What’s in a Name?
Writing about the future is a venture littered with pitfalls. You try to convince the reader of a viable, authentic culture and society, yet with no proof of how things will turn out. This may appear to be an advantage, giving you carte blanche to make it up. But the reality is different. With a touch of irony, every insight into the future requires a foothold in the present and/or past. People require a reference point from the familiar to recognise the imagined. They want to see issues they can relate to, cloaked in a crispy shell of creativity. We can’t help but leave a footprint of our own time on the future.
Inventing proper nouns in science fiction is difficult. Take one Bilzog the Kaltonar: I’m sure you’ve already judged the world that character belongs to. It limits the story to one of kitsch outfits, tacky dialogue, and unscientific technology. Every genre has its fans but, unless written with extraordinary flare, Bilzog will not be a bestseller (Feel free to give it a try).
So, having slagged off poor old Bilzog, how did I approach naming my characters and locations in Liberty Bound? I created my world at an ill-defined time and place in the Earth’s future, several thousand years away. I mapped out a broad ‘history’ to take me from the present to that point: the global community of today, with our multi-cultural societies, slowly breaking down to leave isolated communities with fragile links to each other, until only one small settlement remains. The history of any language is one of gradual fusion from external influences, evolving but keeping those familiar genes of origin. Therefore, I borrowed from today’s multi-cultural society, Finbar, Aminata, Karl etc, and imposed a foreign influence on them to become Finbarl, Aminatra and Karlmon. I introduced some consistency by making the ‘bar’ or ‘barl’ a common ending, as each generation and society has favourites.
Something I debated during the writing process was the need for surnames. All characters possessed surnames in draft one. However, I reflected on the society I had created. It is small, containing around 15,000 people. Surnames are a relatively modern conception in our own world. In medieval times, with a smaller population and restrictive travel, they didn’t need them. You knew everyone in your village and just having a first name caused little confusion. When society became larger, more complex and government bureaucracy developed, you distinguished one John from the other by referring to their trade or a personal trait: John the Tanner or John the Barker etc (both originating for the act of tanning leather, bark being used in the process) or John the Tall Fellow. Over time, the next generation adopted the associate name and, with time and the geographical spread of families, names got corrupted. In the present day, many variants exist as a legacy.
So, for my future community, surnames wouldn’t do. However, the difference between them and a medieval society, is theirs is a singular settlement, representative of an entire society, compact and congested behind walls. To reflect this, I wanted the social strata, commonplace in all societies and rigid in my world, ingrained within their name. Therefore, I created a suffix for each stratum for formal addressing. Even within each stratum you have sub-strata, and so each suffix has different endings to distinguish rank e.g. apcula or apculex amongst the guards. The leader of this community, the Governor Elbar, has the social suffix of enis. I borrowed this from the word for town-king (aka governor) in the state of Lagash in Southern Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC. This little breadcrumb, amongst a few others, is to help create a sense of full circle for civilisation, from its origins to its end.
And why did I choose Athenia as a name for this settlement? If you’re a community clinging on to civilisation, obsessed with maintaining it, too proud to notice its decline, you paint over the cracks with a façade, borrowing an idyll from the past and believing everything will be all right. The Athens of ancient Greece shines in our own age as the birthplace of democracy and philosophical enlightenment – the epitome of classical civilisation - and we perhaps gloss over the less digestible elements of a brutal age. As history becomes more fragmented and the dark ages descend again, what light there is will appear to shine brighter. People will take what they need, dismissing the inconvenient, building their own world upon the foundation of shaky history and myths. In the medieval period this occurred with institutions such as the Holy Roman Empire. It provides some credibility to a regime, while instilling hope that the good old days have returned. However, it is a foundation of sand unable to cope with the weight of reality built upon it.
Nathaniel M Wrey (?)