I’m reading Dune again, and find myself completely blown away by its prodigious awesomeness. The action has, so far, focused pretty tightly on the major characters, but I’m already feeling the massive, epic scope of the world that Herbert has created here. He has that admirable ability to say big things by talking about small things; his prose is a kind of reverse fractal wherein we glimpse the patterns of the universe in small descriptions, quiet conversations, private heartbreak. When you’re building a world, the details are as important as the broad strokes; you can tell that Herbert spent a long time sweating the details in Dune, and nowhere more than in the names he gives his people.
A good name makes a character stick in your head, but a great name manages to contain that character, draws an onomastic portrait with the expressive, Spartan brushstrokes of Japanese landscape art. The people in Dune have names like Duncan Idaho, Gurney Halleck, Thufir Howat; names that roll nicely off the tongue, and manage to be alien, cool and pleasant at the same time. Clay Sails often laments the unfortunate propensity of hack fantasy writers to use apostrophe-laden surnames in their efforts to sound exotic and different. A’Quali’DingDang the Drow, for example, or Laara’d'd’d'd’garaeeeeen the Half-Troll: names that are all flash and no bang, icing and no cake. When I hear Gurney Haleck, I think of a spry, seasoned man of action with a sly streak and a silver tongue; Duncan Idaho puts me in mind of a straightforward, honorable adventurer type, placid and passionate by turns. A’QualiDingDang, on the other hand, is just hard to say.
Naming things is an incredibly important task. Adam, the Christian Ur-Namer, got to name everything. That’s a huge responsibility, and I’m glad he took it seriously. If Adam had been a hack fantasy writer, then we’d be calling trees T’rreequ’ars, badgers would be Baxdjer’toxas, and and the Sun would be Lord Xol. And that would just be silly.
9 comments ↓
I always found the “Duck-billed platypus” to be silly. Any thoughts on who was responsible for that?
As an aside another author who has done well naming characters, places, and pastimes is J.K. Rowling.
i LOVE ‘dune’. the whole book is just amazing - the plot, the way the eventual identity of paul is revealed, the idea of druggies on different planets, religion and politics mixing together.
however, i do take issue with lady jessica’s name.
I had a poetry teacher in college who threw a chair at Frank Herbert during an in-class dispute (Herbert was the prof.). I take Herbert’s side on the issue, and not only for inventing an awesome name like Gurney Halleck, but also because my poetry teacher was a pretentious, smug fuck named Ralph Angel who so badly wanted to be upper East Coast with his whimpy turtlenecks and affected enunciation. What a dweeb. I think he sensed my hostility and, as such, panned my final portfolio, which included this minimalist masterpiece:
L.A. below like banana tinfoil
He thought it was “too brief” and the meter wasn’t well established. Dickhead. There is no meter. Sure, he won some big shot poetry award. I never read even a single line of his work and I don’t recommend anyone else try either: it would annoy you.
God I hate poets. They are worse than poodles.
As a proud American Poodle, I take offense to the previous comment.
Clay, you actually had Herbert as your professor? That’s way beyond cool.
Ramsey,
No, sadly, I did not have Herbert as a professor. I did have a professor who had Herbert for a professor. You can touch me anyway if you like.
Hmmm. Herbert at one remove doesn’t warrant any touching, I’m afraid. Maybe I’ll gaze at you longingly.
But probably not.
like Melville, or Stienbeck “epic” is a good word
as an aside, the dunes in Dune were based on the oregon coast sand dunes they’re a big scary place
i’m with you on the exoticized names in fantasy. but–when fantasy tends make all of their female characters either hags or big-boobied, and either way definitely over-sexed, it leads one to question the minds behind whole thing.
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