parfois la folie est sagesse

Fan: Okay, this is a common dispute between me and my friends: in Song of the Lioness, is it a-LAHN or AL-lan?

Tammy: [looking perplexed] AL-lan. [laughter] Sorry...

F: Where do you get the ideas for all your names?

T: Names? Well, I started out--when I started reading fantasy in, um, the late '60s, and throughout the '70s, there were a lot of fantasy novels with names that were like six syllables long, with apostrophes and accent-marks, [laughter] And... yeah. And I looked at 'em, and I got to the point where if I saw a name like that on the book, I wouldn't buy it. Um, to me what made it really work was if they sounded like names real people would use. It was a problem I had with a lot of fantasy then... is, is--it wasn't--didn't feel real, if I wanted it. So I actually started using names from our world, like Jonathan, George, and Gary. And now, I like--I still like it to feel like a name real people would use. Now I'm a little more sophisticated, so I fiddled with spellings for a bit. But, baby names. In particular, for a starter book, The New Age Baby Names Book. Umm... it has names from all over the world. It has names like "Margaret" and "William" in different forms that they appear in all over the w-world. If you want a miniature history lesson, just take a look at all the different languages that have a variant of the name "Alexander" and you know exactly where Alexander the Great went conquering.

A word of advice about baby name books: Put a cover no one can read through on your baby name book. You will not believe the things your so-called "friends" say to you, when they catch you reading a baby name book. [laughter]

There is another source if you get to go online a lot. It's the Kabalarian site. And, this is on my webpage, too. www.kabalerians.com. 682,000 names. They have Celtic names, Gaelic names, Turkish names, Frankish names, plant names, virtue names. They are a beauty.

Now, since I do fantasy--and these, these are both sources for any--whatever you write, it doesn't have to be fantasy or science fiction--whatever you write. For me, I'll sometimes fiddle with the spelling a little bit, to make it a little more unusual. And sometimes I'll have a bigger, flowery, longer name like Veralidaine or Trisana or Sandreline, and then the nickname is the one that feels like a regular name. But that's where I start--is, is with baby name books. I have... twenty-two of them. [laughter] You never know! [more laughter]

I looked up Indonesian baby names--there weren't any! I had to go look up Indonesia on the internet. And then I found out: Indonesia isn't one country. [laughter] It is fifty cultures [??that are formed??] into one country. So I got a honkin' book of South Pacific baby names, and--and--and named them with that. This is an important thing.