The power of names is an important them in Fantasy literature, one I first became aware when reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. Similar themes crept into later favourites, such as Patricia McKillip’s The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy and standalones such as The Forgotten Beast of Eld.

When beginning to write The Heir of Night, the opening novel in my own The Wall Of Night series, I felt—and still feel—that names were an important way to give coherency to cultures and societies within a world, and so consciously sought to use common root syllables for names within the story’s Derai Alliance. In doing so, I thought (and still think) a lot about how a name both looks on the page and sounds when spoke aloud, often writing down several variants and also speaking them aloud with the “picture” of the character in my mind, to make sure that the name and character “fit.”

In The Gathering of the Lost (The Wall of Night Book Two), the series moves away from the Wall of Night and the Derai

Alliance, which dominated the first book, into the wider world of Haarth. This transition opens up new societies and landscapes in which I used names to help create a coherent identity for each culture. For example, much of the action in the second book takes place in the dukedom of Emer, famous for its armored knights. But the very fact that Emer is a dukedom is a hint to those versed in their history, that the Emerian knights are loosely based on those of Burgundy.

Building on the Burgundian element, I chose a pattern of names that is largely French in origin. The heyday of the Burgundian knights was the late-middle to late Middle Ages, but because Burgundy was for a long time a quasi-autonomous fief of the Holy Roman Empire, I felt that Old French forms of the names, such as Raher and Hirluin for example, were most appropriate. Recognising the Norse influence on regions such as Normandy in that older time, I also included some names, such as Audin, that reference that influence. Other names, such as Ghiselaine, speak to the diversity of the Holy Roman Empire—and Burgundy’s relationships within that—by bringing in a more Bohemian influence.

Given the marrying of both French and Burgundian influences however, the era of the troubadors and minnesingers could not be left out, so in addition to introducing a tradition of “springtime love”, Emerian society also includes names such as Alianor.

Although these influences have been deliberately blurred both geographically and time-wise, I believe there is enough of a “French/Burgundian” and “Middle Ages” core to provide cultural coherence and distinguish Emer from other realms within Haarth. The reason I believe the geographic and temporal influences need to be blurred, i.e. to allude rather than being definitive, is because I am writing Fantasy, not History (not even alternate history.) Haarth is a completely “other” world, not this world, and Emer is not Burgundy, so allusion adds colour and texture, but does not define the society or map out its history.

Part 2 will follow next week.

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This post is adapted from one I wrote for Abhinav Jain's "Names" series, 
a few years back now.