just don't call me late for dinner

[isiscolo]

For reasons which probably don't need exploring at this juncture I've been thinking (for a very long time, now; I promised to write about this last year) about names. Namely (heh): first names and last names, and the usage of each in fic.

There are three issues on my mind, which are only tangentially related: what name the POV character uses in

Comments

[kattahj]

it was only halfway through when I'd gone to Wikipedia to see who everyone was because I was so confused that I realised there were only two people in this one scene, not three as I had thought.

That reminds me of when I tried to read Doctor Zhivago. I couldn't figure out if there were two characters or ten in a room, and had to give up at around page 60. Everyone had about half a dozen names each, and used them interchangeably.

Re the original post: I find names great fun to play with, like how in Angel, both Doyle and Gunn default to their surnames, and who gets to call them something else and in that case what. And also with Wesley - gradually moving him from the full name to "Wes Pryce" as his personality darkens in the Birthdayverse.

I think variations can be useful too, as long as they're meaningful, like the stereotypical mother using the full name of her child, middle name and all, when she's angry. And the added intimacy leading to first-name instead of last-name, as said - though I'm now intrigued at the idea of turning this upside down, so that someone's "intimate" name was in fact their surname...

Tangentially, as a Swede I always feel weirded out at the honorary + last name convention, since we had a "du-reform" ("you-reform") forty years ago that means everybody pretty much calls each other by first name, whether they know each other or not. (Which can lead to some pretty awkward situations when we're trying to be polite - I saw a TV interview where a journalist talking to the king referred to him as "the king": "What does The King think of..." and so on. I squirmed and willed her to understand the phrase "Your Majesty", and I'm most definitely not a Royalist.)