Names Fails?

[Tea]

I'm in the midst of slogging through a freebie I really, really don't like. (I like it even less since having taken a break to read another freebie, one I ended up loving.)

As often happens with me when I'm reading something I don't like, I'm starting to become very nit-picky about every little thing I don't like are now in high relief for my DNW-detector.

Some of those things were found in the book I just finished — a few punctuation snafus — but feel a million times worse because of everything else I hate about this book.

Others are things that are not even wrong, but they are pinging my annoyance buttons. Even the characters' names are starting to irritate me!

And that made me think about books in general, particularly IR books featuring a Middle-eastern* or Asian male lead. So many have names I find to be ridiculous attempts at sounding "ethnic". (I didn't mention female characters because I think ridiculous — or extremely anachronistic – names are pretty much par for the course all over romance in general.

Here, though, I'm thinking specifically of faux pas in naming characters of non-Western European descent, particularly male characters of non-Western European descent.

Am I alone in noticing this? Is it perhaps — as I've already pointed out for women characters — something that occurs across the board in romance, but which I have simply missed?

I don't want this to turn into a rant, but I'm wondering if I'm seeing clearly.

*See also names for imaginary countries in the sheikh-themed books.

[Paganalexandria]

Tea wrote: "I'm in the midst of slogging through a freebie I really, really don't like. (I like it even less since having taken a break to read another freebie, one I ended up loving.)

As often happens with m..."

I don't read that many romance novels that feature a middle eastern hero. If you don't want to name the book, can you give me example of the character name?

[Tea]

Pagan, I tend to skip those books these days, but I'll go through some boxes a look for the ones that irked me way back when.

Often, it was simply either an odd transliteration of familiar Arabic names, but possibly equally often, the names were "Arabicised" European names or vice versa.

[Echo]

I have not read too many with Middle Eastern heroes, so I can't speak to that. I do notice a certain amount of laziness with Asian male leads ie. saying a character is Japanese but using a Chinese name or vice-versa. I remember one book where an author gave a character the last name Suzuki, but then said he was Chinese American. Um, Suzuki is a Japanese last name so....

Another was a Chinese American guy but then there was all this stuff about sushi and ninjas and K-pop songs. It was a hot mess.

I think some people's view of Asia or Asian Americans comes entirely from B grade action movies.

[Paganalexandria]

mrsbookmark wrote: "I have not read too many with Middle Eastern heroes, so I can't speak to that. I do notice a certain amount of laziness with Asian male leads ie. saying a character is Japanese but using a Chinese ..."

I'm dead to the bed after reading your post about ninjas and K-pop! My imagination just went into overdrive trying to picture a scenerio that included both....ROTFL!

[Tea]

@msbookmark:

Oh, yes! I hate that so much. Grrrr. Get a clue, writers! And if you can't get one, make one up. Authors love to make fake countries in Europe and in the Middle East. Why not do the same in the Far East?

Hmmm... There's an idea.

[Echo]

Paganalexandria **wicked juices bubbling over** wrote: "mrsbookmark wrote: "I have not read too many with Middle Eastern heroes, so I can't speak to that. I do notice a certain amount of laziness with Asian male leads ie. saying a character is Japanese ..."
I wish I could find it again, but probably not because I don't want to just hurt someone's feelings for the heck of it. But, yeah, it was tragic.

[Lola]

Authors who mess around with Russian names. Aaarrrrggghhh. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but the odd names kept distracting me from the story flow.

[Kim]

When I was writing Maybe Baby, I wanted to make sure I used authentic Swedish and Danish names that would not be hard to pronounce for English speakers who were not used to Scandinavian names. I've seen a few instances of writers who write about Sweden but don't even know how to spell Swedish names. Or they give a male Swede a female name, which never happens here. Or they simply make up a name that would never normally occur in Swedish.

For example, no matter how popular Nordic mythology is, it is very rare these days that you'd meet a Scandinavian guy called Thor or Odin or Loki. You are more likely to meet a a dog or cat here with those names. Most Scandinavian men have names like Oskar, Per, Andreas or Viktor. Or even something more common like Johan or Mikael.