Do other people get these hangups?

[derien]

When starting my story I lifted some names directly from Sherlock Holmes stories (Brackenstall and Abbernetty) because they had that Victorian flavour I was reaching for, and they sort of helped me get in the mood to write.  Now that I'm about to start posting the story I'm having second thoughts.  They feel to me as though they just scream 'lifted!'  Eor thinks I should just leave them, because if I do a find/replace and one is spelled wrong it won't replace.  I thought one possibility might be that I could do the find/replace with a name which was just a little different (like 'Braakenstahl' 'Abernathy'), and then if one or two remained people would pick that up as a misspelling. 

Opinions, f-list?  Suggestions?  Better misspellings of the names?

I don't know why this bothers me so, but I suspect it to be avoidance behavior re beginning to post the story.  Of which I only have 6 or 7 chapters ready to post after writing for a year and a half.  If I keep on at my present snails pace I might finish it before I'm 60.  I'm hoping that some feedback might result from posting the first few chapters, and that said feedback will spur me to write a little faster.  I got zero feedback when I posted the first draft of the first chapter ages ago, but hopefully the current incarnation is more interesting. 

Somewhat unrelatedly, I have been reading Isaac Asimov's robot novels.  I think the clunky old-fashioned style of writing in them is inspiring me re my story, because they're awfully compelling despite the seeming clunkyness. 

And no, the Spud/Renton icon has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted it to not languish and feel unloved. 

Comments

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

What sort of story is it -- original or fanfic? If it's fanfic, I would say your worries are probably immaterial.

If it's original, then you might have a little more cause to be concerned. Change the names if they bother you, but I doubt readers will even recognize where they come from; if they do, they're probably big enough Sherlockians to pick it up as a clever in-joke or reference.

What's the setting, also? Maybe I've read too many fantasy novels, but a double A in a name just screams "fantasy setting" to me. I know there are languages on earth that have double A's in them, but they're not European languages (as far as I'm aware) and certainly not the sort of languages that would produce a name that sounds like "Brackenstall". The change of "Brackenstall" to "Brakenstahl" is interesting, though, because it changes an English name into something that looks Germanic.

[derien.livejournal.com]

What's the setting, also? Maybe I've read too many fantasy novels, but a double A in a name just screams "fantasy setting" to me. I know there are languages on earth that have double A's in them, but they're not European languages (as far as I'm aware) and certainly not the sort of languages that would produce a name that sounds like "Brackenstall".

The setting is intended to be more science-fictional than fantasy - a far distant future colony on another planet, presumably there might be people of any descent there.

However, as an antidote to your experience, I offer the family name of a guy I used to work with - Kiilsgaard. It seems to be Norwegian, as Wiki says -gaard as a suffix on a name indicates 'farm' in Norwegian.

There are some double-vowel names in Finland, though I've heard that Finnish as a language is not really related to other European languages, so maybe that doesn't count.

Hee! I hope you'll find this amusing - You made me curious, so I just googled for 'Braak' and came up with "Heiko and Eva Braak: German neuropathologists." hee! :) 'Stahl' is also a proper German name, apparently. It doesn't exist as one name, Braakenstahl, but it is two seperate names.

So, no, I couldn't prove this before you challenged me, but you spurred me to do some light research, and now I can argue that Finnish, Norwegian and German all have double-A names. ;)

HOWEVER, and this is probably far more important, you've also scared me off using them because obviously people use them far too much in Fantasy novel settings! I don't read that many fantasy novels, so wasn't really aware of this as a trend and I hate hate HATE falling in with trends.

[anima-mecanique.livejournal.com]

It's probably not a trend...It crops up in RPGs sometimes when they want to make a name look exotic (a game I'm playing right now has a noble family called Ledaal, for example). Most of the fantasy literature I read these days is not traditional high fantasy where you get names like "Ky'laandel Ravenborn", so I wouldn't worry about that too much. *shrug* I'd forgotten about Icelandic languages.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, it's an original story, and the uses to which I've put the names can't really even be considered a ref or in-joke, unless you consider the fact that Brackenstall spends most of his time yelling, so far. And beats the main character with a switch. However, he's not actually a psychotic drunk like the character in the Holmes story.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Um. I hope my answer wasn't... twerpy. I didn't mean to be rude and socially stupid. I'm kind of a geek and can be that way. Your comment really interested me.