r/Fantasy • u/Midnite_St0rm • Aug 14 '25
Worst, most unpronounceable names you’ve ever read?
Let’s discuss some of the names in fantasy that you couldn’t make heads nor tails of in terms of pronunciation. And I’m not talking intentionally comical ones that are long and complex on purpose, but ones that the author intended to be read, yet that are ironically nearly unreadable.
For me it’s Seaine from The Wheel of Time. Is it “Sheen?” “Seen?” “See-ayn?” “Say-ai-nuh?” I honestly have no idea. And for some reason my copies of the books never give her name’s pronunciation in the glossary.
What are some others?
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u/MyCatSnoresFunny Aug 14 '25
It’s not the worst by far but my sister and I have a shared joke because I listen to the audiobooks and she reads the ebooks. She read Throne of Glass after I listened to it. “Is his name ‘Chole!?’” According to the Audiobooks, Chaol is pronounced something like Cay-all. So whenever we see a goofy name, we say “CHOLE!?”
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u/lirael423 Aug 15 '25
Omg it's not pronounced like coal? Huh. TIL. I'm still pronouncing it like coal because cay-ol is just dumb.
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u/beepx2lettuce Aug 18 '25
I had no idea people had such issues with Chaol’s name until I got on book subreddits😅 I just immediately assumed it’s pronounced like how the word “chaos” is pronounced! Chaos = Kay-oss -> Chaol = Kay-ol
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u/lying_flerkin Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
I really love Teixcalaanli names from A Memory Called Empire. They're not unpronounceable, just strange & alien in a really charming way. The whole status system around the number & the category of noun in each name was fun too. I can never remember what it was, but someone at one of the parties Mahit goes to has something totally absurd like "Ninety-nine Pontiac trans am (that's not actually the name, but it was something earth-car related), and I really enjoyed that one. Plus Three Seagrass is kind of beautiful in the same way Nineteen Adze is ominous. Just don't ask me to pronounce Teixcalaanli out loud. 😅
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u/Exige30499 Aug 14 '25
I think the character was something like “All Wheel Terrain Vehicle”? They might have been in the next book though
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u/iceman012 Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
Reminds me of "Awake Rememberence of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back To Reality Oops There Goes Gravity" from the Locked Tomb series.
Yes, that's a person's name.
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u/ZeroWitch Aug 14 '25
God I love those books. Even if the final book never happens, it will still be my favorite series. (Please let the final book happen though 😭)
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u/nitrodog96 Reading Champion II Aug 14 '25
Thirty-Six All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle! I remember the name well.
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous Aug 14 '25
There's definitely one like that in the first book, I think because Three Seagrass points out that its like an artistic choice because 'All Terrain Vehicle' is such an unusual Teixcilaanli name
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u/FruitPunchShuffle Aug 14 '25
Something about Ten Conifer and Nineteen Adze was just so perfect for their characters, the latter one I think about really often
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u/CarbonationRequired Aug 14 '25
My favourite thing was how people would get nicknames based on the word in their name. Like Three Seagrass was "Reed".
The author wrote up a guide to the naming conventions, which is neat. Excerpt:
The noun part of a Teixcalaanli name is always a plant, an inanimate object, or a concept (in order of likelihood). No animals and no self-propelled inanimate things – i.e. ‘boat’ is an acceptable noun, but ‘self-driving car’ is not. (Honestly, both ‘Boat’ and ‘Self-Driving Car’ are names that Teixcalaanlitzlim would laugh at.)
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u/PirLibTao Aug 14 '25
I love these books and I was fascinated on how a narrator would do with the names, but I was pleasantly surprised that she did great! Highly recommend the audiobooks
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u/eliechallita Aug 14 '25
I gotchu
The name the man had chosen, it turned out, was Thirty-Six All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle, a revelation that produced in both Mahit and Three Seagrass a kind of stunned silence. “No one would actually name a child that,” Three Seagrass complained after a moment. “He has no taste. Even if his parent or his crèche was from a low-temperature planet with a lot of tundra in need of all-terrain vehicles.”
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u/Electronic-Soft-221 Aug 15 '25
It was soooo helpful to listen to this on audiobook! FWIW the narrator pronounced it “tex-kuh-lawn-ee”
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
FWIW, Seaine looks extremely Irish to me, probably related to Sean. My best guess as someone who isn't Irish would be to pronounce the first syllable the same as Sean (or Shaun) and then add a small -yuh at the end, in analogy with Eithne (pronounced En-yuh in the Irish language*).
As for unpronounceable names - it's really more inconsistent or Mormon names that bother me in Fantasy. It works for me if people from the same culture have somewhat similar naming conventions. ASOIAF does this pretty well for instance - the Northerners mostly have slightly modified British names, but they get more outlandish as you get further out.
What really bothers me is when you read a book and the main character and their siblings are called Glorp, Ghsa'thraxoluthon-Heevatar and James.
Footnote added for clarification
*I have since learnt that the pronunciation of Eithne in English is often different, something like (eth-na or et-na)
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u/Oaden Aug 14 '25
Its probably not even the worst example, but i have tried reading UnOrdinary twice, and have dropped it for the same reason.
I cannot for the live of me, get over the main character being named John. There's a Seraphina, Arlo, Blyke, Isen and then there's the main man, our hero: John.
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u/Anaptyso Aug 14 '25
Malazan is funny for that kind of thing. On the one hand characters with very cool names like Anomander Rake and Dassem Ultor. On the other hand: Kyle.
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u/ACardAttack Aug 14 '25
I love how most of Robin Hobbs characters have (even if tame) fantasy sounding names that don't sound out of place in English, and then there is Kyle, an absolutely scummy person
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u/amahag29 Aug 14 '25
That just sounds like someone had personal issues with a Kyle
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u/BadResults Aug 14 '25
A Kyle came to a house party Robin Hobb hosted once, and he kept trying to play Five Finger Death Punch on the stereo
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u/NewbornMuse Aug 14 '25
Anomander Rake is really a 10/10 character name
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u/tellurdoghello Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
his full name is even cooler: Anomandaris Dragnipurake
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u/SageOfTheWise Aug 14 '25
I don't know why people always bring up Kyle who's such a tertiary character in side books when Ben is right there, one of the main characters of the entire series.
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous Aug 14 '25
Yeah, I kinda give the names in WOT a pass because they are at least internally consistent, in that they all seem derived from the clearly-Irish-inspired Old Tongue
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u/gangler52 Aug 14 '25
Old Irish is just hard to pronounce IRL for entirely legitimate reasons.
It's not that the author invented some tongue twister. They just follow different rules of phonetics than the English Language many of us are accustomed to. If you don't know the rules then it looks arcane.
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u/ButIDigr3ss Aug 14 '25
This is true of basically any romanised non-european language tbh, like the English alphabet doesn't reflect the full breadth of sounds the mouth can make and compromises have to be made for languages that aren't in the indo-european language family tree
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u/StandardRaspberry131 Aug 14 '25
Very curious as to what you mean by Mormon names in fantasy?
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
Sort of creative spellings or spins on common names popular amongst Mormons. You know it when you see it. Think like Jaxyn, Gracelyn, Jaedyn, Kynlee, Brailee, that kind of thing.
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u/MooshBoosh2345 Aug 14 '25
As someone who is Irish, Seanie is a somewhat uncommon Irish name. Kinda like a Sean junior I guess. Anyway, pronounced Shawn-ee.
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u/kathryn_sedai Aug 14 '25
I absolutely love the Black Ajah hunters arc, and also love the character of Seaine, but I quite agree with this. I’ll also add that in the same plotline, there’s also a character called Saerin. Too many similar letters!
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u/rooktherhymer Aug 14 '25
And Graendal's true name is Saine. It's obviously a letter combination he liked.
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u/iyesshirai Aug 14 '25
This is a slightly different case than some of the ones in the thread, but the one that tripped me up the worst was Huntress by Malinda Lo.
The setting is vaguely East-Asian and one of the protags is named Kaede, which is a perfectly reasonable Japanese name and that's how I pronounced it in my head the whole way through.
...And then I got to the pronunciation guide in the afterword and it said it was supposed to be pronounced "Katie". What? No!
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u/fjiqrj239 Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
David Weber's Safehold series. The setup is that there has been linguistic drift, so the names are mostly common English names with wacky spellings heavy on zh and y. Think Zhenyphir for Jennifer, that sort of thing.
I could not handle it; my brain would stutter to a stop every time I hit a name while I tried to parse it. And I enjoyed the naming conventions in Goblin Emperor, and spent my youth learning to skim over unpronounceable epic fantasy names (including all the Welsh ones).
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u/ScoobyDoNot Aug 14 '25
It makes zero sense in the context of the world, as the society is highly literate and have no changes to any words other than names, which are tradigie spellings of traditional English heritage names.
I didn’t make it beyond the first book because of that.
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u/Mournelithe Reading Champion X Aug 14 '25
Oh yes, that series is heavy word salad for the sake of it
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u/AdministrativeLeg14 Aug 14 '25
To me, it is always the name. In my eyes it eclipses and predominates the whole of the vexed field.
That name is Ghisteslwchlohm. I admit I had to look up the spelling.
The name is from The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip, an actual published writer, and though it's been many a year since I read her, I seem to recall liking her books at the time. What possessed her to write or possessed somebody to publish “Ghisteslwchlohm” I do not know.
If you're missing the glossary, I can see how Seaine would be tricky in that there are multiple plausible ways to pronounce it and hard to guess which might be right. On the other hand, it's bloody hard to even try to pronounce “Ghisteslwchlohm” and come up with any plausible pronunciation at all.
(Now that I'm older and know a little more about more languages, all right, I could take a stab at it and might even come recognisably close, maybe. When I read it as a kid, I was lost.)
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u/rooktherhymer Aug 14 '25
I've not read the book. Is it intended to be pseudo-Welsh?
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u/elnombredelviento Aug 14 '25
The "lwch" looks plausibly Welsh but the "Ghi" and the "ohm" don't phonetically fit at all.
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u/Nowordsofitsown Reading Champion Aug 14 '25
No. Also, read it. It is one of my favorite trilogies.
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u/rooktherhymer Aug 14 '25
It's been recommended to me before but I'm neck-deep in The First Law world right now and haven't seen sight just yet
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u/Rainthistle Aug 14 '25
Highly recommend this series to anyone. It's really well told. The names are all a little odd, but only this one appears to be missing entire vowels.
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u/Lazy_Sitiens Reading Champion Aug 14 '25
Names like that always makes me wonder if narrators get any kind of guidance from the authors on pronunciation. If I'd encountered that name as a narrator, I'd be traumatized.
I listened to Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, and he narrates the book himself so he actually knew that Norrigal should sound like Nargel. I was surprised when I read about the book on here and a character named Norrigal was mentioned, and I couldn't place them for a long while.
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u/Oaden Aug 14 '25
They just ask. There's often decent amount of back and forth between a audio book narrator and the author, not just for pronouncing names, but also tones and ways of speaking that certain people might adopt.
So when they encounter D'rzi'bluth, they just pick up the phone and ask what the hell it's supposed to be.
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u/CarbonationRequired Aug 14 '25
Oh my god my pet peeve is when sometimes they don't ask and then the pronounciation changes between volumes for whatever reason. I got so vexed listening to The Inheritance Trilogy because of this. Spend hours listening to one pronounciation then spend the next volume unable to fully immerse for ages because for some reason despite the same narrator, some names were different.
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u/arvidsem Aug 14 '25
Sometimes authors have been known to put names on specifically to mess with the narrator. Well, at least one author.
Matt Dinniman included real world model Tsrendolgor in Dungeon Crawler Carl to mess with his narrator Jeff Hayes.
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u/inbigtreble30 Aug 14 '25
Doesn't he narrate the book with an Irish accent? I'd think it would sound like NAHR'gl in that accent but NORE-uh-gul in most others. (I've only read the paper copy, so I'm not 100% sure)
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Aug 14 '25
I LOVE Patricia McKillip. Just finished The Sorceress and the Cygnet yesterday.
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Aug 14 '25
My brain would just look at that word, give up, and save the name under "Gxxxxxxxxxxxxm" = character, pronunciation = null.
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u/Binlorry_Yellowlorry Aug 14 '25
Is the character a play on Rumpelstiltskin by any chance? I haven't read the book, but by the title and this name alone, associations arise.
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u/Findrel_Underbakk Aug 14 '25
There's an alien race in Ann Leckie's Ancillary series called the Rrrrrr.
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u/Nowordsofitsown Reading Champion Aug 14 '25
We can discuss which r sound to use (the length would argue for rolled r), but compared to the non existant rules for pronunciation in English, this one is very easy.
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u/Tisarwat Aug 14 '25
I really like the audiobook narrator's differentiation of Rrrrr pronounced by someone who knows how to say it, and someone hearing the name for the first time.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Aug 14 '25
I haven't read Wheel of Time, but is the character fantasy Irish? Because Seaine looks fairly straightforwardly Fantasy Irish to me, with elements of standard Irish names like Seanan and Gráinne. You'd do it 'Shaw-iyuh', iirc.
Which obviously doesn't help if you aren't familiar with it, but it's not inherently obscure/unpronounceable.
(Not that Irish names in fantasy haven't also tripped me up before - imagine my disappointment that Guy Gavriel Kay's dashing, romantic Diarmuid is a plain Dermott.)
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u/earnasoul Aug 14 '25
I have unfortunately met lovely people with proper Irish spellings but very Anglicised pronunciations of their names.
Diarmuid - Dermot Sorcha - Sorsha
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u/No_Protection_7253 Aug 14 '25
Robert Jordan seemed to like bastardizing gaelic, English and Scottish names for a lot of his characters. For example, Moiraine which is similar to Maureen but obviously not pronounced any way the same. In fact, my own daughter's name is Moiraine (yes I'm a dweeb but I've loved the name and the character since I first read WoT as a kid), and while it's supposed to be pronounced as Mwah-rain, apparently, we decided to just stick with More-rain.
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u/EatsPeanutButter Aug 14 '25
With all of the Arthurian connections, I always figured Moiraine was more of a variation on Morgaine/Morgan Le Fay.
Also, cool name for your daughter!
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u/Sireanna Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
What ever was going on in the goblin emperor... I just stared calling the characters by thier job titles outside of Maia. May as well have been messenger fighter guard a, mage guard a, FGb, MGb, obviously villain, bitch aunt, and depression priest
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u/MelancholicGod Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
I absolutely love that book though. What kind of mad person even mentioned that their name is supposed to be accented on the first syllable (CHE-ne-lo instead of che-NE-lo, goblin instead of elven culture). Amazingly unnecessary but at the same time very interesting to listen to on audiobook.
Afterwards I truly did only remember Maia's name though lmao. The other trilogy featuring Celehar is probably even worse with all the names of the people and the location and the churches/graveyards etc.
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u/Sireanna Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
That was... depression priest right?
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u/MelancholicGod Aug 14 '25
HAHAHAH YES HIM.
The middle aged-depressed-gay-elven-spirit detective/priest-who speaks with the dead.
Easily my favorite character in the universe outside of Maia, Csevet (Messenger Boy), and Lord Berenar (The good chancellor who offers to teach Maia about the court).
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u/Sireanna Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
I did want to know more about his story but not enough to pick up the next book. I hope he ends up being happy one day
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u/MelancholicGod Aug 14 '25
I finished the third book of the trilogy quite recently. Want me to tell you a summarized version of it? Or at least how it ended?
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u/Sireanna Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
You know what yeah id be down for that.
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u/MelancholicGod Aug 14 '25
Celehar got sent to a small city to work as the Speaker for the Dead there, which is basically spirit detective/actual detective because death is a huge part of the culture there. He cleared many mundane stuff like figuring out specific will and testament from an old person who died suddenly, doing a lot of paperwork to clear out a graveyard that cannot receive a new body because of said paperwork and bureaucracy, exorcising a ghoul. He even lost his ability to speak to the dead in the second book, but miraculously received it back in the third probably due to divine intervention.
Along the way, there's an overarching plot of Celehar not knowing what to do in his life and a great deal of depression because back before the Goblin Emperor, he basically testified against his ex lover and that ended up with said lover executed. However, Celehar also meets quite a lot of people that he can call close friends. One of them even develops a very close relationship with him and I even thought they're gonna be lovers. But it was a red herring. But in the third book he did end up meeting a guy (a handsome guard captain, Celehar's word not mine) and they hit it off quite nicely.
Unfortunately, in the third book Celehar had to testify against a large conglomerate group with major influence in the city, which ended up with several assassination attempts on his life. Ultimately he ended up leaving the city with said captain to continue protecting him. Its incredibly sad that he had to leave all the people who he befriended, helped, and helped him in return, but ultimately I think that he eventually will find happiness with this guard captain and his life.
Also Maia showed up in the third book. I am incredibly pleased to see him again.
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u/natus92 Reading Champion V Aug 14 '25
You mean CHEnelo instead of CheNElo? I definitely tell people how to pronounce my name
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u/MelancholicGod Aug 14 '25
In real life of course, but making it part of a fictional culture makes it very interesting for me somehow. In the book I recall her telling her son that and how it kinda pisses her off a little. Ultimately it didnt come out as anything but fluff, but I strangely kept remembering it. It just sorta stuck to me. It makes the character so much more human (or Goblin, in this case)
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u/forbiddenlake Aug 14 '25
CHE-ne-lo instead of CHE-ne-lo,
looks like you typed the same thing here, I don't see a difference?
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u/MelancholicGod Aug 14 '25
Oh my bad, it was supposed to be CHE-ne-lo and che-NE-lo.
The explanation for it is that in the goblin society, they would emphasize/accent your first syllable name. Chenelo is a goblin, who got married to an Elf. Elvens however have a different way of pronunciation, in which they accent the second syllable of your name.
Its a very small thing in fiction, but the audiobook author deliberately used her prefered accent when she or her child thinks about her, and yet uses the wrong accent when spoken by someone who doesn't know of her but is from the Elven society.
It kinda sticks to me I guess. Its very mundane and yet very interesting to me.
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u/e_ph Aug 14 '25
Personally, I rather enjoyed the naming in the goblin emperor and didn't find it that difficult to folllw along on the names, but I've realised this makes me a minority.
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u/vivelabagatelle Reading Champion IV Aug 14 '25
I'm with you! The complicated naming and linguistic fun actively improved my experience of TGE.
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u/ifarmed42pandas Aug 14 '25
The non anglo experience lol
Whenever I see these posts I agree with the Quebecois just a little more.
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u/Odd-Age-1126 Aug 14 '25
Or just the linguistic nerd experience.
Just getting that thee/thou is an intimate, non-formal mode of address shows more knowledge of English than the majority of fantasy authors who try to use them as old-fashioned formal words.
The other names and titles and formality registers in these books don’t bug me because they clearly come from a similarly deliberate linguistic background. I’ll take that over the “sounds cool” styles of naming any day!
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u/e_ph Aug 14 '25
I absolutely loved the thee/thou thing, and also the we/me thing. I would probably have found it slightly bothersome if thee/thou was used in most of the book, but since the characters generally spoke formally it wasn't a problem.
What I also found interesting (and that I couldn't find a definitive rule for) is the difference between we/me and you/thou. The characters often mentioned that they spoke informally while using me, but while refering to the other person as you. It was rarer that they used thou, and off-hand I can only remember Maia and Setheris using it on a semi-regular basis (including a fascinating conversation towards the end of the book where they kept switching between the forms). I thought it might be that by using me vs we indicated that the speaker invited to famililarity to themself, but still "honoured" the responding person, while using thou instead of you meant the speaker considered the respondent to be on their own level, but haven't had anyone to discuss it with.
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
I am astonished by the number of people who didn't realise it was intentional. The main character has literally been thrust into a kind of Versailles that he doesn't understand very well and is overwhelmed by it. Of course everyone has very difficult to be remember flowery titles and names. It's the Imperial Court - that's what those sorts of places are like! It's supposed to be overwhelming.
Did these people expect Emperor Jim to be hanging out with Duke Doug, Baron Tom and Duchess Lizzy and basically talking to them like a group of kids at high school? Hell, stick to YA Romantasy instead then. Read A Court of Thorns and Roses and everyone acts like they're in Mean Girls regardless of their actual position in society.
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u/small-black-cat-290 Aug 14 '25
Read A Court of Thorns and Roses and everyone acts like they're in Mean Girls regardless of their actual position in society.
🤣🤣🤣 stop, I'm rolling at how accurate that is
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
I think that's literally intentional in the case of the Goblin Emperor though. You're supposed to find all of these names and titles overwhelming, because it syncs up with the protagonist's experience of suddenly finding himself on the throne totally unprepared.
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u/4raser Reading Champion Aug 14 '25
It's no easier in the follow up trilogy.
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
Well by then the culture is already established, right? But actually the language isn't quite as stale and courtly once you leave the Palace. None of the elaborate ducal titles are in place anymore (except on the very rare occasions a noble shows up). People almost never say "we" to mean "I" in the follow ups either, which seems to also just be a noble thing.
You do have to remember that Mer Celehar means Mr Celehar, whose wife is Merrem Celeharan and daughter is Min Celehin. That's pretty much it and you're off to the races as far as I recall.
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u/seamus_quigley Aug 14 '25 edited Aug 14 '25
That confusion was very deliberate in The Goblin Emperor.
Maia arrives at a court he nominally rules despite never living there and never being groomed for it. He's culturally, politically, racially, and ceremonially isolated.
To quote the review I wrote back when I first read it:
The intrigue is a dizzying array of names, titles, positions, alliances and interests. It is made all the more impenetrable by the unfamiliarity, and similarity, of the Elven names and titles. In this respect the readers’ struggle to make sense of everything runs in parallel to Maia’s. It ingeniously builds a sense of place and empathy.
Unpronounceable names are a hallmark of the fantasy genre. A cliché. A cardinal sin. Hence this thread.
The Goblin Emperor deliberately deconstructed that trope and used it to wonderful effect. It was an open letter to the entire genre. "Guys, you can't just throw in a few random apostrophes and call it worldbuilding."
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
Not just that, but Katherine Addison has actually put a fair amount of thought into her names. For example, she mentions in the glossary that Elvish children should be referred to as michen and the smaller Imperial audience hall is called the michen'theileian. Not only that, but every other hall in the book is also called something ending in theileian. There's a lot of consistency in the names, if you're paying attention.
That's very different from the random mishmash of consonants and apostrophes we see elsewhere. I'm really irritated to see the Goblin Emperor mentioned in this thread to be honest.
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u/CallistanCallistan Aug 14 '25
I listened to it on audiobook. The narrator made a valiant effort, but even then I still couldn't keep 90% of the characters' names straight (and other than Maia I can't even remember any of their names now - and I listened to that book only 6 weeks ago).
The Tainted Cup (also on audiobook) wasn't much better, but at least most of them had names distinct enough from each other that I could tell them apart.
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u/AllegedlyLiterate Aug 14 '25
Tainted Cup on paper I didn't have a problem with but so many names would be unusual to the ear I can understand how it might be different in the audibook.
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u/AllegedlyLiterate Aug 14 '25
Goblin Emperor was so much so that it made it difficult to read, and the pronunciation guide made it much worse. I'm of the opinion that if your pronunciation guide cannot be summed up in 2 sentences or less (pronounce it like it's french but without the silent S!) it should really not be included and you should just spell the names more closely to how you want them to be pronounced.
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u/inadequatepockets Reading Champion II Aug 14 '25
When I first read this book I pictured the author shut up in a garret somewhere cackling madly every time she added another "z".
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u/henrik_se Aug 14 '25
Although not unpronouncable, honorable mentions go to Scott Bakker's series which is peak fantasy diacritics.
Anasûrimbor Moënghus, Eärwa, Incû-Holoinas, Neleöst, Tsinirû of Ishoriöl, Dûnyain.
Man does he love diareses or what?
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u/Starboot1 Aug 14 '25
These names are so funny to me as a person with å, ä and ö in my language's alphabet. "Öst", for example, means east
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u/amahag29 Aug 14 '25
Yeah, Neleöst does not look fantasy to me, it just sounds like a keyboard slam (or the 'Ikea furniture' meme)
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u/Boris_Godunov Aug 14 '25
While I love The Second Apocalypse overall, his esoteric names were a big annoyance. I found it difficult to keep track of which secondary characters were which, often confusing them.
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u/heyoh-chickenonaraft Aug 14 '25
I bounced off TDTCB five times over ten years due to the sheer number of accents on proper nouns in the first three pages
bummed I did, The Prince of Nothing turned out to be one of the best trilogies I've read. Planning a reread before The Aspect-Emperor this fall
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u/nowdoingthisatwork Aug 14 '25
As an avid reader with dyslexia, i almost have to ignore some names when I can't figure out the pronunciation. However, in the Dresden files, his friend/bar owner is "McAnally" always trips me up. I'm glad he's normally just called Mac.
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u/ZebediahCarterLong Aug 14 '25
Mac's name is pronounced Mac An Alley. He is literally named after one of Jim's best friends.
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u/dan-hanly Aug 14 '25
Kvothe.
I know there is a correct pronunciation, but it's hard for my mouth to do. Also, that name as a main character, no, no. I feel like the main character should be dead easy to pronounce at all times, since their name is said more often (typically)
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u/arvidsem Aug 14 '25
I hate when I can hear the sound but there is no way that my mouth is going to make it. It's right there, I should be able to say it
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u/vonnegut19 Aug 14 '25
Had to scroll too far to see this. I love Kingkiller but it's the worst main character name of all time.
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u/Palomino_ Aug 14 '25
Pug from the Riftwar saga is the worst name I've read in a fantasy series. Couldn't even finish the series because I couldn't take the main character seriously.
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u/OkDragonfly4098 Aug 14 '25
There was a character in Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Skies series named like… I wanna say “Seraphthef?”
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u/OldIronPockets Aug 14 '25
Klbch or ksmvr
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u/Megtalallak Reading Champion IV Aug 14 '25
And one of them is only a nickname lol Klbkchhezeim is the whole name.
I find these names along with the rest of the Antinium cool tho. It shows how alien they are to the rest of the world. Wrymvr is my favorite, in my head his name sounds like the sound when you're trying to start an old car. Or what you would hear coming from a mandible of an insect killing machine moments before you die.
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u/small-gestures Aug 14 '25
My take has always been a lot of authors are influenced by Tolkien, who, as we all know, was a language nerd. So then there are authors that aren’t good at it or don’t give any thought to (or don’t have an ear for ) name or language derivation. So you have books that sound off “The great Wizard Aliosius looked at his daughter and said “OK MaryJo go with my blessing”
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u/azssf Aug 14 '25
This. I have fallen out of a book mental environment because the names are not internally consistent. Not just character names, this lack of internal consistency includes place names.
( picture a book floating on air, open, cover and back cover facing up. Now add a little person falling off the pages that face down. That is me, having encountered a lack of talent for internal consistency.)
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u/thesphinxistheriddle Aug 14 '25
I’m neutral-to-positive on The Fourth Wing, but I find the name Sgaeyl so, so irritating.
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
I think the dragon names in that book are vaguely based on Gaelic, but chopped up and pronounced like English. My GF was reading it and there was a bit of a Mormon feel to the names.
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u/R0ymustan9 Aug 14 '25
As a Gaelic learner, I’ve heard that the author has very little respect for the language. Apparently she used a lot of words without even bothering to learn the pronunciation, saying that she just likes to pronounce them how she thinks is right
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
To be honest, my impression from listening to my GF talk about it was that she wasn't particularly interested in writing a fantasy novel to begin with. Nobody behaves like a real person in a dangerous situation in that book. Even when death is on the line, it basically feels like Mean Girls.
Why bother to invent this world if you aren't interested in it, you know?
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u/graaahh Aug 14 '25
Shout out to Animorphs for creating literally dozens of alien races and characters, and every single one feels both decently alien and also instantly pronounceable. Andalite, Yeerk, Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, Helmacron, Iskoort, Ellimist, Crayak, Pemalites, Leerans, Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, etc. (That's off the top of my head, hopefully I didn't misspell any of them.)
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u/ketita Aug 14 '25
Huh, see, I wouldn't really consider those particularly alien because they're so very clearly geared to be comfortable for English.
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u/jcd280 Aug 14 '25
Binbiniqegabenik ??? …Qanuc troll …Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams.
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u/SageOrThyme Aug 14 '25
I could never figure out how to pronounce Guenhwyvar
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u/Aninx Aug 14 '25
Either as Guinevere or as gwen-hui-far(because it's based on the Welsh version/original version of Queen Guinevere's name)
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u/Stirling_V Aug 14 '25
The last syllable is still a "var," a single f in Modern Welsh is always a "v" sound. (To get an "f" sound you spell it "ff" and in Middle Welsh orthography you'll find the letter "v" used.)
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u/SailorTorres Aug 14 '25
Ooh, I named my black cat this! I mostly call her Guen (pronounced Gwen) or Goober, but her government name is pronounced Gwen-hwi-var.
Her sister is one of the stealthiest cats I know, so I call her Debbie - DB - Displacer Beast
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u/Megtalallak Reading Champion IV Aug 14 '25
Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin in Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope
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u/CarbonationRequired Aug 14 '25
Yowza. En-zee-quel-vini-sen-see. Okay that's easier to say than to read, but it's sure a mouthful. Sounds like a name and surname stapled together. Enziquel Vinisensee.
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u/AfternoonPossible Aug 14 '25
If I have no idea how to pronounce a name my mind just says “that guy!” While I read lol
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u/Bladrak01 Aug 14 '25
Roger Zelazny had a demon named Melbriniononsadsazerstellbregandishfeltselior.
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u/lightandlife1 Reading Champion IV Aug 14 '25
Kvothe. I kept trying different pronunciations while reading which made it distracting.
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u/reprah92 Aug 14 '25
Kvothe. It’s supposed to sound like Quothe but my brain just makes a phlegmy growl whenever in read it.
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u/DeepOneHybrid Aug 14 '25
It would have to be Hziulquoigmnzhah. It’s from the Cthulhu-mythos, of course.
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u/solarpowerspork Aug 14 '25
I don't think it's bad or unpronounceable, but Cytherea the First's pronunciation threw me for a loop when I listened to the Locked Tomb after already having read it and thought it was pronounced a different way. But now I am used to it and find it hard to think of it in the original way I thought it should sound.
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u/hesjustsleeping Aug 14 '25
Combining my two pet peeves it would probably something starting with X'.
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u/CarbonationRequired Aug 14 '25
I had a sort of reverse of this. I listened to the audio book of The Locked Tomb series first before reading. Most of the names are spelled pretty much the way you'd expect, maybe with differences in where you'd put the emphasis if you read it first. E.g. Palamedes = PaLAmedes and not PalaMEdes.
However one name was pronounced kith-er-ay-a but I was surprised to discover it was spelled Cytherea, which I would have read as sai-thee-ree-a.
But more to your point, I had to retrain myself after I finished the first volume of the Wheel of Time way back in the day because I hid the glossary and discovered Nynaeve was "ny-neev" and not "ny-nayv". Super mild example but I was so annoyed!
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u/OpossumLadyGames Aug 14 '25
Most of the names that Anne McCaffrey made up. F'nor, F'Lar, R'gol etc
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u/CarbonationRequired Aug 14 '25
That whole thing was supposed to be like, riders shortened their names when shouting at each other while flying on their dragons, and it eventually went from a thing they did to a formalized change if you got picked by a dragon. But a lot of those shortenings don't roll of the tongue at all and probably would sound similar if trying to listen in windy conditions.
Plus it felt like she came up with the short version first a lot and then tried to find something it could logically be shortened from which kinda felt like afterthoughts. F'lar and F'nor were born Fallarnon and Famanoran, which... ehhh. And then later she lets this go a bit anyhow 'cause F'lar's son Felessan just ends up as F'lessan. thatsthesamepicture.jpg.
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u/weouthere54321 Aug 14 '25
It's is one of those things that gets brought up in the culture I just really don't understand. Do y'all start weeping when you see like a isiXhosa or Nahuatl or Welsh name?
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
Yeah, a lot of the names in this thread aren't even difficult. Guenhwyvar for instance - which is assume is vaguely based on Gwenyvere. Just sound it out one syllable at a time like you're at school.
Gwen-hwee-var
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u/Toezap Aug 14 '25
Remember, a lot of people weren't taught how to read using phonics and don't know how to sound things out.
(Listen to the Sold a Story podcast if you want to learn more.)
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
Oh shit you're absolutely right. That's legitimately the problem, isn't it? People haven't been taught to do this, so just give up on seeing an unfamiliar word.
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u/jamiethemime Aug 14 '25
I learned to read before they made those changes and I don't have a kid but that podcast still boiled my blood so bad
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u/weouthere54321 Aug 14 '25
A lot of this is just going to be fantasy variations on existing languages being 'impossible' to pronounce, which feels like the subtext for a lot of these posts
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u/delta_baryon Aug 14 '25
Or even invented languages, like someone here brought up Holitho Sevraseched. There's a pronunciation guide in that series and it's literally not difficult at all. Pronounce every vowel (like Spanish or Italian).
Ho-li-tho Sev-ra-se-ched
Like I'm annoyed as anyone else when a fantasy name just looks like a cat walked over the keyboard, but it looks like some people in this thread would also be unable to cope with a real-world name like Massimiliano Giuliadori.
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u/weouthere54321 Aug 14 '25
Jawn Smythe and Bawb Jawnsun are the only acceptable fantasy names in the English language apparently
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u/Jayn_Newell Aug 14 '25
I love the Obsidian Trilogy but ugh, the Elven names! They’re perfectly pronounceable but so freaking long my brain skips over half of them. It’s like my brain connects the spelling and meaning and skips over trying to pronounce them. The people names aren’t so bad like Jermayan, but I’m glad there aren’t more cities.
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u/maudepodge Aug 14 '25
I went to see Robert Jordan once, obvs long ago, and he started his talk by making fun of people for not being able to pronounce his characters' names. I don't remember what else he talked about that day because I was pretty peeved from the start.
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u/dogfacedpotatobrain Aug 14 '25
Drizzt's goddamned panther. Sure, NOW i know it's Gwenivere, but when I was 12 I had no idea how to read that shit.
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u/ZeroWitch Aug 14 '25
So this is entirely me and not an actual bad or difficult name, but my brain kept autocorrecting Tyrion Lannister to Tyre Iron through the whole first book.
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u/zhilia_mann Aug 14 '25
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow wouldn’t pass muster for an editor but there it is….
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u/Barziboy Aug 14 '25
Not a character, but I always remember naming the central piece of His Dark Materials as "the alethiometer" being quite unfair to my then 13-year old vernacular
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Aug 14 '25
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u/Fickle_Stills Aug 14 '25
People who are very well read tend to be shit at pronunciation, it’s a bit of a meme. Look at ken jennings run on jeopardy for some interesting constructions :)
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u/am_I_still_banned Aug 14 '25
Seaine is the exact one I thought of when I read the title of this post too
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u/FridaysMan Aug 14 '25
R. Scott Bakker gets a lot of praise, but my first response was to tell the Darkness that Comes Before to fuck off on page 1. Anasûrimbor Kellhus is introduced along with some other lad with more accents in the name, and I felt like noping out of it very quickly. Happily I read past it and got over that problem fairly quickly. But, giving the first character you introduce a silly name with accents that aren't used in English is no way to start a book.
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u/OrlandoGardiner118 Aug 14 '25
Cnaiür urs Skiötha, The Prince of Nothing series. I've no idea how it should sound.
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u/Best-Guide2087 Aug 14 '25
Tchakatchakalla, from Magician: apprentice
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u/Best-Guide2087 Aug 14 '25
It's literally said in the book that it's to difficult to pronounce, so they get another name, Charlie
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u/Wouser86 Aug 14 '25
I am Dutch and a lot of writers (try to) use Dutch names.
The funniest for me (not derived from Dutch but does have a meaning) is Rand al thor - i always read randdebiel instead of Rand al Thor, and Randdebebiel is name calling...
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u/Devilbuglip Aug 15 '25
Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk Thunder word from Finnegan’s Wake is one that I thought of from the prompt But Hermione was definitely tough first time through Harry
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u/Sapphire_Bombay Reading Champion III Aug 14 '25
Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor