Editorial oddities

[petronia]

You know that thing that happens with popular names, when everyone rushes to name their kids Jennifer or Ashley, and then those get old and suddenly it's onto the next thing? This feels like the umpteenth story I've read that contains an Eric. Or a Kyle. Or Ryan or Jason. Jonathan seems pretty popular too. I should check to see whether that's actually what people are naming their babies these days. XD

Granted, BL yomikiri are all pretty much interchangeable Kei and Hiroshi and Hideki and Ren and Takuya and so on. What I wouldn't do for a Masatoshi or an Iwao one of these days, srsly.

Then there's the other thing, which is that 80% of these are variations on the same four stories, but that's probably a sign that the format is working as it should. XD;

Comments

[jokersama.livejournal.com]

For kids born in the last 10 years ago, the common names seem to be variations on:

Cody
Caden
Kyler (yes, not Kyle)
Xavier (or Xzavier, or...)

You can also peruse my hall of shame. (http://jokersama.livejournal.com/411138.html)

..or maybe these are just the kids who get SICK.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Kyle + Tyler = Kyler? XD;

No Codys so far, I think - it does sound "young" somehow, which I guess isn't what one might want. XD

[saturnoolaa.livejournal.com]

I think it's more the names people have grown up around. In my age group at school there were many Kyles, some Erics, Ryans, and quite a few Jasons. Only one or two Jonathans, but with Jonathan there's also the homoerotic Biblical angle to work with.

...I have a feeling I am being judged on my choice of name and story content. >_> But writing within the genre is so much fun! If I could crank out BL light novels for a living, I'd be there like *snap*!

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I don't really mind it! (Especially the content; it's sort of the point of the thing. XD) It's different from my own instinct, I guess, in that I avoid giving BL characters - or any characters, really - names that remind me of real grade school classmates, college buddies, etc. XD I do know at least one of each in RL.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Your post made me envision a computer program for writing BL, based on a library of paragraphs and a few global variables, mainly the names of the main characters and a list of admissible kinks. The program would then traverse the library based on chronology, picking random generic paragraphs at each stage and adding optional kink paragraphs also appropriate for that stage. Some events may be contingent on prior events, but probably most would not.

I think of this as a tool similar to the machine translation tools used by professional translators: You would have to read through the text afterwards and scan for logical inconsistencies etc, but ideally people would do that anyway.

Actually, why limit this to BL? Perhaps I should recruit a couple goths and make one for vampire romance. Unless they already have one... there is a suspicious explosion in supply over at that genre.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

We had three baby Jonathans at one point a few years back and another in the toddler section. Two Erics, one Swedish and one Chinese. (Twenty-five years ago everyone was Jesse.)

Interesting sidenote: Jonathan appears to be the only Biblical (=has English equivalent) name open to Israelis living over here, because all the others sound ultraOrthodox. Was the lament of Yonatan's mother when she then had twin boys and had to find English-friendly Hebrew names for them.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Really? o_O Something like Jesse or Joshua or Samuel wouldn't do? Or am I understanding the issue wrong? (And ha, ultra-Orthodox-sounding Hebraic names should be trendy these days, for that Hollywood Kabbalah frisson. XD;)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, no- the Hebrew versions of Jesse or Joshua or Samuel are the provenance of the ultra-Orthodox and feel kimoi to the un-ultra-Orthodox. It might not be a problem if one used the English form and lived one's life in English, but for obvious reasons most Israelis live their home lives at least in Hebrew. And now I think of it, while Canadian Jews (and everyone else) are happy to use OT names (currently on our books: Aaron, Noah, Eli, Asa, Joel, Jemima, Benjamin, and Rebecca) I've never met an Israeli who has one, the occasional Yonatan aside. Elan, Timor, Dafna, Nadav, Vered, Shahar- not Biblical at all.

[galerian-ash.livejournal.com]

It's sad, but naming my characters is quite possibly the aspect of writing that I spend the most thought on. It's probably very silly of me -- because, for example, how many people will get that Tei is short for Teivel (which is Yiddish for devil)? -- but well, atleast I amuse myself -_-b

For people my age, Johan seems to be the name every other male is stuck with. In seventh grade, in a class consisting of roughly twenty people, four boys were named that. Nowadays, the trend is apparently naming your babies after contemporary Scandinavian actors that got it made in Hollywood; Viggo (Mortensen), Peter (Stormare), Stellan (Skarsgård), etc.

As for rehashing the same plots over and over again, I... I have nothing to say in my defense *runs away*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

The currently most popular boy baby name here in Quebec is, oddly enough, William (pronounced au français). XD Guilliaume is the traditional French version of William, but no.

I think it's important to get a character's name right, actually - I find it hard to write unless I know for sure what a character's name is, as if it defines him/her as a person. :P

[fantabulous.livejournal.com]

The name Jayden seems to be rather popular at the moment, judging from how many kids at my work seem to have that name (two boys and one girl) ... heh. Not sure it's any kind of name I'd give to a kid/a character, though.

We have a few Alexes too, but I don't mind the name Alex as much.

I could go on forever about "trendy" names, though. Bleargh.