Aerith And Bob / Literature

• ½ Prince, due to taking place mostly in an online game, is full of this. Some characters have believable names (Prince or Wen), some have words (Wicked or Ugly Wolf), some have the sort of names you'd expect online (Lolidragon or Ice Phoenix). That is because the original light novel used Chinese names so they only sound like their meaning when translated. The names sound ordinary, like Mary or Bob to Chinese speakers, but their meaning can be as cool as Wind Dragon or Emerald Heart. Also, Lolidragon was supposed to be Xiao-Long-Nu, which means Little-Dragon-Girl (after the heroine from the Louis Cha novel which influenced this story in many ways). The translators thought Lolidragon made more sense for fans, so they stuck with that.
• Almost every character mentioned in T.S. Hana's The Alchemist series. This includes the main cast of Convent Craven including Axel, Joshil, Ororo, Rega, and Hiroto. However this may be normal due to the residents of the world of Alon being categorized as Inhumans, and almost no one is completely normal.
  • Joshil's wife...Fern.
  • Megiram's real name being ...Emma.
  • Most notably Hiroto and his immediate family including father Lionel, mother Vorkuta (Who is written to have a French accent despite sharing the name of a Russian city), older sister Vidine and younger sisters Hope, Hera, and Noelle. What's even worse about Hiroto's out of place name is he is implied to speak with a British accent.
• In Animal Ark, the humans have regular names, but there are some pets with made-up names, such as Squeaker the mouse and Clown the cat.
• In An Outcast in Another World, outside of Rob, the newcomer from Earth, all of the other characters in Elatra have fantasy-sounding names. Except for the myth of David and Goliath, which very suspiciously exists in Elatra as well, with the same names.
• Main human characters of Artemis Fowl have the given names Artemis, Domovoi, Juliet, and Angeline. Domovoi and Juliet are siblings; Artemis is Angeline's son. Fairy names include Trouble, Mulch, Grub, Briar, Ark, Lili... and Holly, Opal, and Julius.
• In The Arts of Dark and Light, the various human cultures have names derived roughly or entirely from real historical languages, and so will usually look fairly familiar to the reader (though some forms can still be rather exotic). At the same time, the fantasy civilizations follow their own more fantastic naming conventions, leading to this. Consider, for example, Marcus and Caitlys, an Amorran scholar and his elvish girlfriend.
• The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga: Names vary from Anglophone (main protagonist Blaine McFadden) to Nordic (the Solveig siblings Tormod and Rinka) to vaguely Slavic (Prokief) to made-up (Kestel Falke, Pentreath Reese, Thrane).
• In Atharon we have names like Valiria, Malador and Piomaz, standing side by side with Nick, Victoria and Atilla. Justified by the setting, which was inspired by MMORPGs.
• In Autobiography of Red, the three main characters are named Geryon and Herakles (both from Greek Mythology) and Ancash (a Peruvian place name). But then there are minor characters named Maria and Marguerite.
• An interesting In-Universe example occurs in Aztec: In Mesoamerican culture, most people tend to be named for concrete objects, warriors, animals, and such. For example: we have protagonist Mixtli (Dark Cloud), warrior Blood Glutton, princess Jadestone Doll, etc. So when Mixtli encounters someone from another village whose name means simply "Always", he's understandably a bit confused.
• Baccano!: Names in this series come in one of four categories. The first is of names that you can believe American parents would name their child (Carol, Eve, Keith, Dallas, Nick, — Claire might not seem like a Gender-Blender Name, but was actually a not-too-uncommon boy's name around the time Claire would have been born). The second group is of names that sound unusual because the characters themselves are first or second generation immigrants (Firo, Szilard, Maiza, Czeslaw, Sylvie, Gretto, Chane etc.). The third group is of characters in which the author just picked whatever sounded cool (Luck, Nice, Ladd, Tick, etc.). The fourth category belongs entirely to Jacuzzi Splot, whose name is so inexplicable and stupid that it turns around and becomes awesome. Well, "Jacuzzi" was a legit Italian name once upon a time. No explanation for "Splot," though. And although probably not intentional, Ladd means young boy, and is a name derived from middle English word Ladde, meaning a foot soldier or a servant. Quite a suitable name for a hired gun.
• In The Bad Guys series, the alien species of Dr. Marmalade has names such as KDJFLOERHGCOINWERUHCGLEIRWFHEKLWJFHXALHW, the true name of Dr. Marmalade, but also names as simple as "Nathan".
• The Bazil Broketail series takes place in a fantasy setting and therefore, nearly all characters have entirely fictional names. However, the author also plays with this trope a bit — for starters, part of said names were certainly borrowed from the real world, but got tweaked in order to sound a little more otherworldly. This resulted in names such as Jak or Endi (for real-world Jack and Andy respectively). In other, rare cases, this trope is played totally straight with such characters as Tomas, Hektor or Manuel.
• The Beginning After the End:
  • The humans of Dicathen, in stark contrast to the other cultural groups of the setting, mostly have normal names such as Alice, Jasmine, Vincent, and Curtis. That being said, there are a few with rather unorthodox names such as Brald, Varay, Darvus, and Trodius.
  • The elves and dwarves have rather fantastical names. The former have names such as Alduin, Alea, Feyrith, and Saria, while the latter have names such as Dawsid, Mica, Buhndemog, and Skarn.
  • The Alacryans, despite being humans for the most part (albeit with the blood of the Vritra Clan in their veins), have a colorful variety of names when compared to their counterparts in Dicathen. Their names range from completely made up such as Adaenn, Uto, Melzri, and Caera to being lifted from historical cultures and mythologies such as Circe, Augustine, Kai, and Alaric to being relatively normal such as Seth, Lenora, Ezra, and Lyra. It is implied the reason for their fantastic nomenclature is due to their culture having been ruled over by the Vritra Clan for generations, who as Asuras have rather unique names.
  • As stated above, the Asuras have tend to have unique names regardless of which race they hail from, such as Kezess (a dragon), Ademir (a pantheon), Mordain (a phoenix), and Agrona (a basilisk).
  • Even though the other cultural groups have rather fantastical names, every so often there are a few individuals with rather mundane-sounding names. Case in point, one of the elven Lances is named Aya, and during Volume 4 mention is made of an elven student named Denton. Similarly, the daughter of Kezess and one of Arthur's Parental Substitutes is named Sylvia.
• The main heroes of 'Beta Testers' are named Xenobite, Banzai, Grandma, Granddaughter, Machmud, McMed... and Melissa.
• In The BFG, the giants are called things like "The BFG" (Big Friendly Giant) and "The Blood Bottler", but the humans get regular names like Sophie and Elizabeth.
• In Sharon Creech's Bloomability, the protagonist and her sister are named Domenica (usually shortened to Dinnie) and Stella, while her brother is named... Crick. Dinnie explains in the narration that this is because her brother was named by her father, while the girls were named by their mother, and so their names reflect their parents' respective backgrounds (her father was a country boy from Kentucky, while her mother was a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Italy).
• In Birthright (2017) most characters have Indian names, such as Sabrina or Kamalakshi. Other characters have Maori names, such as Taurau, or completely fabricated names, such as Ko-Kalah. Justified, as the different names comes from pretty vastly different nations and cultures in-universe.
• Black Dogs: We have names like Lyra, Trent, Sadrao and Jacyl interspersed.
• Blind Faith by Ben Elton has Caitlin Happymeal. Her name is a compromise between her parents; her father Trafford prefers the more traditional Caitlin, while her mother Chantorria wanted the more socially acceptable Happymeal.
• Shannon Hale's Books of Bayern do this a lot. Take Anidori-Kiladra Taliana Isilee and her best friend, Enna. The names of characters in Hale's novels are always slightly off, presumably so as to emulate and not copy the cultures she's inspired by (Dashti, Tegus and Saren in Mongolia-inspired Book of a Thousand Days; said names of German-inspired Bayern; Miri, Britta and Gerti in Scandinavia-inspired Princess Academy, etc.)
• Border, KS features characters named Walter, Ryan, Leah, Antigone, and Siobhan. And Aoife/Morgan/Mab, Niamh/Tania/Titania.
• Chris Wooding's The Braided Path series has the population of the same country containing people with Japanese-sounding (Kaiku), fantasy style, or European (Lucia) names. Justified: The people of Saramyr descend from foreign settlers: some names are from their original cultures, some names are from the original inhabitants (yeah, most of them where slaughtered, but part of their culture was assimilated), and some are the results of a millennium worth of linguistic and cultural evolution.
• The Bridge of D'Arnath series by Carol Berg has four cultures. One, the Mundanes, include such names as Connor, Paulo, and Martin, alongside Seriana and Evard. The other groups get more outlandish as they separate more from the mundanes.
• A Brother's Price is speculative fiction more than fantasy, but here are the names of some of the Whistler children: Jerin, Corelle, Eldest, Pansy, Violet, Kai, Doric, Leia, Blush, Summer, Eva, Kira, Heria, Liam, Emma, Celain, Kettie, Birdie, and Bunny.
  • And the royal family. The princesses have names like Rensellaer, and there is a prince Alannon somewhere in the royal family. But there was also the very tragic figure, an infertile prince consort called... Michael.
• While a number of common religious names like Rachel and Francis persist throughout A Canticle for Leibowitz, the names of non-religious folk gradually get stranger over the centuries, thanks to changes in language and culture. So you get a character named Joshua acting as a contemporary to men named Taddeo and Kornhoer.
• Captain Underpants: The villains of the third book are aliens named Zorx, Klax, and...Jennifer. Amusingly, when they disguise themselves as lunch ladies for their plot, they all add "-ette" to the ends of their names, turning Jennifer's name ("Jenniferette") into something a little closer to Aerith on the naming scale.
• A Certain Magical Index: While not as extreme as other examples, many (if not all) names can be separated in two categories. One category consists of names that are fine by themselves, but use rather unusual and/or obscure kanji characters that are rarely or never used for naming in Real Life. These kanji are often used just because of its reading, similar to a Japanese name written in hiragana/katakana which in itself bears no meaning. The other category consists of names nobody would have in Real Life because they would be way too obscure. Both types apply almost exclusively to the Japanese names due to Alternate Character Reading.
• A non-fantasy example: the Chalet School series. On the one hand, there are girls with pretty conventional names, such as Gillian Culver, Beth Chester, Margaret Twiss, Mary Woodley and Amy Stevens. On the other, there's the likes of Verity-Ann Carey, Yseult Pertwee, Loveday Perowne, Viola Lucy, Josette Russell, Zephyr Burthill, Evadne Lannis, and many other girls with equally weird names.
• Children Of The Rune has this in spades. We have Boris, Mila, Joshua, Chloe, Lucian, Issac—though pronounced It-Chak—and Tichiel, Nayatrei, Lanziee, Isolet, Benya, Maximin, Ispin and Anais.
• Brought up in Christendom - before the collapse of America, British emigrants gave their children Biblical names in the hope of getting a visa more easily. A desire to avoid a glut of Michaels and Benjamins led to kids named Malachi (such as the protagonist) and Hosea running around.
• Robert Newcomb's Chronicles of Blood and Stone centres on Tristan and his twin sister Shailiha. There is also a man named Faegan with a daughter named Emily. Now, if that were the least of the series' problems...
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: The books have a mix of names like Tasia (full name Natasia), Andreth or Mylla and ones that are nearly or entirely the same (Markas, Joslyn, Remington etc).
• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant have many exotically named characters, but two of the legendary heroes of old were Kevin and Trevor.
• Codex Alera has some of these. The Alerans (Romans) all have Roman sounding names, some of which are still fairly common, like Maximus (aka Max) or Bernard, while others like Odiana or Isana are quite rare in the real world. Of course the various other cultures represented (primarily the Canim and the Marat) have entirely fantasy sounding names more in line with their respective races.
• Badger names don't follow a clear pattern in The Cold Moons. On the same page are listed Harvey, Greyears, Palos, Buckwheat, and Jason. Jason's son is named Eldon.
• Names in The ColSec Trilogy tend to be either singular and weird, or ordinary or slightly unusual given names paired with more-or-less ordinary (if sometimes idiosyncratically spelled) surnames. Of course, it is After the End.
• Count and Countess. Almost definitely unintentional, but when sharing pagetime with characters named Ferencz, Dorotta, Darvulia, Orsolya, Istvan, Bogdan, Mehmed, and Radu, names like Elizabeth, Frederick, and Christian can appear very jarring.
  • More like Melting-Pot Nomenclature - most, if not all, of these names are Hungarian, Slavic or Islamic.
• The Crimson Shadow: Ethan, Oliver, Siobhan etc. versus Brind'Amour, Shuglin, Morkney and far more.
• The characters in Shane Hegarty's Darkmouth series have names that vary from the normal (Finn, Emmie, Steve, Hugo) to the weird (Lucien, Elektra, Tiberius) to the completely inexplicable (Axel and Estravon).
• Lezirth Dawnbringer and Luise Maynard in the Korean light novel series Dawnbringer are both replicants from the same "pack". At the same time Lezirth's Uber-mech is also called Dawnbringer which is quite normal compared to Luise's Tetragrammaton.
• Deltora Quest has names like Leif, Barda, Endon, Sharn, Jinks, Ranesh, Glock, Neridah, Gers, Zeean, Lindal, Mikal, Dain, Fallow, Doran, Paff and Prandine mixed with names like Jasmine, Jared, Tom, Steven, Anna, Josef, Marilen, Ava, Jack, Verity, Bess and Kirsten.
  • The Rowan of Rin series is similar. There we have Val, John, Marlie, Hannah, Bree, Sharan, Rowen, Sarah, Allun and Neil mixed with Bronden (a girl,) Lann, Timon, Jiller, Annad, Ellis, Zeel, Perlain, Doss, Asha, Seaborn, Tor, Mithren, Ogden, Norris, Solla and Sheba.
• In the Devil Trilogy, most characters have made-up names. While the main characters have names like Marak, Egon and Armana, and minor characters end up with names like Zubal, Marak's sister is called... Melissa.
• Dial-a-Ghost: The eldest known Snodde-Brittles are five siblings named Archie, Mungo, Frederica, James, and Rollo.
• Discworld to an extent. Names like Rincewind and Eskarina, which fitted perfectly when the series was a parody of fantasy tropes, have become The Artifact in a series which is far happier with characters called Sam Vimes or Tiffany Aching. Which in itself may be a parody.
  • There are also some weird naming traditions in the Ramtops, giving you names like Yodel Lightly, King My-God-He's-Heavy the First, and Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre.
    • The weird naming traditions aren't limited to Lancre, either; any number of plain old Ankh-Morpork citizens have names like Findthee Swing or Legitimate First. (Can't blame a mother for being proud.)
  • Traditional Omnian names include the likes of Smite-the-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments and Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets. These names used to be a lot bloodier before Brutha came along.
  • In Interesting Times, the five ruling families of the Agatean empire are the Hongs, the Sungs, the Tangs, the Fangs, and the McSweeneys. This is lampshaded twice.
  • Even the nonhumans' naming conventions took a while to get established, with incongruities like dwarfs named Bjorn and Fruntkin, or a troll in Moving Pictures choosing "Rock" as a film pseudonym, despite this being a racist term for his species.
  • One-Man-Bucket (short for One Man Pouring A Bucket Of Water Over Two Dogs) and his unfortunate elder brother who was born very briefly before him; he wishes the dogs in question had been fighting.
  • Then there's poor Moist, whose name isn't even normal for Discworld, going by the fact that he's heard a lot of jokes about it.
• In Distortionverse we are able to find pretty common names such as Michelle, François, Bertrand, Egon and alongside less common names like Veckert, Vortag, Silman, Emmelyn, Sapphire (and so on). Ah, yes: there are even Dkrav'lest and Andrakta, but they are aliens, so this is partially Justified.
• Dora Wilk Series has a grand mix of different naming conventions. There are Polish names (Dora, Gajusz, Roman, Anita), foreign-language names (Varg, Joshua, Katia, Olaf), biblical (Baal, Lucifer, Jezebel, Raizel) and some that seem to be completely made up, such as Faoiliarna, Nisim or Laoisie, all mixed together, and nobody seems to notice.
• Domina
  • The web-novel starts out simple enough. Adam and Derek, Laura and Lizzy, Akane and Ling. There are a few unexpected foreign names like Zusa (Yiddish) and Jelena (Serbian), but they're still real names. Then you start running into people like Malcanthet, the Princess of Killing Sparrow, and Jarasax of the Blood-Doused Hunters.
  • Turns out that the changelings (such as Jarasax) do this intentionally. They are all former slaves of the fey, who never bothered to give them names. Once they escaped, they chose the most outlandish names possible. So we get names like Loga'ha'shanar of the Sky-Borne Lords, Feless of the Firstborn, Heresh'ni of the Velvet Orchids, and Eccretia of the Never-Known Thieves.
• Steven Brust's Dragaera books have these. On the one hand you have names like Morrolan, Loiosh, and Khaavren, while on the other are characters named Vlad, Mario, and Kelly. Most of the more common-sounding names belong to Easterners (i.e. humans), but Mario (a Dragaeran, and the best assassin in the world) is a major exception.
  • It is, however, specifically pointed out that Mario has an Eastern name.
  • Also Loiosh is very close in pronunciation to Lajos which is the Hungarian version of Louis. And as we know Steven Brust is of Hungarian descent.
• Dragonvarld: The series has ordinary names or ones close to them like Edward and Melisande. On the other hand, there are others such as Maristara.
• Dream Park: Lampshaded in-universe in The Barsoom Project, in which most participants in the Fimbulwinter Game use their real names, but one (Marty Bobbick) plays as "Hippogryph". Eviane, a mentally ill woman convinced that the Game's events are really happening, becomes puzzled by his weird name shortly before she recalls that it's all pretend.
• In the Dreamscape Voyager Trilogy, names like Cassidy and Zayne exist alongside Kekarian and Elyia. And that's without getting into the more Chinese or Arabic inspired names.
• The Dune series is all over the place. Many of the main and supporting characters have various real, mostly European names, like Paul, Jessica, Duncan, Vladimir, Piter, Miles, or even ''Marty''. Leto, though unusual, is a real name too. Some characters have given names more similar to current day surnames - e.g. Gurney, Wellington. Then come the characters with the really exotic names: Irulan, Shaddam, Wensicia, Chalice, Tiekyanik, Scytale, Pardot, Moneo, Hwi Noree, Waff, Darwi, etc.
  • The Fremen in the first book mostly have Middle-Eastern sounding names, but there are several exceptions, including a guy with the very English name Geoff. Also, some Fremen names were apparently originally meant to be symbolic, but phonetics drift over the centuries rendered them into completely new forms: A good example is Stilgar himself, whose name was originally something like "Steel Guard." This also extends to the Fremen name for themselves as a people: They originally boasted to be "the Free Men."
    • "The Free Men" is actually a mistranslation of the term Berber in keeping with the vaguely Middle Eastern and North African theme.
  • Some of the female names are actually star-related: Irulan is named after a traditional name for a certain star and there's also a star with the traditional Arabic female name of Alia.
• Duumvirate is roughly three-fourths Bob, one-fourth Aerith. Howard and William Dominus, Sarah Mortis, Quadrus and Stanley Dominus, Paul Smith, Jeremy Jorgensen, Judas Rockefeller, Hadji Rajadhiraja...
• To an extent in Each Little Universe, which is set in a world mostly alike to the real one but a bit weirder. While the majority of characters have reasonably Bob-ish names, most of them are almost exclusively referred to by nicknames. The two main characters are, to the narration and to other characters, known as TM and Veggie; their real names are Tom Major and Jonathan Vega, both of which are hinted at early on and revealed to have some level of significance later. There are also nonhuman characters who assume human names that might not be completely impossible for a normal person to have been given at birth but are at least mildly unusual, most noticeably Riegel O'Ryan.
• In the Evillious Chronicles, characters can have completely ordinary names, such as Kyle, Irina or Eve, as well as more fantastic- but still possible–sounding names, like Elluka, Banica or Lilien... and then there's characters like Milky Eights, Aybee Cee, and Neruneru Nerune.
• An Exercise in Futility - Kalharians have made-up fantasy names like Kathelm and Meunig, while the Gurdur have Herbrew names such as Ethan and Joseph. One Gurdur tribe names women after virtues, such as Charity.
• In the Fairy Oak series, characters called Martha, Shirley and Horace share a world with Grisam, Flox and Acanti. This is related to the fact that people who will potentially inherit magic powers are named after flowers and other plants, while the non-Magicals usually have more normal names.
• The Fallocaust series is full of this. Names like Reaver, Sanguine and Sidonius appear side by side with names like Tim, Ellis and Jade. Generally, the more unusual a charater's name is, the more likely they are to be a chimera.
• In The Fires of Affliction, male characters have names like Khan, Talican, Cylas, Cedric, Arikk, and Shalastan. Female characters include Melissa, Sarah, Elayne, and Lori (the latter of which is technically short for Alorica).
• From Reality to Fiction includes names such as Sam, Alex, or Max, as well as a boy named "956".
• In Gathering the Enchanted you've got normal names such as Tess, Aurora, Tristan, and to a small extent Calynn. But then you have Xen and Bannor...
• In Ginger And Pickles, there are characters named things like Tabitha mixed in with characters called things like Pickles.
• A Grimm Quest: The Fairie names range from Ashling, Remmington, and Piper to Illaca, Tyghanaire, and Echalson. Somewhat Justified by the Fey having to translate their names out of their own language so humans can pronounce them at all.
• Lampshaded in The Gods Are Bastards with a drow-human couple whose names actually are Aeris and Bob.
• In Gone, we go all the way from Sam to Drake to Astrid to Caine to Zil to Orsay.
  • Lampshaded with Nerezza:
  Turk Weird name.
  Nerezza Yes, it is.
• Used deliberately in Gor. Voyages of acquisition by the Priest-Kings have occurred off and on for millennia, more normal names are those from people brought over recently.
• In Robert Reed's Great Ship universe, human names get progressively weirder the younger they are. The oldest character has a fairly standard Asian name, Quee Lee. The main characters, who are a mere hundred thousand years old, tend to have more odd names such as Washen or Miocene. The youngest characters have names like "Promise" and "Till".
• In Harry Turtledove's Great War cycle of Alternate History novels, a lot of the black characters from the CSA have hifalutin' classical names like Xerxes, Bathsheba, and Cincinnatus, apparently as a form of rebellion against the mundanity of life as a third class citizen.
  • This was a naming pattern for slaves in the Real Life Old South: Classical history and occasionally the Bible provided names that were not used by their white masters. Not an alternate element at all.
  • It was also necessary, since slaves weren't allowed to have surnames and needed unique names to distinguish one another.
• Something of an Ur-Example (though with toponyms instead of personal names) can be found in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Book III of which is titled "A Voyage To Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg And Japan."
• Harry Potter really falls under the cosmopolitan exception to the trope. Given that wizarding society is a mix of pure bloods, half-bloods and Muggle-borns, naming conventions are understandably varied. Generally speaking (but not without exception), the more traditional Wizarding families use odder names while Muggleborns and Halfbloods have more common or mixed names.
  • Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. All names deriving from the same time period, but only one that remains common in the modern era. This rule also pertains to his family. His Muggleborn mother had a common name, Kendra. His father and sister had uncommon but not unheard of names, Percival and Ariana (though this is a fairly popular name now). However, his brother’s name is Aberforth.
  • The Weasleys have relatively normal names because they’re named after both classical and modern British royals. Arthur, William, Charles, Percy, Fred, George, and Ronald. Ginny is a common nickname, but for Virginia, rather than Ginevra, which is pretty uncommon in the UK (in fact, before Word of God stepped in, Fanon interpreted "Ginny" as a shorthand for "Virginia"). Arthur's father, though, is named Septimus, which may indicate that the Weasleys sometimes indulge in fantastical theme naming like other purebloods.
  • Crops up again within Harry's family: you have Harry and Ginevra (Ginny) and then their kids, Lily Luna, James Sirius, and... Albus Severus.
  • Nymphadora Tonks, the daughter of Andromeda (Black) Tonks and Ted (Edward) Tonks. Her middle name, apparently, is Vulpecula. She's a walking lampshade hanging; she only goes by her surname, and when asked why she says that you would too if your fool of a mother named you Nymphadora.
  • The Marauders - James, Peter, Remus and Sirius.
  • The trio itself consist of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. She’s the biggest aversion of the general rule of Muggleborns having normal names. Although ironically the popularity of the series has resulted in what was not long ago an extremely old-fashioned name becoming quite popular.
  • Voldemort’s name is Tom Marvolo Riddle. Tom was his Muggle father’s name and Marvolo his Wizard grandfather’s. Although he considered it rather too common even before he learned his father was a muggle. This is lampshaded in the Pensieve Flashback, where the owner of the orphanage where Tom lived wondered what kind of mother would pick such a weird name for her son.
  • Cho Chang is an interesting case; while both parts of her name would sound unusual in the British Isles, they'd be more normal in China (and she does have some Chinese aesthetics to her appearance). Some fanfictions even make her family originate from China in connection.
• In High School Dx D, you have names like Issei, Akeno, Asia, Kiba, Koneko, and then there are names like Rias, Sirzechs, Vali and Ravel.
• Aliens in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tend to follow the Law of Alien Names but robots and computers tend to have human names like Marvin, Eddie and Colin (although, to be fair, Colin was named by Ford Prefect after a dog owned by someone he knew on Earth). Keep in mind that this series named the Insignificant Little Blue Planet trope and most of the galaxy hasn't heard of us. The only exception is that someone called Dan Streetmentioner is mentioned in the second book.
• The Hunger Games, Where you have names like Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Finnick, Twill, Plutarch, Beetee, etc. to names like Effie, Madge, Annie, and Johanna. Some of the more bizarre names go along with Theme Naming though, as people from certain districts tend to be named after certain aspects of their home (ex. people from the luxurious District 1 have names like Glimmer and Gloss, people from the Capitol tend to have Roman names, etc.). The setting is supposed to be in the distant future of North America; Katniss comes from approximately West Virginia coal country. She's named after a plant. Peeta is almost certainly a corruption of Peter. Or Pita, as his parents are bakers.
• In the Hush, Hush series, Angel names range from Patch/Jev to Rixon to Dabria.
• The Hussite Trilogy by Andrzej Sapkowski is a quasi-historical trilogy set in XV century Europe, so most characters have medieval European names (quite often of German origin). The name of the main protagonist? Reynevan. Yes, it's only a pseudonym, but his other pseudonyms are rather normal (if a bit punny).
  • Reynevan isn't really that odd, it's just a Polish/Czech variation of his Germanic birth name — Rheinmar. Remember, most of the action takes place in Silesia, which for most of its history was hotly contested between Poland, Bohemia and various German principalities, so having a several variations of one's name in different languages was a perfectly normal practice.
• In I Do Not Want To Do This humans (and partial-humans) tend to have typical American names, while non-humans generally don't.
• In InCryptid, the youngest generation of the Price family consists of Verity, Antimony, and...Alex. Their cousins are named Elsinore and Arthur.
• I Need A Wee: Some characters have proper names (e.g. Alan and Claude) while others are just named after their species (e.g. Giraffe, Robot, and Magic Rabbit).
• Inheritance Cycle has characters named Garrow, Eragon, Roran, Helen, Sloan, and Selena all from the same out-of-the-way village. Eragon's name is at least noted as odd (he's named after an elf).
  • This occurs with place names as well-as noted by a reviewer of Brisingr in The Sydney Morning Herald (an Australian newspaper), it was strange to see fantastical names such as Uru'Baen alongside more commonplace names such as Lithgow. Word of God states that this is because of many cultures having inhabited the land and left behind place names, which is of course an element of Truth in Television. You need look no further than the areas of early colonization United States to find various places with Native American, English, French, etc. names all within a few miles of each other.
    • Yazuac, Carvahall, Du Weldenvarden and... Sharktooth?!
  • The Eragon Sporkings point out in the dissection of Eragon that most, if not all, of the important people have exotic names. Thus, it would follow that the characters themselves are aware of this, which explains why two protagonists who need to sneak into a city choose ordinary names (by Earth standards) and that their obvious unimportance is why the guards wave them on through when they give their names.
• In The Interdependency series, set over a thousand years in the future, characters have unusual names like Batrin, Cardenia, Marce, Nadashe and Ghreni, showing that names will evolve over time. Then there's Hannah Patrick, who wouldn't be out of place in the 21st century.
• Diana Wynne Jones's last novel The Islands of Chaldea zig-zags this trope, using European names that aren't commonly used.
• In John Carter of Mars, Carter's two half-Red Martian children are named Carthoris and… Tara? However, this is justified since Carter wasn't present when Carthoris was hatched.
• In the novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, one character has four brothers named Matthew, Mark, Luke and Bing. Guess which one dies tragically.
• Justified in Kalpa Imperial, as the Vastest Empire that Never Was has thousands of years of existence, each with several cultures, timelines and languages. The names variate with the years a great deal, and several stories have similar names than modern ones like Bib, but others are like Meabramiddir'Ven.
• In the Kiesha'ra series by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, there are average-sounding names like Zane, Danica, and Irene, and fantasy-sounding names like Betia, Nacola, and Nicias.
• King of the Water Roads has mostly Mesopotamian or Egyptian-ish names, but the main character is named "Garth," due to his foreign grandfather.
• For Finnish audiences specifically, Knight's & Magic can be a strange experience to read/watch due to the unusually high number of Finnish names mixed in with other European names (as Finns are used to every fantasy name sounding equally exotic to them, even as audiences from other cultures are experiencing this trope). Such names include the main character Ernesti Echevalier/Echevarria, Helvi Oberi/Öberg, Baston Termonen, Lauri Echevalier/Echevarria, Ambrosius Tahvo Fremmevira, and Eleonora Miranda Aukusti. The funniest are probably the names of the country itself and its capital, Laihiala (which sounds similar to Laihia, a municipality in Ostrobothnia whose residents are stereotypically associated with stinginess) and Kankkunen (Finnish for hangover).
• Played for Laughs in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible! to join in the rest of the Anachronism Stew. In "Jacob and Esau," the Composite Character of Esau's Canaanite wives is Linda. The protagonist of "The Golden Calf," son of the enterprising calf salesman Gomer, is Ian.
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff features 8 concubines named Tiny Feet of the Divine Dance of Joyous Orgasm, Beautiful Gate of Heavenly Moisture Number Six, Temptress of the Golden Light of the Harvest Moon, Delicate Personage of Two Fu Dogs Wrestling Under A Blanket, Feminine Keeper of the Three Tunnels of Excessive Friendliness, Silken Pillows of the Heavenly Softness of Clouds, Pea Pods in Duck Sauce with Crispy Noodle, and Sue.
• The Last Wish, first novel in The Witcher series, sees such interesting names as Geralt of Rivia, Foltest, Segelin, Velerad, Ostrit, Calanthe, Duny, Rinfri, Civril...and Dennis Cranmer, dwarf captain of the guard. Who would have expected the dwarf to have the lame name? Still, the protagonist Geralt himself has a real-life name (it's the German/Polish pronunciation of "Gerald").
• The somewhat creepy Mind Screw Children book Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say "No" to Drugs stars the three mare sisters Latawnya, Latoya... and Cindy.
• The Licanius Trilogy has plenty of exotic names like Fessiricia, Gassandrid, Isiliar, Breshada and Nethgalla, but twists the formula by using real, but relatively uncommon and fantastic sounding names like Davian, Ashalia, Torin, Caeden, Aelric and Dezia.
• Lilith's Brood: Family names start getting strange when the Oankali aliens start having children with humans; for example, Lilith and Tino have children named Jodahs and Aaor. Lampshaded when an all-human village takes in a half-Oankali girl named Shkaht and questions what sort of name that is.
• In the Little Bear books, characters are mainly named after their species, except for Emily. "Cat" is almost a proper name, but when it is, it's spelt "Kat" and it's a girl's name.
• In The Locked Tomb series, normal and common names like Abigail and Camilla exist alongside some unusual names from mythology, like Palamedes or Protesilaus, and a few invented ones, like the majority of the Ninth House, who get names like Harrowhark and Aiglamene.
• In Tolkien's works, specifically The Lord of the Rings, the translation convention is that various 'real' Middle-earth languages are translated to various real-world ones. E.g.: The Westron language (the 'common speech') is translated to English (including names), Rohirric becomes Old English, while the Dwarves get Nordic names. Appendices and supplementary works mention some of the 'real' names that were translated - for example, Frodo Baggins' and Sam Gamgee's 'untranslated Westron' names are Maura Labingi and Banazir Galpsi. According to Tolkien, he invoked the trope to make names from Elvish and other origins feel different from Westron names, to portray the same feeling the hobbits would get when stepping out of the Shire.
  • In a straighter example of this trope, the trolls in The Hobbit are named Tom, Bert, and William. While this can be explained by the story's more whimsical nature, Tolkien also used the names Tom and Bill for other characters in The Lord of the Rings.
  • Due to the Conlang system in LOTR, this trope is inverted. Despite Westron being translated into English (including names), almost none of the characters has a realistic name that is commonly used nowadays. Sam and Pippin are the closest exception, though they are short for the less common "Samwise" and "Peregrin" respectively. In other words, real-life names are Aeriths in that universe. Canon foreigners from the movies and video games have realistic names, such as Sara Oakheart, Lianna, Corwin, Theodore, Willem, or the Easterlings-turned-Nazgul Yuka and Riya, who have real Japanese names ^note non-Canon Foreigner Easterlings have weird, fantastic names that aren't Japanese, such as Khamul.
• Justified in Lud In The Mist, where Dorimarites have names ranging from Nathaniel and Hazel to Moonlove and Dreamsweet due to cultural exchange with Fairyland next door.
• Magical Girl Raising Project: There's no rule as to what a magical girl's name can be. It can be a traditional magical girl name (Snow White, Magical Daisy), an ordinary human name (Tama, Akane), some sort of historical reference (La Pucelle, Pythie Frederica), or just plain weird (Genopsyko Yumenoshima, @Meow-Meow).
• Maledicte has the title character Maledicte or Miranda, and his servant/friend/sidekick Gilly.
• The characters in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series are mostly Only Known by Their Nickname, or have standard random letters mash-up fantasy name. And then the spin-off book Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian Cameron Esselmont introduced a character named Kyle, who, combining this unfortunate name and his characterization as a young tracker with a magical sword, instantly became The Scrappy to a section of the fandom.
• In the Mediochre Q Seth Series we have Mediochre and Charlotte, Joseph and Dhampinella, the list goes on...
• In A Memory of Flames among the tamed dragons you have names across the board. Simple ones (Snow, Onyx), poetic ones (Silence, Unmaker), compound ones (Wraithwing, Awestriker), two-word ones (Morning Sun, Storm's Shadow) to just plain weird ones (B'thannan). According to the series' author Stephen Deas each eyrie has a different naming pattern for dragons.
• In the Mog books, the humans all have normal names, but among the cats you get a few names like Mog, Rumpus, and Tiddles, but also Matilda, Oscar, and James.
• Although the original Swedish books (Moomin books were originally written in Swedish but their country of origin is Finland) avert this, there is a rather interesting case in the English translation of The Moomins: the pair of strange visitors Thingumy and Bob (Tofslan and Vifslan in the original).
• In the Mortal Engines Quartet, there are "normal" names ranging from Tom and Anna to Wren and Freya, stretching into names like Smew and Oenone. Next to those, there's Gargle and Fishcake vs. Nabisco and Napster - presumably as a sort of Culture Shock and/or nod to the deterioration of origins.
• Murderess features two parallel worlds, Earth and Greywall’d. Earth is a minor example, where there is a girl named Dakota in an English school (Justified, as she’s American), but Greywall’d absolutely loves this trope, featuring relatively normal first names alongside names comprising legitimate words (translated in the English version) and fantasy names with a vague European sound. Justified again, as Greywall’d is a big place divided into multiple nations and races.
• All the characters in the Dragonlord Trilogy of Mystara novels by Thorarinn Gunnarsson have fantasy names, except for disguised drake Sir George Kirbey.
• In the Island in the Sea of Time (Series), Nantucket grows increasingly diverse as Fiernans, Iraiina, and Native Americans move there to seek a better life. It becomes increasingly common to see names like "Llandaurth Witharaxsson", though some of the newcomers do end up taking more "American" names in the hopes that they'll fit in better.
• In Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy Trilogy, human civilization falls into two main cultures. The Adamists have names that are relatively normal for whatever ethnic group the individual hails from. They have names like Joshua, Ralph, Quinn, and Kelvin (it's Polish). The Edenists, on the other hand, pull names from the deepest, most obscure depths of mythology (or just make shit up). They have names like Syrinx, Sinon, and Eysk. The two groups' respective starships follow a similar trend (Lady Macbeth versus Oenone).
• October Daye: Fae (at least purebloods) are functionally immortal, so some of their names may have been more "normal" (in human society) when they were born.
  • Quentin is the "Bob" of his family, with his parents Aethlin and Maida and sister Penthea.
  • The three Torquill siblings are Sylvester, Simon, and September.
  • The Firstborn often have more than one name, but they include people named Eira, Antigone, Acacia, Amandine, Michael, and Pete.
• Of Fire and Stars: The books have largely invented names, with a few real ones like Tristan mixed in.
• The Orphan's Tales has characters have names with Middle Eastern, Scandinavian, Indian, African, Japanese, Eastern European, Greek, English and many other influences. Bonus points need to be given to Ragnhild and St. Sigrid, two women from Middle Eastern inspired cultures who have Scandinavian-sounding names.
• Greg Egan's Orthogonal trilogy features relatively predictable names such as Clara, Tamara, and Ramiro alongside stranger ones like Yalda, Tarquinia, and Eusebio. Of course, the entire thing is presumably fed to the reader through a thick soup of Translation Convention.
• The Outsiders inverts this with the Curtis siblings: Ponyboy, Sodapop, and Darrel.
• Pareidolia and the Gilded Scar features a mixture of real names, Megan, Francis etc. and names entirely made up by the author e.g. Prail, Tantallidy, Vensegnia.
• Steve Higg's Patricia Fisher mystery series includes a pair of retired sheriffs from Hawaii named Rick and Akamu.
• The Platinum Key has characters with normal names like Alyson, Lydia and Leila alongside characters with names like Aramincia, Chocolate and Vanilla.
• The Raven Cycle. The female protagonist's psychic residence has names like Blue, Jimi, Orla, and Neeve alongside Persephone, Calla, and Maura.
• In The Red Vixen Adventures the Foxen aliens have such exotic names such as Rolas, Sallivera, Alinadar.... and Melanie. Slightly justified in there being a bit of cultural contamination after meeting Humanity.
• Redwall does this a lot. Contrast the famous warrior "Martin" with his best friend "Gonff". Most characters in the early books were Bobs, and as the setting evolved from more or less real world to completely different world, the names drifted further from Bob and closer to Aeris. In fact, most of the Bobs occurred in Redwall, and the few that are left are mainly holdovers.
  • "Goniff" is the Yiddish word for "thief." "Gonff Mousethief" could be a nickname.
• Re:Zero stars a guy with the extremely generic Japanese name "Subaru Natsuki" alongside standard English names like Emilia and Beatrice, as well as bizarre fantasy names like Puck, Felix Argyle, and Rem and Ram. This is probably at least partially due to the isekai setup, which involves throwing a real-life everyman into a High Fantasy universe.
• Two of the main characters in TheRiddleMasterTrilogy are named Tristan and Morgon. The Big Bad, meanwhile, is named Ghisteslwchlohm.
• In The Robots of Dawn, Auroran names mentioned are Han, Vasilia, Santirix, Fuad, Maloon, Kelden and Rutilan.
• In the Roys Bedoys books, the girls are called Wen, Flora, and Truly, which are real, if uncommon, names. The boys, however, are named Roys, Loys, and Maker.
• In the Sabrina the Teenage Witch novel Ben There, Done That, the biker gang members are named Wolverine, Chrome, Razor...and Bob.
• The two main characters of Zelda Fitzgerald's only novel, Save Me The Waltz, are named Alabama and David.
• Semiosis: The more whimsical early colonists on Pax give their children unusual names that became normalized in later generations, so there are Lightnings and Rolands in the same community.
• The eponymous main character of Septimus Heap has a family with names such as Nicko, Jenna and Simon. One wonders how the Heap parents knew about the meaning of "Septimus".
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • The main characters of The Mortal Instruments are named Jonathan (Jace), Alexander (Alec), Isabelle, Simon,... Clarissa (Clary) and Magnus.
  • The Shadowhunters have names that range from common (Luke, Robert) to semi-common (Jocelyn) to rare (Valentine, Amatis).
• In Shadow of the Conqueror, Hamahran names include Tara, Lyrah, Daylen, and Ahrek.^note Though Ahrek is Tuerasian by blood, he was raised in Hamahra, and Daylen recognizes his name as Hamahran.
• Shaman of the Undead is set in contemporary Poland (mostly in the city of Wrocław, to be even more precise), except magic is widespread and in the open. Character names are a motley collection of contemporary Polish names, a few old-timey ones (the sort your great-grandmother would have), people using pretty normal nicknames... and then there are completely outlandish, either foreign or outright made-up names. This is inherited by Spiritlessness Interquel short story from Harda Horda anthology, with Lajla really standing out among people like Adam or Marek (Mark).
• In the Shannara series, things often go this way, with either outright normal or at least somewhat plausible names (like Flick and Shea Ohmsford from the first book, or Morgan Leah from the "Scions" sub-series, as well as Walker from the same series, or minor characters named Hunter and Britt in the "Voyage" set) are seen alongside outlandish ones (the eponymous Jerle Shannara, just to start). Many names for both people and places throughout the books often feel like the author ran a dictionary through a shredder and pulled out real or real-ish words and stuck them together (like a swampy region known as the Matted Brakes, alongside truly bizarre names like the Wolfsktaag Mountains or bog-standard ones like the Rainbow Lake). This fits in with the world as established, though, as it is set thousands of years After the End of our earth, specifically in the American Northwest, so it is likely that many English words and names gathered different meanings and were applied to people and geographical features.
• Shatter the Sky: The books intersperse names that are real or close to it with invented ones, like Maren, Kaia, Rashida vs Ferrik, Kellyn, Patak etc.
• In what may be the earliest example: Sherlock Holmes and his best friend/partner in crime-solving/on-and-off flatmate John Watson. This seems to be trend in their family, as Sherlock's older brother is called Mycroft.
  • Amongst Scotland Yard, take Inspector G. Lestrade (a French name from the Provence) amongst rather normal English/Norman names like Gregson, Jones, Hopkins, Morton and Bradstreet.
• The Silverwing series. It's about bats, but the two main characters are Shade and Marina. The villain is named Goth. The child of the first two is named Griffin. Darkwing is even more egregious, naming characters of the same close family Sylph, Dusk, Jib, and Aeolus in prehistoric times.
• In The Sign of the Four Sherlock Holmes uses this on a signed pact to deductively identify Jonathon Small, the sole English name on the pact, as the murderer of Bartholomew Sholto.
• Sister Alice has the older Great Family members having more standard names, such as the first dozen Chamberlains having names like Ian, Alice, and Thomas. Younger characters have odder names, such as Ord, Xo, Ravleen, or Lyman.
• Silas Marner invoked this trope, and simultaneously parodied the tendency for this to happpen to Old Testament names, when Silas names his foundling child "Hephzibah" after his mother and sister. A neighbor questions whether that's "a Christian name", and he rebuts that it's in the Bible. She goes by Eppie for short.
• Slayers, being a Medieval European Fantasy, naturally runs across the spectrum, with names ranging from Zelgadis, Gourry, Xellos, Luna, Lina, Sylphiel, Milina and Naga, to Amelia, Luke, Phil, and Alfred.
• A Song of Ice and Fire features a lot of them (the last two kings as of the start of the series are in fact named Aerys and Robert). You get some real modern names (Robert, Jon, Arya, Catelyn, Brandon, Joanna, Jaime), some unusual spellings of real names (Margaery, Lysa, Eddard, Petyr, Joffrey), some medieval European names (Cersei, Tywin, Ygritte) ...and then several straight-up fantasy names (Daenerys, Viserys, Qhorin), which often appear to be assembled from other European languages. Eventually, though, it becomes clear that most of the weirder names just come from cultures outside mainstream Westeros. (If the name contains the letters "ae" or "rys", the bearer is probably Valyrian; if it's short, harsh and vaguely Norse they're from the far north or a Wildling and not a member of House Stark; if it ends with "io" it's from the Free Cities; names with an X in them are usually Summer Islander. etc.)
  • This is a good example because while they are, for the most part, perfectly good (or somewhat unusual, but acceptable) medieval names, they come from all over medieval Europe, which leads to the Lannister family having, among other gems, two parents with medieval English names who have a daughter named Cersei (an late-medieval Italian bastardisation of a Greek name) and two sons named Jaime (an early medieval bastardisation of a Latin bastardisation of a Hebrew name) and Tyrion (a two-language composite name that sounds like Tyron, an acceptable medieval English name). The Seven Kingdoms were formed into a single country three hundred years ago, which might explain why names from different regions have been exchanged. Westeros, while culturally based mostly on England, is a region about the size of South America, and has experienced several waves of colonization, which goes a long way toward explaining the diversity.
  • The Stark siblings' names are a good example. The girls, Sansa and Arya, have names that sound strange to English ears compared to the boys, Robb, Jon, Bran, and Rickon. Rickon sounds exotic, too, but it's actually an in-universe variation of Rickard, his grandfather's name.
  • The dragons' names are all over the place. Some have exotic, Valyrian-derived names (Balerion, Tessarion, Vermithor), while others have English descriptive names (Sunfyre, Silverwing, Quicksilver). Daenerys' dragons are named Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion. While Rhaegal is fantastical, Drogon is obviously derived from the word "dragon", while Viserion is a real-life Greek name, commonly transliterated as Vissarion or Bessarion. However, the similarity is coincidental in-universe, as they are alterations of the names of important dead men in Dany's life.
  • The Starks' direwolves are named Grey Wind, Ghost, Summer, Shaggydog, Lady,... and Nymeria. The last one is named by Arya after the Rhoynish ancestor of the Martells, who led her people to escape the Valyrians and settle in Dorne. Fittingly, she is also the most successful of the lot; while the others are either killed or turned into glorified pets, Nymeria becomes the leader of a large wolf pack somewhere in the North.
• So This is Ever After: The book mixes names like Arek or Sionna with Matt, Bethany, Lila etc.
• Spectral Shadows has this literally with the main characters: There's Rael, Jon, and Christine. It also extends to other characters, such as Pamela, Miyan, Kara, Alditha, Salocin, Ra, etc.
• Star City: Human characters usually have common, "normal" English names, such as Emma or Michael, while Ba'ren characters have bizarre "alien" names, e.g. Sepporinen or Ngizzida.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe, even more so than Star Wars itself, is noted for these. In particular books by Timothy Zahn tend to have more 'normal' sounding names for human characters than those by other writers. (In one case, Executive Meddling made him change the names of Han and Leia's children from Jason and Jane to Jacen and Jaina, a case of My Nayme Is More Futurey.)
  • Also, there seems to have been an agreement that because Luke had a normal name, other people from Tatooine would also have normal names (and in the format Luke Nounverber, too).
• In the Stories of Nypre series we have the usual names like Jordan. Then we have the names that come out of nowhere like Tawarln.
• Survivors features various dogs from different backgrounds, some strays and some feral. As a result, the cast has a variety of names. You have Bella, Martha, and Mickey against Storm, Moon, Whine, and Twitch. Then there are the Fierce Dogs who are outright named after weapons, like Blade and Axe.
• In the Sword of Truth series, confusingly, characters with mundane Anglo-Saxon names interact with ones with wholly fantasy names. It doesn't seem to follow any particular geographic boundary either, as Anglo-Saxon names crop up in the more fantastic parts of the world as well as in the "mundane" Westlands. In Westland, we have George, Richard, and Michael Cypher, as well as Nadine, Adie^note who's actually from the Midlands, and Dell Brandstone. From the Midlands, we have Rachel, Violet, Milena, Samuel, Harold, Wyborn, Kahlan Amnell, and Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander. From D'Hara, we have Cara, Gregory, Jennsen, Darken, Panis, Denna, Berdine, Nathan, and Demmin. From the Old World, there's Nicci, Warren, Ann, Jagang, Karg, Six^note deliberate Theme Naming on the part of her mother; "Six" is a bad omen for witchwomen, and said mother knew that Six would be a bad girl, and Kadar Kardeef. In it's defense, at least the Midlands and the Old World are said to be very culturally diverse. How the real-world names (with histories and etymologies that are incompatible at best with the fictional languages and cultures of the setting) ended up in this world is never addressed.
• T*A*C*K: Holly's pet ping-pong ball, Pongo, once had a brother. Cyrus guesses the name as "Pingo", but it turns it was Sam.
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit opens: "Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were— Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter."
• In The Tale Of The Two Bad Mice, the dolls are named Jane and Lucinda, but the doe mouse is named Hunca Munca. The buck mouse straddles the line by being named Tom Thumb.
• In Tales from Netheredge, there doesn't seem to be any particular pattern to how the characters are named. Some are fantasy-like (Zagor, Mizral, Verne); some are Earthlike but "exotic" (Runi, Caspar), and some are rather mundane (Cole, Fry, Perry); some sound like nicknames (Archer, Blue, Drum), and others explicitly are nicknames (Joy). Most characters don't have surnames, and those who do are usually middle-to-upper class.
• In Fiona Patton's Tales of the Branion Realm series set in an alternate medieval fantasy Britain … oh, boy.
  • Real names - Robert, David, Alexander, Rosemary, Tanya, Bill
  • Real names with unusual spellings - Evelynne, Warrin, Jonathon, Zavier
  • Real, sometimes obscure names with gender changes - Jordana, Kassander, Gawaina, Amedea, Braniana
  • Real but obscure names, some with unusual spellings - Drusus, Atreus, Agrippa, Dimitrius, Isoldt, Bran
  • Ethnic or ethnic-sounding names, some with unusual spellings - Llewellynne, Rhys, Llewen, Tuedwur, Jock, Arren, Gordon, Duglas, Etienne, Celeste, Henri, Arnolfo, Benedito, Juan-Ernesto, Eleanor, Ferdiad, Mairi, Bridget.
  • Totally-made-up names - Ellisander, Terrilynne, Caliston, Quindara, Galerion, Ballentire, Kelahnus
  • Bird-themed names (denoting Heralds, possibly because they're swift) - Ptarmiganna, Eagleynne, Robinarden, Wrenassandra
• Tales from the Year Between in its first volume features wizard C'Naga, seer Gerwyn, explorer Rapaecio Pallor, warrior Aislinn Rrekwe'm, engineer E'de'and... and a carpenter named Alan. (Also Dolphin Joe, Howlin' Jed.)
• Talion: Revenant: Alongside names like Nolan, Marana and Lothar, we have Eric, Hal and Malcolm.
• Most English dragons in Temeraire have Pretentious Latin Names like Maximus or Perscitia. And then there's Lily, who hatched earlier than expected and who's young nervous captain had to come up with a name on the spot. To a lesser extent, Temeraire himself, who's captain didn't know about the traditional naming scheme and went with that of a captured French warship.
• Jim Hawkin's kids in Tennis Shoes Adventure have the following names- Melody, Steffanie, Harrison/Harry...and then little Giddgidonihah Teancum.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: The stories intersperse the ordinary names like Magdelene, Tristan or Juan along with invented ones including Joah, Herrick and so on.
• In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, characters have names that are somewhat unusual - Thursday Next herself, her brothers Joffy and Anton, and her children Friday and Tuesday, Archeron Hades, Victor Analogy, Yorrick Kane, etc. - or complete puns - Paige Turner, Braxton Hicks, Lamber Thwalts, Landen Park-Laine, etc. The only exceptions are Thursday's other daughter Jenny, and a character in the second book called John Smith. Upon meeting the latter, Thursday comments, "Unusual name."
  Thursday: I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday and they called him Anton - go figure.
• 'Tikki-Tikki-Tembo', a 1968 story by Arlene Mosel, has a boy named Tikki Tikki Tembo-No Sa Rembo-Chari Bari Ruchi-Pip Peri Pembo and his little brother... Chang.
  • This is a case of purposefully evoking this trope. The moral of the story was that if you give your child a long, crazy name that it'll take a very long time to say, and could possibly get you in hot water if you can't spit it out on time or over and over again.
  • A musical record version renames the younger brother Yen, and also names the numerous elder sisters, starting with eldest Humph, then Lumph, until the youngest sister Gumph, all of whom were named out of spite (just because the parents wanted a son).
• Tamora Pierce does this in her Tortall books, partly as a result of more detailed Worldbuilding adding more "foreign" names, partly flexing her Fantasy-Sounding Name muscles. A generation with names like Alanna, George, Jonathan, Gary, Alex, etc., grows up and calls its kids Keladry, Nealan, Joren, Lalasa... and among the older generation suddenly appear Wyldon, Turomot, Imrah, Fanche... some of whom have Bob nicknames (Kel, Neal, etc). A lot of these are real medieval names (or variants) that have fallen out of use.
• The Traitor Son Cycle: Characters from human nations have names borrowed from the cultures their countries are Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of, while the Outwallers and the Wild have their own naming conventions, so on one hand there are people with names like Gabriel, Tom and Alison, and on the other there are, among others, Mogon, Tapio and Nita Qwan.
• Twilight:
  • The Cullens consist of Edward (common name), Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Rosalie (old-fashioned), Esme, and Carlisle (unheard of).
  • The Volturi have names ranging from Jane, Alec, and Chelsea to Aro, Caius, and Athenodora.
• Twilight Dragon has interesting names like Kether, Kayari, Keaira, Gaignun, and Beldabezabubbabaloo XXVII to contrast with comparatively simpler names like Chris and Monica.
• In The Tygrine Cat, cat names are either ordinary names, nouns, or purely made-up. Cats who live close to humans tend to have names more towards the "Bob" end of the spectrum than those who don't but this isn't a hard and fast rule— within the same society, Binjax or Trillion is just as ordinary of a name as Domino, Arabella, or Sparrow.
• In the Uncle series by J. P. Martin, one of the four "Respectable horses" is named Mayhave Crunch. One can speculate that the other three are named Shallhave, Willhave, Canhave or something like that. In the next book it is revealed they are named Ann, Anna, And Annette.
• In The Underland Chronicles, the humans have both typical English names — Henry, Howard, York, Susanna, Judith — and more fantastic names like Solovet, Nerissa, Vikus and Mareth. Lampshaded when Gregor is introduced to Henry. He almost laughs that "among all these strange names, there's a Henry".
• If you speak Polish, Uprooted. A pair of friends named Agnieszka and Kasia will be found in any elementary school, Hanna, Jadwiga and Marek are also completely mundane, but Wensa and Ragostok have a definite fantasy feel, even if they do sound Slavic. The wizard's names are a twofer - while a Polish fantasy series Kroniki Drugiego Kręgu also uses proper nouns for names, in Uprooted these are also given translation into magical language that resembles Hungarian.
• Vampirocracy: Ordinary names like Leon, Liz, and Karl next to archaic and foreign names like Arnbjorg and Joakim. Justified, in that the more uncommon names tend to belong to many-centuries-old vampires.
• Villains by Necessity: There's Sam and Robin alongside Arcie and Kaylana. Valeriana is soon nicknamed "Valerie" much to her distaste. Sam is short for Samalander (not "Salamander"), rather than Samuel however. "Arcie" also turns out to be "R. C.", for "Reinhart Corallis".
• Due to the Animal Naming Conventions in Warrior Cats, a lot of characters have this. Kittypet and ex-kittypet characters often have "Bob" names (and a few keep them even after joining Clans), as do certain other cat colonies, but Clans and certain other colonies have "Aerith" naming traditions. So we have Zelda, Daisy, Jake, Susan, and Millie amongst guys like Brambleclaw, Tallstar, Pink Eyes, Jagged Rock Where Heron Sits (nicknamed "Jag"), and Rainswept Flower.
  • SkyClan's isolation made it even worse, to the point that the other Clans think their names are weird. They sometimes just tack another word/syllable to a "kittypet name", resulting in such awkward constructions as Bellaleaf, Billystorm and Harveymoon. On other occasions they don't even do that, and have thus ended up with members named things like Macgyver or Tree.
• Wars of the Realm features both human characters with names such as Drew, Ben, Sydney, Kathryn, and Jake as well as angels with fantasy names like Validus, Tren, Brumak, Sason, and Ral. And that's without even touching on the demons...
• The Wheel of Time does this a lot. The men tend to have more normal names, while the women's are feats of imagination and pronunciation. You have Rand, Mat, Perrin, Verin, Elaine and Min and then you have names like Egwene, Egeanin, Nynaeve, Aviendha, Mazrim Taim, and Cadsuane Melhaidrin. There are also some names that sound like they're from our world, but aren't, such as Liandrin, Galina, Amys, Anaiya and Myrelle.
  • Galina is actually a real name of Greek origin that is pretty common in Russia and Bulgaria, but the point stands.
  • Several of the above names are actually alternate forms of names from the Arthurian myths. Nynaeve is an alternate name for Nimue, the lady of the lake.
  • Some are even further connected to Arthurian legend, with Egwene al-Vere being probably a combination of Igraine and Guinevere, Gawyn being Gawain and Artur Hawkwing clearly Arthur.
  • Also Min is a bad example, Min's full name is Elmindreda.
• In the Wicked Lovely series, most character have unusual names. Sorcha, Aislinn (pronounced either "Ashley" or "Ashlynn," though), Bananach, Niall, Irial, Beira, Donia, and Siobhan are Celtic in origin. Leslie, Gabriel, Ani, Tish, Olivia and Seth are relatively normal names. Then there's the tattoo artist nicknamed Rabbit.
  • Most of the normal names are human: Aislinn is the reincarnated Summer Queen, but the name isn't that uncommon anyways, Seth is fully human until he gets Sorcha to change him, and Leslie is human. Ani and Tish are halflings. Sorcha is one of the classic names for a Queen of the Fey, and Bananach is the personification of war. The others are Fey, and immortal, so this is okay in context
  • Furthermore the first two names listed here also fit into the Celtic naming theme: Aislinn is an Irish name (from which Anglisised names like Ashleyne derive) and Sorcha is likely an Anglicised spelling of 'Saoirse'.
• Winnie the Pooh has names related to animal species like Piglet, Owl, Kanga, and Eeyore. Then we have Christopher Robin, who has a real name. Some of Rabbit's friends straddle the line by being named things like Henry Rush or Alexander Beetle. The titular character is an interesting case because his real name is Edward but his surname is Bear. Winnie is a real name, but it's a girl's name, and of course, isn't typically followed by "-the-Pooh".
• In The Witch Family, you get Amy, Clarissa, and Hannah hanging out with Babay, Nobby, and Lurie.
• The Wren series by Sherwood Smith features character names that run from real and unexceptional (Connor and Tess), to real and unique (Wren, Leila, Andreus), to completely invented (Idres, Astren, Nerith).
• A Woman's Work: The main character is Arrabel, with her son Danyel and loyal assistant Wallace. Then you have other names such as Palatat.
• In A Wrinkle in Time, the humans are named things like Meg and Charles, but there are also three... entities named Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Who.
• The Mexican novel Youth in Sexual Ecstasy has common names for secondary characters, like Jessica and Joanna, also common Spanish names like Luis or José; but the main characters have either Middle-Eastern sounding names like Efrén and Asaf, or outright exotic like Dhamar. And the sequel names the protagonist's daughter as Citlalli, which is an Aztec name.
• The Realm of the Elderlings series includes characters such as Fitz, Burrich, Regal, and Chade...as well as Molly and Will. Possibly a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, as the characters with "normal names" are introduced in the first book and are out of the picture by the end of the first trilogy.
• Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner: The Embryon's real selves are a Japanese named Shin Minase, an Italian named Annabella di Fiori, a Latin American named Cielo Alondra and a German named... Kazuki Homura. The first three are real-life names in their countries, though Kazuki is not a German name and is even written in Japanese Kanji. Probably justified, as Kazuki is part Asian.
• Most characters in The Empirium Trilogy have fantastical names, such as Ludivine, Obritsa, Harkan and Corien. There are also characters who sport more convential names like Simon and Remy.

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