beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

You know this morning I decided to have a character be from a muslim space station?
So I spent the day poking websites and getting a better feeling for the depths of my extreme ignorance.
Then I thought, hey, I skip all this, I go name the character and get on with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_name

... yeah, that's... not so simple. Makes complete sense in its way, but inventing one of those names? Oh, that would take some doing.

Names: Not just first and last, around the world

... I should have realised this earlier cause I know what Alexander Siddig was called before he simplified for an audience and made it Alexander Siddig. He was Siddig El Fadil on credits for a while, but his official site says:
Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig El Abderahman El Mohammed Ahmed El Abdel Karim El Mahdi (he goes by “Sid”)


funnily enough none of his characters on wiki have that much name.

so does a new made up character only need the one name? the one syllable? out of all that all?

And all naming convention massively complicated by the way there isn't a standard transliteration for Arabic so the exact same person's exact same name can have a huge great list of ways of writing it.
... apparently this has been screwing up US intelligence databases something awful for years...


I can make up a name simples, but it's a worldbuilding choice. If I make the names that sound easy to my British ears then I've made Arabic-via-Britain at best. If the migration didn't go through Britain then it sounds different.

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Naming and language has so much history tied up in it.

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