Something I'm kind of struggling to wrap my head around. Is there a way for multiple word given names to work in English? Have you ever seen it done well? Just from a grammatical standpoint, it seems very difficult to construct sentences around a character with a name that is made up of multiple normal english words.

I don't even have any examples of such names yet because while I have the concept of a world in which names are supposed to be very directly and unambiguously meaningful, I haven't come up with one yet that doesn't completely fail a basic "Hello, my name is" test

Basically, how do I break English name rules without it sounding 110% fucked up?

  • Kuori [she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    so i don't think you really can break the naming conventions without it sounding weird but there is precedent for this in english. you might be familiar with the concept of virtue names (grace, charity, hope, etc).

    per wikipedia:

    Some Puritan virtue names were compound imperatives, such as "Search-the-scriptures" or "Praise-God". An example of the use of "Praise-God" as a name is Praise-God Barebone, whose son Nicholas may have been given the name If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      There's a pasta of Millenial versions of this. I think one of them was like Curse-God-and-Walk-Backwards-In-To-Hell Smith.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        https://www.google.com/amp/s/variablejabberwocky.tumblr.com/post/166362371547/motorizedduck-thischick25/amp

        Found it.

    • booty [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ooh, imperatives as names is kinda badass actually. Some very good inspiration there.