"No, you don't understand," the White Knight said: "That's what the name is *called*."

[melannen]

Talk to me about what we call our characters.

And I don't mean in a story we're writing: that's its own problem, but it also always comes down to the story. I mean when we talk about shared characters outside of story - in our journals, in chatting, in meta, in captions - what names do we choose to use?

This comes up a lot in Untamed/MDZS fandom, of course, with the characters who all have three names, except the ones that don't, as complicated by filtering through different cultural understanding.

But it's not just fandoms in translation - one of my first fic fandoms was Earthsea, where characters all have a use-name and a truename. At least in Earthsea it's in-universe canon that a character's truename is always used (if there's anyone left to tell it) in the stories that are told about them after they're gone, so I am confident in calling Ged Ged and Estarriol Estarriol when I talk about their stories from this end (although Ogion is still called Ogion far more often than Aihal).

And even in fandom much closer to ours, there's the question of first names and nicknames and surnames. Is it Snape or Severus, Draco or Malfoy when I talk about them with others? I always call Holmes Holmes, because even Watson calls him Holmes, so who am I to call him Sherlock, but in modern adaptations it's Sherlock. When I was a kid, Captain Kirk was always Captain Kirk, but somewhere in there the Captain started feeling awkward (and in my head I often call him Jim, because, well, you know what 'Jim' means in Romulan :P), though half the time I still use it by habit anyway.

Meanwhile Captain Jack Sparrow is always Captain Jack Sparrow. Bruce Wayne is Bruce Wayne to me even though he's Batman to himself because it's Bruce Wayne I want to know better (but he's always Bruce Wayne because just Bruce is Bruce Banner.) Meanwhile Kal-el and Clark and Superman to me all refer to different facets of the same man, and I'll swap them around.

I sometimes feel like there's a general change as a fandom gets larger and/or older for fans in general to shift to less formal and more familiar forms of address for their characters, but I have no data on this, and maybe it's a general overall shift with time over all fandoms, more toward first names (do smushnames affect this?)

And, of course, there is the long and hallowed tradition of calling your fandom faves by embarrassing and/or mushy pet names whenever you can get away with it!

So what do you call your favorites? Do you have any fandoms where the naming of characters is especially tricky, or where something the rest of fandom does bug you or endears you? What are your thoughts on what we call our characters?

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I don't distinguish between "marinette dupain cheng" and "ladybug" or between "adrien agreste" and "chat noir" for Miraculous Ladybug Tumblr tagging purposes. Depending on which persona each one is being at the time, though, I might tag "ladynoir", "ladrien", "adrienette", "marichat", "snekmouse", "love square", or more than one of the above. And Ladybug/Snake!Adrien is Ladrien, Chat Noir/Rat!Marinette is Marichat, and Biker!Marinette/Banana!Adrien is Ladynoir, I don't care what anyone else says about it. (Snake!Adrien/Rat!Marinette is sort of Adrienette but also sort of not, and it's like Ladynoir but it explicitly isn't Ladynoir. Identity porn is fun!)

(Yes, the episode in which Marinette and Adrien don't have access to the magic that make them Ladybug and Chat Noir, but still need to go out and be Ladybug and Chat Noir without blowing their secret identities, involves Adrien in a banana costume on a foot-propelled scooter, in obvious contrast to Marinette and her bicycle, badass motorcyclist suit, and tinted/polarized/something-so-people-can't-see-in helmet. Yes, this even almost makes sense in context.)

Kagami is always "kagami tsurugi", though, never "ryuko", even when she's being Ryūko. And whenever she's shipped with either of the above characters, it's "adrigami" or "marigami" or "adrigaminette", regardless of which persona any of them is being at the time.

[polarissruler]

Now I really need to watch the rest of the show... If I remember where I dropped out, that's it.

[melannen]

Yeah, Tumblr tags are, as always, their own pile of mess...

[alexseanchai]

oh are we also talking about how characters refer to each other and themselves?

in ML, people refer to Marinette and Ladybug as though they are two separate individuals, if they are not (and most people are not) aware that these are the same person. that's not optional. in my fic, she herself thinks of herself as whichever one she is being at the time. which can get complicated quick—like, as Multimouse, she is being Marinette and Chat Noir knows it, but she's not not being Ladybug, either, and she wants to keep those three identities separate for everyone else's benefit—but it means I as writer have an easier time keeping track of which one of her others are seeing, and I can occasionally do cool tricks by having her internal narrative refer to her as one of them when she's definitely being the other one. and people who know her as both, I'm having them mostly do the same thing of referring to her as whichever one she happens to be being, unless pointedly distancing the other one—like Adrien when talking to Marinette in the presence of people who don't know she's Ladybug (when he does know) will talk about Ladybug as though she isn't present.

most of that transposes to the other secret identities in play, too. not all—I don't think Alya has ever once thought of Nino as Carapace, since she figured out Carapace was Nino about five seconds after his superheroic debut, and I think Nino stopped thinking of Alya as Rena Rouge the moment he learned those are the same person—but most.

GuardianKarenTerrier makes a point of Adrien thinking of himself as Adrien no matter whether he's being Adrien or Chat Noir at the time.

[highlander_ii]

when chatting w/ a fandom friend, we end up reducing most of the characters down to first initial unless that's super confusing. so, like with Suits - H = Harvey; M = Mike; R = Rachel; D = Donna.

we've picked up discussing a lot of Phantom of the Opera recently, which presents some additional problems with different actors in different performances of the characters - so they get listed by actor or performance depending on how different they are.

[melannen]

Initials only used to be super common, didn't they? I remember when Harry/Draco was H/D and Kirk/Spock was K/S. These days I'd be really hesitant to do that outside of a private chat, though, too many fandoms!

Les Mis fandom used ! bang notation a lot for actor!characters, but I never watched any enough performances to get very involved in that.

[china_shop]

I quite often use initials when talking about Guardian characters, especially for three-syllabled characters like ZYL (Zhao Yunlan). I used to always refer to the Envoy as the Black-Cloaked Envoy or the BCE, but now just "the Envoy" seems sufficient a lot of the time -- which is definitely a familiarity thing. I tend to use the Chinese term in dialogue for nuance (Hei Pao Shi, Hei Lao Ge, Hei Pao Shi Daren), but the English translation in narration. No idea if that makes sense/feels consistent to anyone else, though. :-)

[trobadora]

I used to always refer to the Envoy as the Black-Cloaked Envoy or the BCE, but now just "the Envoy" seems sufficient a lot of the time -- which is definitely a familiarity thing.

Same here. I still use "BCE" or even the full "Black-Cloaked Envoy" when I want to emphasize the (political or quasi-mythical) weight of the role, but otherwise ...

[krait]

There is nothing to top Silmarillion fandom when it comes to names. Tolkien's delight in heaping name upon name on his characters really outdoes any other author.

Even Nirvana in Fire's Lín Shū | Méi Chángsū | Sū Zhé can't hold a candle to Nelyafinwë ("Nelyo") | Maitimo | Russandol ("Russo") Fëanorion, Maedhros the Tall, Prince of the Ñoldor, High King of the Ñoldor, Lord of Himring and the March, Maedhros the Kinslayer, Maedhros Self-Slain. :D

And then the author added in a few more variations due to linguistic shift and regional dialect, if that wasn't enough for you. (It's also sometimes spelled Maidros and is technically an Anglicised version of Maeðros, which its owner would likely have pronounced Maeðroþ.)

[melannen]

Nothing like having a linguist as your canon writer! Although some RL historical/mythical figures get almost as bad.

[pedanther]

In Doctor Who fandom, there's the additional challenge of identifying which version of the title character one is referring to. Common variations back when I was most active included both formal and casual versions of the ordinal, ie. "the First Doctor", "the Second Doctor", "the Third Doctor" vs "One", "Two", "Three" -- with some of the people using the formal version getting quite sniffy about how the casual version was Obviously Wrong -- and also formal and casual versions of the actor name, eg. "the William Hartnell Doctor", "the Patrick Troughton Doctor", "the Jon Pertwee Doctor" vs "Bill!Doc", "Pat!Doc", "Jon!Doc", etc.

[unfeathered]

LOL, I remember when I first got into DW fandom (I'd always watched it, but only entered fandom after Torchwood aired) and got so confused by people talking about "Ten" all the time. I thought it must be an abbreviation of "Tennant" (logical!) until they started mentioning "Nine" as well, and then it finally twigged... :-D

Because to me, as a viewer but not a fan, then yes they'd always been called by the actor's name. But calling them by number makes it so much easier! (You know, until you get ones who you don't know where they fit, and obviously it doesn't work with the Master either...)

[tielan]

For me, it always comes down to the point in time where the story is set, the intimacy of the characters, and, of course, canon reference.

The classic examples that come to mind for me are Stargate SG1 generally: who refers to whom by what name is very dependent on whose POV I'm coming from. It always made writing AUs rather interesting.

Or are you referring to how I talk about the characters when in discussion with other fans?

[melannen]

I mean how you talk in discussion, but we're getting both in comments and they're both interesting!

[luckyzukky]

ooh this is a cool question! in the hello project fandom, and in most j-idol fandoms, fans usually switch between calling idols by their first name, last name, or official nickname.

usually when they're called by their last name it's because another idol in the same group (or another closely related group) has the same first name, so it's easier saying their last name to differentiate. i see this in h!p fandom when people are talking about hamaura ayano and kawamura ayano, but say their last names so they aren't confused.

but most of the time people just talk about idols using their nicknames, since it seems less formal and it's just a cute way to refer to idols. an example is people talking about sato masaki and kudo haruka by their nicknames, maachan and duu. for me, i usually use nicknames too, but if an idol has a really short name (like dambara ruru) and a nickname sounds weird i'll just use their first name lol

[melannen]

I think there is a tendency to go with nicknames faster in RPF fandoms overall, even in US fandoms. It's interesting!

[hannah]

Spike is the best-known name, the one for swagger, everyday conversations, new people, introductions, the one everybody better remember. William is both more removed and impersonal and formal, and way more intimate at the same time, and that depends on how it's said and who's speaking.

I just started The Americans, and it begins with the two main characters - deep cover KGB spies - only knowing each other by their assigned identities. They don't share their birth names with each other so they don't think of their partner as someone other than their cover identity. And even after that information comes up - in a deeply private, personal moment meant as a crack in the facade, this reaching for true connection in a life of lies - they still think of each other as the cover names, because that's how they met, and that's how they fell in love.

[sophia_sol]

I run into this problem semi-regularly when I join new fandoms and then have to figure out what names to use in tags when bookmarking fic to my pinboard. When I'm still new to a fandom and haven't yet settled into whatever's most comfortable to call the characters it's hard to know what version of the name to call them! Is it the name they call themself in their internal narration, is it the name most other characters call them, is it the name that third-person prose in canon calls them, is it a common nickname, etc. Depending on the fandom, it will end up being very different answers! I sometimes have to go back and change all my tags after I've been reading in the fandom for a little while. And sometimes I disagree with my past self's choices but then never quite get around to fixing the tags so I have some weird tags in places.

Anyway possibly my most idiosyncratic choice of what name to call a character is that I always call Jean Prouvaire by Jean Prouvaire or Prouvaire, as VHuggs does, rather than Jehan the way Amis fandom does. Jehan is canonically established as a name he chooses to go by among friends so that's extremely valid of people to call him, but to me it feels weird to be on a more intimate name-basis with him than his author is. So Prouvaire it is. (Also then it matches the rest of the Amis who don't get any first name.)

[melannen]

Yeah, it doesn't add much to call him Jean Prouvaire or Jehan given that all the other characters in that fandom also have the first name Jean. :D

(I do wonder how much of his fanon characterization is derived *just* from the fact that he has a first name where the others don't though - it gives fandom somehow a different interaction with him.)

[primeideal]

I have that issue with Amis fandom too--most people call another character Bossuet, so I feel like I want to call him Laigle just to be contrary.

Les Mis fandom is randomly guessing at characters' first names, Animorphs fandom is randomly guessing at characters' last names. ;)

[melannen]

THe problem with not calling him Bossuet is that then you have to decide if it's Laigle or Lesgles or L'Aigle or....

[goldgust]

I feel you about Holmes over Sherlock! Generally I go with whatever the narration / in-game text of a canon uses, and if that's absent I feel presumptuous and overly friendly (to a fictional character...) if I use a first name that barely any of the characters do. I also like to collapse names down (Hokuto>hkt, Martin>mr, etc, as long as it's clear in context) which is something that grew out of not wanting to show up in keyword searches on Twitter.

[melannen]

Oh, yeah, the not showing up in search issue! Its own fun.

I wonder how many people share that feeling with us of being overly friendly with names! Clearly a lot of people don't. :D

[stellar_dust]

Two .. okay, three thoughts on this.

1. Having just finished Temeraire, it was definitely sometimes a bit weird to read a story where everyone generally is called by their last name, except for some people (Napoleon, Demane), and lots of people have last names that are also first names (Roland, Laurence). I don't know what the fandom does with this but I would imagine it follows canon?

2. Politics is less of a "fandom" these days than it used to be I guess, but during the (US) Democratic primary I found it fascinating to see which candidate got called by their first vs. last name and under what circumstances, and by the campaign vs. news media vs. commentary.

3. I definitely headcanon that Crowley under no circumstances calls Aziraphale by a diminutive form of his name. Crowley's taken such pains with his own name that I don't think he'd take liberties with the name of someone he respects, unless they ask him to or if he's being an arse on purpose, and I doubt it would ever cross Aziraphale's mind to ask for it. (But although it's annoying, a stray Zira here and there isn't enough on its own to make me back out of an otherwise good story.)

Ok, I lied: 4. Speaking of angels ... the Cas vs. Cass issue for Castiel. I prefer Cas because .. his full name only has one S. But the closed-captions on Netflix spell it Cass and the double-letter spelling has entered both entertainment news media and fandom in some circles.

[melannen]

I have a problem with the Zira thing especially because in GO oldfandom it was semi-fanon that Zirah was roleswap AU demon!Aziraphale. And maybe partly because of that, it also just feels like an awkward nickname formation? He's English, surely if it did get shortened it would turn into Azza or Zol or something silly like that.

But yeah, I don't think Crowley would alter a person's name without them requesting it of him. (Aziraphale is too long to type though, which is probably why I overuse Angel.)

[polarissruler]

In most of the fandoms, I don't have that problem. But if I try writing a Fate/ story... It becomes a mess of Sabers, Pendragons, Arthurs, Artorias, Arthuria (because I randomly misspel her name like that) and so on. And don't get me started with the otehr Servants.

EDIT: How could I forget? There's the eternal question of how to spell a name when there's no official (or even worse - not any at all) English translation.

[melannen]

Oh, yeah, lack of a consensus English translation makes everything worse. (And then there's the question of camel caps in Chinese names.)

[yourlibrarian]

Merlin fandom and the MCU are the exact opposite of one another it seems. I've occasionally seen "Merls" or "Morgs" or "Gana" used but in canon everyone was known by a single name with no nicknames (for example Gwen was known as Gwen and not Guinevere even though that was acknowledged as her full name). Most people were never given a last name either.

In the MCU Tony Stark probably accounts for the majority of nickname use. But when you've got people with two identities, I think it's likely there will be more nicknames. Lots of people call Steve Rogers "Cap", Clint calls Natasha, "Nat", she calls him Clint but others call him Barton. They're much less often referred to as Widow or Hawkeye. Bruce is Bruce to everyone, and some of them also call Hulk "The Other Guy" as he does, perhaps as a form of politeness. I can't recall anyone calling Bucky "James." Most just call him Barnes, although in fanfic he does go by James with certain people, especially those who hadn't known of him prior to meeting him.

One thing I get tired of in reading Tony/Loki fic is Tony constantly using the same nicknames he used in canon for Loki. But then Ragnarok made it canon that the one off he used for Thor got used regularly.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Tony strikes me as the sort to nickname profusely, but occasionally find one he really likes and immortalizes in one or another way. At which point he uses it less indiscriminately.

With Loki, it strikes me he'd want to keep his Game fast and furious.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Yeah, I mostly call him post-Winter Soldier "Barnes" or Tumblr tag as James Buchanan Barnes because Steve and people of that era call him Bucky and I'm not that inner circle. I'll call him Bucky sometimes for clarity with fen but in my mind, he's only Bucky or Sarge until he falls off the train.

Jerk or troll, well, I do write him so that's pretty intimate. I normally do provide much better conditions than canon.

[melannen]

Bucky Barnes is a super interesting case since his identity questions are so marked in canon and so interesting to fandom!

I will admit to still growling in frustration when people call him the Asset like it's a codename, though - asset is a generic term in spycraft! They're all assets in Shield's account books, it's not special for the Soldier! I will die on this hill! Anyway it makes it *worse* that they're just calling him by a generically depersonalizing noun.

[silveradept]

Most of the fandoms I'm in are good at naming their characters uniquely, so it's almost always a first-name (or only name) basis or everything, and much of the fun (and pun) comes out when there's ship talking.

There are some exceptions, as in Farscape, where Crichton is always Crichton, since that's basically how everyone in the cast refers to him (except Pilot, for whom he is always "Commander"), when someone is deliberate invoking formality for Rigel ("Dominar"), and Aeryn, who is most always "Officer Sun" to me (again, taking my cute from Pilot), because Officer Sun is the correct amount of distance that Aeryn wants to maintain between herself and everyone else.

For the most part, though, I realize I take my cues from how the other characters refer to someone as the way that I do, as well.

[melannen]

I can never count on sticking to one fandom long enough for unique names to be helpful, alas. That must be nice! I was once in two fandoms that had Jack/Elizabeth-related shipwars going at once.

[sholio]

I think for me it's a mix of what the viewpoint character calls others (and themself), and what the fandom typically calls them. Usually, if there are options, I tend to try to go with whatever the POV character would use. But I notice that over time my use of nonstandard character names tends to evolve towards the fandom standard just because of reading a lot of fic with that name until it feels more natural to call them that. Since I'm often in action fandoms, where some of the characters are often called by their last names, or are called by their last names by specific characters, I typically start out being conscientious about using last names when from the POV of a character who calls them by their last name, and then slowly slipping into using first names almost everywhere but dialogue because the fandom typically does. (Examples: John Sheppard in Stargate Atlantis; Daniel Sousa in Agent Carter.)

But I also find it grating when writers adhere too strictly to, for example, only ever using a particular nickname that the POV character might have used once and it stuck. I think in general I just want the character name to "vanish" as much as possible; you don't want to be slightly jarred out of the story every single time if YOU think of them as Roger but the viewpoint character calls them Admiral Asshole every time they show up. (Not an actual example.) Always referring to superhero characters by their cape names is one of the ways this can sometimes show up in Marvel/DC fandoms.

Dark Matter fandom was the worst for names, though - all the characters' names were numbers, and even when I'm writing I sometimes have to stop and think about who Four or Six or One is. It works better in a visual medium than in text.

[melannen]

I think I definitely do find myself swerving toward fannish norms a lot of the time, yes, except when I deliberately try not to. (I have also found that moving to first names in fic too fast is one thing that will get you yelled at in AO3 comments? People have strong feelings!)

And yeah, the overused nicknames get annoying (even, perhaps especially, when I find myself doing it!) but I find them much less annoying in meta than in fic.

[graveexcitement]

with danganronpa it's largely a translation issue, and where fans fall usually depends on how they consumed the canon. DR's first translation was a fantranslation that preserved the original japanese's name usage (referring to just about everyone with last names (and honorifics, depending on the character speaking.)) so, the fans who got into DR through the fantranslation or the anime tend to refer to characters by last names - "Naegi, Kirigiri, Komaeda," etc.

however, the official localization of the games switched to everyone using first names for the series. so fans who got into the series later tend to call everyone by their first names. it's not necessarily a strict dichotomy, however; for instance, i'm much more used to last names for the first two games because i read the fantranslations, but i also played the second and third localizations myself, so the first names are in my head too. i often swap back and forth between which names i use, but that helps less when i need to nail down which set i'm using when writing fanfic. i've definitely used different sets for different fics (but not, i hope, different sets in the same fic.) and that's without adding in honorifics, which i also go back and forth on using.

there are a few characters whose first names i feel weird about encountering; calling Komaeda "Nagito" or Togami "Byakuya" just plain feels odd to me. but the ones that really get my goat are a few "nicknames" that the localization introduced that totally weren't there in the original. i definitely get thrown when i hear/read fans talking about Hina (Asahina Aoi) or Taka (Ishimaru Kiyotaka) or Hiro (Hagakure Yasuhiro) (all examples are Lastname Firstname). like, really, what even were those nicknames about? i'm guessing it was to cushion the unfamiliar names -- all 3 examples were in Danganronpa 1, and there's only one other example iirc -- but like, seriously? i get that "Aoi" is gonna be weird for an english-speaker, but the other two really don't seem that hard :p

oh, and i almost forgot the other translation issue: the differing romanization of character names.

there's one main difference, but it crops up in a bunch of names. see, japanese お = o, and う = u. so, one method of romanizing おう is "ou." this is what the fantranslations, and generally fans who are more used to romanizations where おう = ou, do. however, おう is usually pronounced as a long "oh" sound, so the localization just romanizes it as "o" so that it isn't confusing for english speakers.

thus, we wind up with Ouma/Oma, Toujou/Tojo, and a few others along those lines. there's also a few cases where うう (uu) was localized as a single u, so Kuzuryuu/Kuzuryu and Shuuichi/Shuichi. ao3 tags are standardized to the localized version of spelling, in Lastname Firstname order. i understand this decision even if having to tag my stuff with "Oma" is bothersome :p

hmm, this got longer than intended. if anyone else has DR name preferences, feel free to share.

[caramarie]

I played the localised games, but with the Japanese voice track, so I usually end up thinking of the characters by their family names or however they're referred to most in the audio. What I hear overrides the written text for me (although I've found in other games where less is voiced that I'll default to the names as written instead). I spell things as per the official romanisation though.

Funnily enough, Byakuya is one of the ones where I will use his given name, just cos Fukawa uses it so much in Ultra Despair Girls I got used to it!

[pedanther]

Another one that comes to mind: Esmerelda Weatherwax from the Discworld novels. Formally she's Mistress Weatherwax, but most of the people in her home turf call her "Granny Weatherwax". One of the books makes it clear that this is something that only her people get to do, and that it's a rare and special honor for her to let somebody who's come from away call her "Granny".

So, since we're all from away relative to the Discworld, strictly speaking we ought to call her Mistress Weatherwax. But the narrator generally calls her Granny and by and large the fandom follows suit. I will say that I don't think I've ever seen anyone dare to call her "Esme"; that's an even more privileged circle and we all know we're not in it.

[flo_nelja]

I remember kind of making fun of myself for having ships I labelled "Sirius/Lupin" or "Xavier/Magneto" without coherency in the way I chose to call them.

I think my inner reasoning was: you call teachers by their family names.

[krait]

I remember the chaos of Potter fandom pairing names, too. I like HP/SS as a pairing, but seeing it referred to as "Harry/Snape" bugged me in some small way because of that lack of naming coherency!

HP/SS, Harry/Severus, or Harry Potter/Severus Snape, please.

[fandomonymous]

Oh Disco Elysium makes this *fun* - I consider the actual given name of the protagonist a spoiler, but uh, AO3 does not. On Twitter, where it's harder to discuss the game without worrying about spoiling newbies, I often see initials for him (HDB) or an alternate name you can get semi-jokingly. (Semi-, because the entire *game* is about whether or not said protagonist can truly start over again. The alternate name is ostentatious and ridiculous, but also, well, given that theme...)

Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, on the other hand, is always precisely himself. In-canon pet names are 'Kimothy' and 'Kimkim', and I tend towards the latter. Fandom has also decided on the pet name 'Kitsy' for a particular AU that I also love. The narrative often refers to him as 'the lieutenant', though interestingly, I usually see the rank come up in uh, NSFW/power dynamic contexts. (This is one of the first times I've been in a police/detective based canon - is this rank kink common elsewhere?)