I'm writing a book that I guess is closest to "Urban Fantasy" in genre, and takes place somewhere near Chicago--so, the characters all have names that people in the US would be familiar with: there's a minotaur named Katrina and a satyr named Earl (but it's supposed to be a little bit funny that these non-human characters have very human-sounding names). And then there's a Tammy, a Laura, an Andrew, and a Joe (who's actually a woman). There are a couple of less common names, but you get the idea.
But if a story is epic fantasy, or science fiction with non-human characters, I expect there to be unfamiliar, and perhaps difficult to pronounce (for me) names.
It's a little silly to expect characters who live in a place that isn't the US, on a planet that isn't Earth, to have American-sounding names. I think that would bug me more than a really long name with umpteen consonants in a row that I couldn't for the life of me pronounce--there are people in Africa whose language includes a series of clicks that no Westerner could possibly pronounce, so why wouldn't it be the same on another planet? People need to get out of their box already.
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I'm writing a book that I guess is closest to "Urban Fantasy" in genre, and takes place somewhere near Chicago--so, the characters all have names that people in the US would be familiar with: there's a minotaur named Katrina and a satyr named Earl (but it's supposed to be a little bit funny that these non-human characters have very human-sounding names). And then there's a Tammy, a Laura, an Andrew, and a Joe (who's actually a woman). There are a couple of less common names, but you get the idea.
But if a story is epic fantasy, or science fiction with non-human characters, I expect there to be unfamiliar, and perhaps difficult to pronounce (for me) names.
It's a little silly to expect characters who live in a place that isn't the US, on a planet that isn't Earth, to have American-sounding names. I think that would bug me more than a really long name with umpteen consonants in a row that I couldn't for the life of me pronounce--there are people in Africa whose language includes a series of clicks that no Westerner could possibly pronounce, so why wouldn't it be the same on another planet? People need to get out of their box already.