A lot of people have complained about the endless apostrophes, dashes, and other punctuated names in speculative fiction. You know, the alien named S’m’gar-Ka, or the lost city of Yab-Smabb-o, or whatever.
I realize that in some cases the authors egregiously abuse punctuation marks. But I feel that sometime’s an apostraphe or two is necessary.
Confusing vowels. If your character “shee-an” has a lot of vowels in her name, writing it as She’an is better than Shean. The former clearly has two syllables, whereas the latter looks like is should be pronouced “sheen”.
Asperations and stress. Say your want to name your flower fairy Thasilan. The way most people would stress the syllables would be THA-sil-LAN. If you want Thasilan to be pronounced as thas-I-lan, one easy way to do so would be to write the name as Thas’Ilan, or Thas-Ilan.
Likewise, if you want an asperation in place of a vowel. If you don’t want A E I O U, but just a quick breath, then as far as I’m concerned you have the right to put an apostrophe in place of a vowel.
I realize YMMV, and some people may disgree with me. Some people may ask “Why not ‘Thas Ilan’ as two words and no punctuation?” But I think that the occasional ’ or - is justified.
I don’t read this type of fiction, but “She’an” to me is two syllables with a glottal stop in between. Without a glottal stop and a visual cue to the pronunciation, I would have to settle for “Sheän” or even “She-an.” As for “Thasilan,” I would pronounce it “thuh-SILL-uhn” or “thuh-SILL-ahn,” but I often have the wrong instinct onto which syllable to place stress in an unfamiliar word.
Well, the problem is that punctuation is all too often used as a crutch. Add some of it to a name and it becomes alien or strange. They can work (think Ankh-Morpork, though that has some real thinking behind it – two cities, Ankh and Morpork, combined), but it’s an easy way out.
And you can get the same effect in other ways: “Thasilan” can be fixed the way you want by spelling it “Thassilan.” “Sheann” or “Sheean” would probably work for “She-an.”
The readers are never going to pronounce your made-up names and/or words the same way you do. So don’t stress about it.
(Actually, that’s Rule number two. Rule number one is, Do not confuse your readers. And sometimes those umlauts and other diacritical marks do just that. Use with caution.)
I’m one of those readers who can’t stand this sort of superfluous, made-up punctuation. You see it mostly in fantasy fiction (but lately in real peoples’ names). It’s one of the reasons I never picked up the “Wheel of Time” series. Didn’t he name the hero Rand’ al or something instead of just Randall? Hate the stuff.
And now we’re starting to get into the use of punctuation in real people’s names, like “Me’shell”. So far, the worst example I’ve heard of is the girl whose parents named her “La-a”.
It bugs me. It is NEVER any help pronouncing a name. Diacritical marks have specific meanings that are different in different language. How am I supposed to know whether the diacritical in Sheän is a diaeresis or an umlaut? How do I know if the character in She’an is an apostrophe or a glottal stop? Often the punctuation marks don’t correspond to the usage ANY language; it’s just there to look exotic. The worst are the spellings that simply can’t be pronounced phonetically, like “Xosh.” Is that pronounced Zosh? Ksosh? Shoss (as in Pin-yin)? With a ch as in Bach (as in IPA)? Any one of those could be better transliterated into English. I mean, it’s not like alien languages are traditionally written in the roman alphabet, right? Even deliberate attempts to produce a name unpronounceable by humans just hangs a lampshade on the fact that it’s just a transliteration that wouldn’t have spellings that don’t make sense and that in fact a truly alien name would probably use sounds not close to anything in English, and possibly include gestures, smells, and blinking lights as well. It’s not going to be just like John but with an apostrophe!
I think a lot of those names are meant to imitate real romanizations of foreign languages like Chinese, which in pin-yin has lots of out-of-place-looking Qs and Xs. But those are there as part of a consistent system of spelling, and represent English ch and sh sounds respectively, they aren’t just because Chinese is exotic.
Rand al’Thor. It’s part of the last name, not the first. Slightly justified in that al is a prefix with meaning in the Wheel of Time setting and shows up often.
I just remembered the worst case of sci-fi apostrophe abuse I’ve ever encountered. There was an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 where one of the characters (I think it was Quark, but it might have been Odo) was trying to remember a name they’d seen written in Bajoran. After much melodrama, they were finally able to remember that there was something unusual about the name: It had an apostrophe in it! I think it actually began with an apostrophe! I remember shaking my head in disgust at the idea that an alien name in an alien language with it’s own writing system would be spelled with an English punctuation mark. Does any of these symbols look like an apostrophe?
Well, I don’t know if you’d really call it abuse of punctuation, but my favorite manipulation of writing to make it appear exotic is in the Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century series starring Gil Gerrard.
They made random letters capital, even in the middle of words. So, characters would pass signs that said:
oFfiCe, lauNch bAy, DanGer!, aNd sO on and On. It waS fUn to rEad. ANd oh SO fUtuRisTic.
I’ve coined many alien and fantasy names and never felt the need to put in any punctuation to get the pronunciation right. You do it with spelling.
In one case, I wanted the character to be pronounced “VAY-da.” I was basing the name on the old Cincinnati Reds star, Vada Pinson. But “Vada” would be prounounced “Vadda” and I didn’t want to go with “Vayda.” So I used Veida.
But you shouldn’t worry about such things too much. Terry Brooks pronounces his fantasy world, SHAN-a-rah; I don’t think anyone else does.
Alan Smithee – Star Trek had lots of examples of where they didn’t think things like that through. I remember one episode set in an alien courtroom where they had exactly the same setup and rules as a US court. People would shout out “objection,” and the judge would reply “overruled.” :rolleyes:
Oh God, I remember that. They did it several times. As a matter of fact, I think just about every sci-fi/fantasy tv show or comic has done something like that. If it doesn’t have one, it should have its own page on TVtropes.com.
I know a girl named Ja’net. How about spelling it Jenette, cause that is how she pronounces it.
I know of a girl named Bri’an. How about spelling it Breeanne or Bree Anne or any number of other ways.
When I was little Maribeth and Mary Beth were too different names. Maribeth was with a short “i” like Mare-eh-beth.
It’s nothing more than a way of trying to spell Mark as Marq.
I think it’s pretentious like Hyacinth on “Keeping Up Appearances” and her famous, “Yes I know it’s spelled B-U-C-K-E-T, but I can assure you it’s pronounced Bouquet”
