{"id":31674,"date":"2016-03-11T06:30:01","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T17:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=31674"},"modified":"2016-03-10T20:57:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:57:58","slug":"fashions-in-names-yes-even-in-fantasy-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2016\/03\/11\/fashions-in-names-yes-even-in-fantasy-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashions In Names—Yes, Even in Fantasy Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever noticed that there can be fashions in names for Fantasy characters, just as there are in real life?<\/p>\n

\"ash_malindalo_500-200x304\"<\/a>Take “Ash” as in Aislinn\/Aisling\/Ashleen for example. It’s a real name, but in the mid-Noughts it ‘suddenly’ made a strong showing in Fantasy novels, particularly those with a YA flavour.<\/p>\n

\"wicked-lovely-uk-cover-melissa-marr-593248_298_480\"<\/a>For example, Katie MacAllister’s Guardian<\/strong> series, published between 2004 – 2007, features protagonist Aisling Grey. In 2007, Ash — short for Aislinn — was the lead character in Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely, <\/em>while in 2009 Malinda Lo’s Ash<\/em> (a retelling of Cinderella) had another Aisling as the main character.<\/p>\n

\"Bell<\/a>Almost simultaneously, Patricia McKillip brought out The Bell At Sealey Head<\/em> (2008), which featured an Aislinn House as its (arguably) central location. Yet here’s where this gets really fun: one of the occupants of Aislinn House, and a main character in the book, was called Ysabo.<\/p>\n

\"Ysabel\"<\/a>The previous year, 2007, Guy Gavriel Kay had published his standalone novel, Ysabel<\/em>, with a main character of the same name — while Melina Marchetta’s first foray into Fantasy, the novel titled Finnikin of the Rock<\/em>, had a main character called Isaboe. Noticing a trend, anyone?<\/p>\n

\"Finnikin<\/a>Of course, all are variants of “Isabel” — so I must not omit Bella, short for Isabella, of the Twilight<\/strong> saga (2005 – 2008) fame.<\/p>\n

\"Graceling<\/a>Last but not least, I have to mention “Kat” — with Katsa in Kristin Cashore’s Graceling<\/em> (2008), and Katniss in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games <\/em>(also 2008).
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"200px-Hunger_games\"<\/a>I’m sure there are many more you can point to, but I thought these were sufficient to illustrate how there really can be fashions in Fantasy names at certain points in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever noticed that there can be fashions in names for Fantasy characters, just as there are in real life? Take “Ash” as in Aislinn\/Aisling\/Ashleen for example. It’s a real name, but in the mid-Noughts it ‘suddenly’ made a strong showing in Fantasy novels, particularly those with a YA flavour. For example, Katie MacAllister’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epicfantasy","category-funstuff","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31674"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31684,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31674\/revisions\/31684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}