highlight major parts of their character. Explore the character, are they, as TVTropes calls them, a lancer? That’s the second-in-command to a main character who works to contrast them by being the opposite personality and injecting friendly conflict. Maybe you’ll name your character Lance if so, or… be a little less directly on point. Lance means “Land” in old German, so why don’t we use Darrick instead. That means King of the Land! As you can see, a permutation of anything you come up with is available, and you don’t have to explain how you got from point A to point B unless you want to.
Roll for It!: Another option, roll a dice for numbers between 1-26, and take the letter that matches your roll, then look through names starting with it! Pick your top 10 favorites, and roll again. Luck itself picks it, this can feel like a form of destiny. You have no hand in the ultimate outcome, you can influence it, but you can’t pick it by yourself. On the other hand, sometimes having it roll a name you don’t like makes you unhappy and roll again, which means you should remove the icky name you don’t like. You can keep rolling until all the names are good and dead, leaving you a final winner which subconsciously you picked all along. The die works simply as a way of forcing you to make a decision, because it already has, so you can decide to agree or disagree. Magical.
Ask a Friend: A friend who knows you and your character may have a good enough feel to pick a name for you. After all, we don’t get to pick our own names, our parents do, and that’s almost similar isn’t it? A loved one picking a name means it has more weight, and honestly your parents didn’t know you or your future before they picked a name for you. People don’t always grow into their names, and that’s alright.
Find a Name: A final way to do this is probably the most round about. Roleplay finding a new name. Create a reason to redefine yourself, or to find a name to be called by. Maybe it’s a symbolic act for the character of divesting themselves of their old life. Maybe they have amnesia or have forgotten a large portion of things, and need to find something else to call themselves. Maybe they pick up a title, or a new identity for some reason, and become so accustomed to playing that role they refuse to give it up. This option is the most fluid for change, within the game. It means no one has to pretend the change was true all along, and the people you meet can help form a history of this new name. Unfortunately, you’ll be stuck with the old one for a while longer, but this gives it some solid backstory as a reason to adopt a new one.
That’s basically all the advice I can give! Good luck finding a name that suits! It was hard enough trying to figure out the first one, I know, but you can do it. Sometimes, it just comes to you. You really don’t need to follow any rules when you do this, you’re the writer, not a best friend. You’re essentially a god-like figure with the choice of changing anything at any moment to your fancy without any reason or rhyme. There’s no reason to feel trapped by anything you’ve already created, because you can just say it never happened. Sometimes we get so close to a character we feel like we’re telling their story rather than creating it from scratch, but it’s not true. We’re gods. They live at our whim. You can change shit.
The only major thing that this may effect OOCly is how people you play with respond to it, well… Let them! Try and make it easy for everyone, explain your reasons, and just do it! This is your character, not theirs. You can change whatever makes you feel better. Let that character grow. Let them become something more than a first draft. It’s alright, and good people will respect your choices even if they’ll miss The Old Days™.
Oh and final word of warning, maybe let your friends know the name you have in mind in advance and ask them to make fun of it. If they can come up with something stupid in under 15 seconds, either be prepared to deal with that stupidness forever, or try a different name. People are very very bad at being original and any knee-jerk response will happen over and over until you want to scream. Best check in advance. Seriously. Sometimes you don’t see that that name rhymes with Penis, and now Thenis the Penis is the only fucking thing you hear forever. Don’t fall for this.
This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!
Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax.Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!
However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).
So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.
If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.) A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.
So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.
If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just… just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.
(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)
One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v.
Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?
Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.
Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:
Chinese people, generally, love their kids. (Obviously, like in every culture, there are some awful exceptions, and I’ll give one specific example of this later on.)
As part of loving their kids, they want to give them a Good name.
So what makes a name a Good name??? Well, in Chinese culture, the cultural values (which have changed over time) have tended to prioritize things like: education; clan and family; health and beauty; religious devotions of various religions (Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Christianity, other); philosophical beliefs (Buddhism, Confucianism, etc) (see also education); refinement and culture (see also education); moral rectitude; and of course many other things as the individual personally finds important. You’ll notice that education is a big one. If you can’t decide on where to start, something related to education, intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, etc, is a bet that can’t go wrong.
Unlike in English speaking cultures (and I’m going to limit myself to English because we’re writing English and good God look at how long this post is already), there is no canon of “names” in Chinese like there has traditionally been in English. No John, Mary, Susan, Jacob, Maxine, William, and other words that are names and only names and which, historically at least, almost everyone was named. Instead, in Chinese culture, you can basically choose any character you want. You can choose one character, or two characters. (More than two characters? No one can live at that speed. Seriously, do not give your character a given name with more than two characters. If you need this tutorial, you don’t know enough to try it.) Congratulations, it is now a name!!
But what this means is that Chinese names aggressively Mean Something in a way that most English names don’t. You know nature names like Rose and Pearl, and Puritan names like Wrestling, Makepeace, Prudence, Silence, Zeal, and Unity? I mean, yeah, you can technically look up that the name Mary comes from a etymological root meaning bitter, but Mary doesn’t mean bitter in the way that Silence means, well, silence. Chinese names are much much more like the latter, because even though there are some characters that are more common as names than as words, the meaning of the name is still far more upfront than English names.
So the meaning of the name is generally a much more direct expression of those Good Values mentioned before. But it gets more complicated!
Being too direct has, across many eras of Chinese history, been considered crude; the very opposite of the education you’re valuing in the first place. Therefore, rather than the Puritan slap you in the face approach where you just name your kid VIRTUE!, Chinese have typically favoured instead more indirect, related words about these virtues and values, or poetic allusions to same. What might seem like a very blunt, concrete name, such as Guan Yu’s “yu” (which means feather), is actually a poetic, referential name to all the things that feathers evoke:flight, freedom, intellectual broadmindness, protection…
So when you’re choosing a name, you start from the value you want to express, then see where looking up related words in a dictionary gets you until you find something that sounds “like a name”; you can also try researching Chinese art symbolism to get more concrete names. Then, here’s my favourite trick, try combining your fake name with several of the most common surnames: 王，李，陈. And Google that shit. If you find Actual Human Beings with that name: congratulations, at least if you did f/uck up, somebody else out there f/ucked up first and stuck a Human Being with it, so you’re still doing better than they are. High five!
You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.
First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!
Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work… and its prequels… and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)
Worldbuilders naming towns: I named this town Elygwe’meth which means “Where the Dearly Beloved King died next to his Lover” in the language I invented and also a combination of the Old English word for diamonds and the Maori word for apples since that’s their main exports
People in real life naming towns: I named this town Big Falls cause big fall there
me poring over a fantasy map: Shit I already used that name for a town, I can’t use it again, that’s such sloppy worldbuilding
real life maps: There are six rivers in Britain called the River Avon, which means River River, because when the Romans asked the Celts “what is that?” they replied “a river?” and the Romans nodded and jotted it down
Terry Pratchett:
The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called – in the local language – Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.
The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don’t Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod (‘Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is’)…
Some of my most popular posts on this blog have to do with Chinese names. It seems like a lot of people who reblog those posts enjoy writing and are saving the posts as resources for naming their characters. So, I wanted to share some additional resources that I’ve found and used.
This site reflects names from Taiwan. It has quite a few different pages/features to explore. Just make sure you only enter in traditional characters–it won’t work properly with simplified characters.
You can specify the surname, if you want a one character given name, the second character of the name (aka first character of the given name), number of strokes, and things relating to luck. The specify second character feature is really useful for if you want a common 字辈 across names. The site will generate a bunch of names, and you can click each to learn more.
The tool I find most useful is the name similarity tool (名字相似度查詢). You enter a given name, and it will show a popularity score as well as lists of common names with the characters you included. The score is people/million, taken from college (I think) entrance exam takers over a 15 year period.
The default name when you click on the page is 心怡. This one is pretty popular. If you know you really want a name with the character 怡, you can enter in 怡怡 so it will show all the most popular names with this character (both in the first or second position), like below:
Some other pages of interest are the list of most popular characters in names (常用名字[單字]) and the list of most popular names (常見名字). You can click on each character or name to see more. According to the website, about 90% of names are made up of the top 500 most popular characters, and the 1000 most popular names made up 22% of people. So if you want a “normal” sounding name, this is a great resource. If you’re wondering, the most common character is apparently 怡, with the most popular name being 怡君!
This site is available in English and Chinese, so it’s relatively accessible for people who don’t speak Chinese. However, some of the specific information on individual names is only in Chinese. Also, that it seems to default to displaying traditional characters when you are in English mode, so you may need to ensure you are entering traditional characters in some of the later steps.
First I’ll discuss the name generator. This feature is great because it allows you to specify a region (Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, or any). Different regions have different naming trends. I can’t vouch entirely for how good this feature is, but I think it’s so cool that they offer it.
Another cool feature is that you can specify different traits. I can imagine this would be great for those of you looking for a name for an original character. You can also skip this step if you don’t have a preference.
Next you can enter a surname and a character you want included in the given name. As you can see, you can pick to include a character but not specify placement, specify the first character, or specify the second character. This is also good for 字辈 or if you’ve selected a character you want to include but are not sure how to finish formulating the name.
Here’s my list of names. It happens to just have female ones at the top, but since I’m on the “all” tab, it’s actually displaying a mix.
If you click on a name, you can see some more information. Further down, the page also shows stuff like gender, popularity of the name by region, and names with similar pronunciation. However, I noticed that the site isn’t the best at noting which names are more gender neutral, so this is something to keep in mind.
This site also has pages on popular namesandcharacters by region! I find this stuff very interesting. The lists definitely reflect some trends in names I’ve observed by region, so even though I don’t know the data source, it seems fairly accurate.
Resource #3: Provincial Databases (重名查询)
Some provinces have websites where you can enter names and see the number of people with the name. Sometimes they include a gender breakdown too. There is actually a government site for the whole country that does this, but I think you have to be a Chinese citizen to use it. Luckily, some of the individual provincial services don’t require this. There are probably more sites for other provinces, but I’m just going to list a few. Guangdong, Henan, and Shandong are the three biggest provinces in China, so those are always good ones to start with. These sites are all in Chinese.
If you use one of these sites, first I recommend trying a super common name like 张伟 so that you can use that information to interpret your results. Also, I believe for all of these site you have to enter a surname, so you can just pick a common one like 王, 李, or 张 (or whatever the most prevalent surname is for that individual province).
I hope these resources are helpful to you! If you know of other good websites, I’d love to see them too.
