Making it up

[lostrocket.livejournal.com]

I was wondering how people feel about tailored and made-up names. I know there is a lot of dislike for "kreatyv" spellings, and at least a moderate amount of disdain for apparently made-up names.

I mostly agree with this, but I've started feeling kind of bad because a lot of names that are now perceived as traditional began as made-up (well, I suppose all names were made-up once upon a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but most names currently in circulation have a long linguistic history).

I don't mind creative names and spellings on principle. My issue is when people bastardize language in order to differentiate a name. Language has rules and systems, and if you want to come up with something new I think you should operate within those constraints. Language also has history, and it would also be nice to think about the etymology of your creation (but I would definitely settle just for people realizing that you can't swap/add/subtract/rearrange letters indiscriminately).

For people who dislike "kreatyv" and made-up names, is it an across-the-board feeling? Are there ways to categorize how you feel about different tailorings?

I also sometimes have issues with names that have been borrowed from other languages, and kind of jury-rigged to fit with English, but I can't even go into that without this trailing on forever.

Comments

[lostrocket.livejournal.com]

So I know Pilot Inspektor, but....Audio Science? Sounds like a University major, to me!

I dunno, sometimes I appreciate the wackier names, even though I would never use them myself. Sometimes, I think there are words that make nice names (those four aren't the best examples), and are perhaps preferable to jacking up the spelling of "actual" names.

One of my favorite French names, for example, is not actually a name, but a word meaning something like "a lot of things": Kyrielle.

[lostrocket.livejournal.com]

Well, I used it in a French-speaking environment, and just got a lot of compliments on how pretty it is. I do think that it is actually a fairly rare word used more in literary contexts, so that helps.

[kindofquixotic.livejournal.com]

Audio Science is Shannon Sossamon's baby. :)

[lostrocket.livejournal.com]

A) She's a nut.
B) I just saw her on SVU last night! Playing a nut. How fitting.
C) She's still hot.