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Title: The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet ISBN: 0-89879-632-6 Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: February, 1994 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.09 (22 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: 332 page name list; 26 page light pamphlet about Char. names
Comment: Don't get me wrong; I liked this book; but the editorial description and the majority of other reviews of this book make it sound like this is a profound volume exploring the depths of the art of the naming of your character; but it's not. The first twenty-six or so pages is a light piece by Blythe and Sweet divided into four chapters that whizzes by every form or way that they can think of to pick appropriate names for your characters but; and no offense to Blythe and Sweet; it reads like an amateur writer's guide to the creation of the personality of a character through the device of choosing a name for it, him or her. They drop a lot of names of famous characters and refer to the names of many famous author's characters but the way they write it it sounds like they're trying to put forth this statement (that all writers manipulate their audiences through the use of clever or meaningful names in their characters) and then try to prove it backwards by calling up lots of examples and sounding very authoritative but I thought it was rather manipulative to do it in that way because it sounds like the ways they're suggesting are the only ways you should do it officially; if you want to do it right. Obviously there are myriads of ways to come up with names of characters and just because Blythe and Sweet say you should do it one way doesn't mean that you necessarily have to follow their example.
Now the rest of the book is series of lists of names organized under various categories (here they are: Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, Armenian, Arthurian Legend Names, Basque, Celtic, Czechoslovakian (Obviously it's a little dated...), Danish, Dutch, Egyptian, English, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indian, Irish, Italian, Latin, Native American, Norse, Persian, Polish, Russian, Scandinavian, Scottish, Slavic, Spanish, Swedish, Teutonic, Ukranian, Welsh, and "Other" (where Kenyon puts all the names that don't fit into any of the other categories, like Yiddish and Urdu and Sanskrit)) and an alphabetically organized index. With each list Kenyon writes a little blurb that generally describes the culture from which the names come and how names are often used within that culture followed by two lists of names: Female and Male. For the breadth of Western and Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures used I commend Kenyon; but I found the depth of the number of names in each cultural segment a little lacking. Many names that I know are Russian names for example are not in the Russian section (not to say that she put Russian names in the wrong section; those names I was looking for weren't in the book at all). Also lacking were the East Asian culture's names (like the ridiculously large number of names coming from China) and the South and Latin American Culture's names (like Brazil and Columbia) and glaringly missing is a section entirely devoted to names often used in North America and the different regions within each of its countries but I assume Kenyon was attempting to display names that were originated in native and old world cultures (but again is missing one of the oldest cultures; namely China; and the aboriginal cultures of Australia and New Zealand and for that matter the Inuit cultures of North America).
Tips on using this book efficiently: obviously, use the index first; it's a little difficult to look for names by country or culture or to skim through each cultural section one by one (honestly if you do that it gets a little monotonous and the sheer number of cultures can be a little overwhelming). I suggest skimming through the index; finding a name that sounds familiar; looking at all of the similar ones; and then looking them all up. I think you'll find that the book's strength is in the wide variety of names and cultures and meanings from each culture presented and represented.
The book itself is 9 1/4"X6 1/4"x 1 1/4"; weighs almost 1 1/2 pounds; has a nice hard cover and a good heft; is a garish dark raspberry sherbet in color inscribed with thin orange scripted examples of names and covered with a purple rectangular box edged in orange on the front with the title in white letters along with the names of the writers and editors and a thin purple rectangular box edged in orange on the spine with Title and Writer's and editor's names and the publisher and a white rectangular box edged in orange with a general description of the book and a bar code on the back.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fantastic! The Best Book going!!
Comment: I don't normally write a review, but when I saw someone trashing what has to be the greatest name book ever written for writers, I just couldn't remain quiet. Ms. Kenyon did a FABULOUS JOB!!!! And she doesn't list just ten surnames--had the other person read the book, they would have found that she specfically goes into how surnames are developed in each region, then tells you how to use her guide to create your own authentic surname. I love the book. To quote from the English section: English surnames began as epitaphs or place, occupational and patronymic names (the meanings of these are given in a previous segment of the book). They can be traced back for centuries. By 1290 even peasants had surnames, but surnames didn't become hereditary (passed to all children) until after 1290. In fact, Ms. Kenyon clearly states "Surnames came late; these names were already in use as given names centuries earlier" which I took to mean that a list of surnam! ! es & given names would be redundant. Anyone who wants a book that is a FAR cut above baby name books NEEDS TO BUY THIS BOOK!! I've used it at every writer's talk/workshop I've ever taught.
Rating: 2
Summary: Use with extreme caution!
Comment: "The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook" is useful for some writing, but it also includes grave errors that may turn your story into unintentional comedy. I'll get to that in a moment; first, let me say that I liked Blythe and Sweet's essay on naming strategies, even though they make a few weird statements in it (a fictional town called Leslie might indeed seem isolated and cut off because Leslie means "from the gray fortress," but only if the reader already knows this). Names are important in a story, and the strategies have been useful to me.
The lists of names from different cultures also seemed good at first, while I was still browsing through cultures I don't know a thing about. Then came the lists dealing with my own culture, that of Sweden, and my enthusiasm died. A quick summary:
1) Kenyon has confused male and female names. Under Female, we find the quite masculine Adrian, Lage, Svante and a few others. The female names Bodil and Valborg turn up under Male.
2) Many of the names haven't been common for about a thousand years (Saxe, Alrik), are extremely rare (Guda), or simply aren't Swedish at all (Quenby).
3) The dots and rings are missing. It might seem overly picky to complain about something like that, but an A with a ring over it isn't just some kind of modified A--it's a whole other letter. Personally, when I'm studying names from a foreign culture that uses the Latin alphabet, I want the original spelling rather than an anglified version of it.
There are other things to complain about, but I'll stop there--obviously, using these lists to find names for Swedish characters may not give you the result that you want, and Swedes may end up laughing at your story. I don't know if it's the same with the other lists in the book, but until I do, I won't use the names "as is." I will, however, use them as starting points when I need realistic, diverse names and words for fantasy settings. In that context, I find the book very useful!
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Title: Everyday Life in the Middle Ages (Everyday Life Series) by Sherrilyn Kenyon ISBN: 1582970017 Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
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Title: 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters by Victoria Schmidt ISBN: 1582970696 Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, Sue Viders ISBN: 1580650244 Publisher: Lone Eagle Publishing Company Pub. Date: 19 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon ISBN: 0312979975 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Dance With The Devil: A Dark-Hunter Novel by Sherrilyn Kenyon ISBN: 0312984839 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 07 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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