# Question about fictional foreign names...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [January 18, 2011, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057 "2011-01-18T07:20:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/1 "2011-01-18T07:20:17Z")
Suppose I wanted to make up a character in a piece of fiction who’s from another country. Suppose I researched that region, language, and culture, and found a first name that is reasonably well-used in that region/language/culture (i.e. not necessarily as common as “Chris” in America, but perhaps more used than “Aloysius”), and found a last name that is the same (not necessarily as common as “Smith”, but perhaps more used than “Obama”).
What are the odds that if I put the two together to make up the foreign name, it would sound odd somehow to those who know that region/language/culture? Are there particular regions/languages/cultures where this is more likely to happen?
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### Author:  [@6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/2 "2011-01-18T07:30:24Z")
I would think that if you’ve done your research, the composite name you choose wouldn’t sound strange at all. Possibly boring to a native, but probably not odd.
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### Author:  [@Nunzio\_Tavulari](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunzio_Tavulari)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/3 "2011-01-18T07:31:40Z")
You mean names like Toniqua Cavendish or Mordecai Fitzpatrick?
I could see that happening. I think that there are potential pitfalls in randomly inventing a name and it would be helpful to be knowledgeable of religious and ethnic customs in a region. Go on Facebook and steal someone’s name.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/4 "2011-01-18T07:35:38Z")
I can’t give you odds, but I can tell you it happens to me pretty often - usually it indicates poor research on the part of the writer. It’s not so much strange name-lastname combinations as it is “bad” lastnames; after all, people do pull stunts like name their son Juan Ramón when their lastname is Jiménez (“the” JRJ was an important 20th century poet). I had a coworker who spelled his firstname out in full: Francisco de Javier (most people would have left it as “Javier”, “Francisco Javier”, “Francisco J.” or even “FJ”) - it looked strange until you saw that his two lastnames were “compuestos”, they had the same Something de Something structure.
There are some names which are very common in specific locations, but that doesn’t mean you’ll never encounter them elsewhere: Pilares are a dime a dozen in Saragossa, a quarter a dozen in the rest of the Hispanic world.
Some examples of “bad” lastnames I see often in fiction: the lastname Lobo exists and does mean wolf, but it isn’t Spanish, it’s Portuguese; lastnames which usually carry a “de” but which do not have it for the fictional character; “de” added to a lastname which will usually not have one…
If the work is old, ok, but nowadays it’s pretty easy to check the white pages for about any country and see if the lastname exists.
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/5 "2011-01-18T15:45:25Z")
JK Rowling clearly didn’t do more than about ten seconds of research when she named her fictional Bulgarian character, Viktor Krum. Every single ethnic Bulgarian man I’ve ever met had a last name ending with “ov” or “ev”, ie, Atanasov or Dobrev. (For women, it would be Atanasova or Dobreva.) I am a little curious as to where she got that particular name, since it would be very unusual. Her description of a Bulgarian accent in English is also wildly inaccurate, FWIW.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/6 "2011-01-18T15:53:51Z")
So his her description of Hogwarts, for that matter. In real life, such institutions do not exist. I bet the people who believe in accuracy are laughing their asses off over that.
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/7 "2011-01-18T16:01:02Z")
> [@Kyla](#):
>
> JK Rowling clearly didn’t do more than about ten seconds of research when she named her fictional Bulgarian character, Viktor Krum.
Yes, but he might be descended from immigrants. You might be equally sceptical about a fictional Frenchman with the name Nicolas Sarkozy – that’s not a proper French name!
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### Author:  [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/8 "2011-01-18T17:04:56Z")
Or a South American president named “Fujimori”.
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### Author:  [@Timchik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timchik)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/9 "2011-01-18T17:17:29Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> So his her description of Hogwarts, for that matter. In real life, such institutions do not exist. I bet the people who believe in accuracy are laughing their asses off over that.
No, schools of magic don’t exist. Bulgaria, however, does, and unlikely foreign names really are an unnecessary bit of laziness that can take you out of the story (suspension of disbelief being a powerful but fragile thing).
My own pet peeve is fictional Russian names (since that’s the language and culture I know best). Every second Hollywood or spy-novel Russian character seems to either be named after historical/literary figures (way too many Romanovs, Rasputins, Gogols and Chekhovs) or have a vaguely Slavic but gratingly un-Russian last name (Ivan Drago? Is this guy the world’s most Swedish-looking Serbian? Xenia Onatopp? What the hell ethnicity is she supposed to be?).
It’s one thing if it’s a deliberately mock-Russian name (I have no problem with Boris Badenov, or Premier Kissov from Dr. Strangelove) with a wink and a nod, but it sounds amateurish if it’s just a lack of research
and **Giles/BobArrgh** - such characters usually aren’t presented as immigrants, but as typical (indeed, stereotypical) representatives of their purported nation. To use the Sarkozy example, it would be like having a “French” character named Pierre Moholy-Nagy wearing a beret and a striped shirt, baguettes tucked under the arm and a Gitane dangling from his lips, with no further explanation. Vairy frenche, non?
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### Author:  [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/10 "2011-01-18T17:53:33Z")
> [@Kyla](#):
>
> JK Rowling clearly didn’t do more than about ten seconds of research when she named her fictional Bulgarian character, Viktor Krum. Every single ethnic Bulgarian man I’ve ever met had a last name ending with “ov” or “ev”, ie, Atanasov or Dobrev. (For women, it would be Atanasova or Dobreva.) I am a little curious as to where she got that particular name, since it would be very unusual. Her description of a Bulgarian accent in English is also wildly inaccurate, FWIW.
Once I needed to make up a Bulgarian name for a psychology study and decided to ask my friend who had recently been to Bulgaria for one. She recalled that she had a friend X who was the son of Mrs -cheva. So plainly his name was X -cheva. Thankfully no one in the study knew Bulgarian naming conventions…
For the same project i needed a Sunni Arab name. I mashed together a first name and a last name from two members of Hussein’s cabinet who seemed similar demographically. If the result was somehow wrong, no one noticed.
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/11 "2011-01-18T19:21:16Z")
> [@Giles](#):
>
> Yes, but he might be descended from immigrants. You might be equally sceptical about a fictional Frenchman with the name Nicolas Sarkozy – that’s not a proper French name!
Nobody immigrates to Bulgaria.
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### Author:  [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/12 "2011-01-18T19:38:43Z")
> [@Kyla](#):
>
> Nobody immigrates to Bulgaria.
Well, if we want to fanwank this: Viktor Krum goes to a school more dedicated to the Dark Arts, which is also associated with blood purity; and it’s often explained how very few families of pure bloodlines are still around (and a lot of in-breeding that occurs as result). So if Viktors father cared a lot about pure blood, and the only witch he found was in Bulgaria… then he would move there.
Also, wizards don’t live in the same society as Muggles do, they live seperatly, so the bad economic situation and infrastructure of a former East Bloc country would be less important to them than to the normal Bulgarians.
Given that Bulgaria has had a better history than the current state suggests, probably Krums parents are sitting on some old castle and thinking of the old times?
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/13 "2011-01-18T19:42:21Z")
> [@constanze](#):
>
> Also, wizards don’t live in the same society as Muggles do, they live seperatly, so the bad economic situation and infrastructure of a former East Bloc country would be less important to them than to the normal Bulgarians.
> Given that Bulgaria has had a better history than the current state suggests, probably Krums parents are sitting on some old castle and thinking of the old times?
Heh, maybe. Excellent fanwank.
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### Author:  [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/14 "2011-01-18T19:42:45Z")
> [@Leaper](#):
>
> Suppose I wanted to make up a character in a piece of fiction who’s from another country. Suppose I researched that region, language, and culture, and found a first name that is reasonably well-used in that region/language/culture (i.e. not necessarily as common as “Chris” in America, but perhaps more used than “Aloysius”), and found a last name that is the same (not necessarily as common as “Smith”, but perhaps more used than “Obama”).
>
> What are the odds that if I put the two together to make up the foreign name, it would sound odd somehow to those who know that region/language/culture? Are there particular regions/languages/cultures where this is more likely to happen?
Given the opportunity of research with the internet, I suggest the easiest way is to search for full names in that other country and see which ones are common, because searching seperatly and combining can indeed be a pitfal.
Although taking an extremly common name is a problem, too: in his “Dead Zone”, Stephen King named the main male character … John Smith, called “Johnny”. Every time I hear/ read this, I give a small start and think “That’s a placeholder King put there and forgot to go back and insert a real name.” because John Smith is similar to John Doe. Surely there are people in real life with that name, but for a fictional character, I wouldn’t use it unless there’s a very very good reason (and no, Mr. King, that you want to write about an “everyman” isn’t one, I think.)
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/15 "2011-01-18T19:52:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> JK Rowling clearly didn’t do more than about ten seconds of research when she named her fictional Bulgarian character, Viktor Krum. Every single ethnic Bulgarian man I’ve ever met had a last name ending with “ov” or “ev”, ie, Atanasov or Dobrev.
But you can’t go by that. My own real last name is Polish, but doesn’t end in “-wicz” or “-ski” or have any unlikely consonant juxtapositions. People mistake it for an English surname all the time, but a Pole wouldn’t think it unlikely. Similarly, not all Armenian names end in “-ion”, “-ian”, or “-yan”\*. The famed Canadian photographer Karsh was of Armenian extraction, and his name isn’t altered or shortened.
\*Nor are all names that end in those letters Armenian. For years I thought that the Russian general Bagration was Armenian, but I’ve learned better. And there’s that famous non-Armenian from outer space, Lando Kalrissian.
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/16 "2011-01-18T19:55:02Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> But you can’t go by that. My own real last name is Polish, but doesn’t end in “-wicz” or “-ski” or have any unlikely consonant juxtapositions. People mistake it for an English surname all the time, but a Pole wouldn’t think it unlikely. Similarly, not all Armenian names end in “-ion”, “-ian”, or “-yan”\*. The famed Canadian photographer Karsh was of Armenian extraction, and his name isn’t altered or shortened.
That’s mildly interesting, but also totally unrelated to Bulgarian naming conventions.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/17 "2011-01-18T20:25:12Z")
> [@](#):
>
> That’s mildly interesting, but also totally unrelated to Bulgarian naming conventions.
I’m not familiar with Bulgarian naming conventions, but I’ll bet they don’t _invariably_ end in “-ov” or “-ev”, which is totally relecvant to the discussion. Not all Irish names begin with “O’” and not all Scottish names begin with “Mc-”, “Mac-” or “M’”.
About the only invariable rule I’m familiar with is that males Sikhs have the last name “Singh”.
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### Author:  [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/18 "2011-01-18T20:34:42Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> I’m not familiar with Bulgarian naming conventions, but I’ll bet they don’t _invariably_ end in “-ov” or “-ev”, which is totally relecvant to the discussion. Not all Irish names begin with “O’” and not all Scottish names begin with “Mc-”, “Mac-” or “M’”.
Oh, okay, you’re totally right. I lived in Bulgaria for over two years and have met thousands of Bulgarians, but now that you mention it, not all Irish names start with “O’”.
So yeah, Krum is actually a really ordinary Bulgarian name, I have no idea what I was talking about.
ETA: p.s. go back to what I originally said - every single ethnic Bulgarian man I’ve ever met had a name that ended with “ov” or “ev”. I didn’t say it was “invariable” or that it could never, ever happen. My point was that “Krum” would be an extremely unusual name. Maybe that’s what Rowling was going for, I don’t know.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/19 "2011-01-18T20:35:32Z")
Wikipedia on Bulgarian surnames:
> [@](#):
>
> There are several different layers of Bulgarian names. The vast majority of them have either Christian (names like Lazar, Ivan, Anna, Maria, Ekaterina) or Slavic origin (Vladimir, Svetoslav, Velislava). After the Liberation in 1878, the names of historical Bulgar rulers like Asparuh, Krum, Kubrat and Tervel were resurrected. The old Bulgar name Boris has spread from Bulgaria to a number of countries in the world with Russian tsar Boris Godunov, British politician Boris Johnson, and German tennis player Boris Becker being two of the examples of its use.
>
> Most Bulgarian male surnames have an -ov surname suffix (Cyrillic: -ов). This is sometimes transcribed as -off (John Atanasov—John Atanasoff, but more often as -ov e.g. Boris Hristov). The -ov suffix is the Slavic gender-agreeing suffix, thus Ivanov (Bulgarian: Иванов) literally means “Ivan’s”. Bulgarian middle names are patronymic and use the gender-agreeing suffix as well, thus the middle name of Nikola’s son becomes Nikolov, and the middle name of Ivan’s son becomes Ivanov. Since names in Bulgarian are gender-based, Bulgarian women have the -ova surname suffix (Cyrillic: -овa), for example, Maria Ivanova. The plural form of Bulgarian names ends in -ovi (Cyrillic: -ови), for example the Ivanovi family (Иванови).
>
> Other common Bulgarian male surnames have the -ev surname suffix (Cyrillic: -ев), for example Stoev, Ganchev, Peev, and so on. The female surname in this case would have the -eva surname suffix (Cyrillic: -ева), for example: Galina Stoeva. The last name of the entire family then would have the plural form of -evi (Cyrillic: -еви), for example: the Stoevi family (Стоеви).
>
> Another typical Bulgarian surname suffix, though much less common, is -ski. This surname ending also gets an –a when the bearer of the name is female (Smirnenski becomes Smirnenska). The plural form of the surname suffix -ski is still -ski, e.g. the Smirnenski family (Bulgarian: Смирненски).
>
> The surname suffix -ich can be found sometimes, primarily among Catholic Bulgarians. The ending –in (female -ina) also appears sometimes, though rather seldom. It used to be given to the child of an unmarried woman (for example the son of Kuna will get the surname Kunin and the son of Gana – Ganin). The surname ending –ich does not get an additional –a if the bearer of the name is female.
> **[Bulgarians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarians)**
>
> Bulgarians (Bulgarian: българи, romanized: bŭlgari, .mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}IPA: \[ˈbɤɫɡɐri\]) are a nation and South Slavic ethnic group native to Bulgaria and its neighbouring region, who share a common culture, history and language. They form the majority of the population in Bulgaria, while in North Macedonia, U Bulgaria...
The related article _List of Bulgarians_ is dominated by -ov and -ev and -vic and -ski, but has plenty of non-conforming names, like \*\*
Adam Malka
Sophia Peer
Itzhak Fintz
Rosa Brown (!!!)
Petar Volgin
Chernorizetz Hrabar
Dora Gabe\*\*
and so on…
> **[List of Bulgarians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bulgarians)**
>
> This is a list of famous or notable Bulgarians throughout history.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2011, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-fictional-foreign-names/568057/20 "2011-01-18T20:56:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> My point was that “Krum” would be an extremely unusual name. Maybe that’s what Rowling was going for, I don’t know.
As the first reference I cite shows, “Krum” was the name of an early Bulgarian ruler. I suspect that, while not common, it’s also not an impossible Bulgarian name. Rowling certainly did at least five minutes of research:
> **[Krum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krum)**
>
> Krum (Bulgarian: Крум, Greek: Κροῦμος/Kroumos\[a\]), often referred to as Krum the Fearsome (Bulgarian: Крум Страшни) was the Khan of Bulgaria from sometime between 796 and 803 until his death in 814. During his reign the Bulgarian territory doubled in size, spreading from the middle Danube to the Dnieper and from Odrin to the Tatra Mountains. His able and energetic rule brought law and order to Bulgaria and developed the rudiments of state organization.
> Krum was a Bulgar chieftain from Pannonia. ...
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