Name - Literary Names

Literary Names

In fiction, proper names of people or places are often unique to the work in which they appear. Although, within the work of fiction proper, the name may nonetheless be said to have a certain ethnic origin, the name itself may not actually exist. For example, the character of Ororo Munroe (Storm of the X-Men franchise) is of African descent. Her first name, however is not an authentic African name. Names may also be created to either represent ethnic neutrality or corruption of a name with the passage of time. This is a common technique used by science fiction and fantasy writers who may also employ alternate spellings of existing names. Also, many science fiction operates on the premise that racial and ethnic boundaries will cease to exist in the future thus producing names that appear to be mixes of different ethnic sources. Yoshiyuki Tomino (creator of the anime Mobile Suit Gundam) is notable for creating character names that are unusual, exotic, and sometimes silly sounding. Examples include Char Aznable (which is actually based on a real person), Bright Noa, Quess Paraya, and Marvel Frozen. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov has also created names which may or may not be variants or corruptions of existing or ancient names. Examples include Dors Venabili, R. Daneel Olivaw, and Giskard Reventlov. The Star Wars and Dune franchises contains many character names that juggle existing names with created ones; Leia Organa, Ben Kenobi, Paul Atreides, Vladimir Harkonnen.