the naming of names

[bonibaru]

Readers and writers: I want to write a little bit in Guardian, but I'm struggling with naming convention. Fics themselves seem all over the place. I've scanned back through the group posts at least a few weeks and not found an obvious post so the faster thing to do is just ask here.

Is it correct to refer to the characters by surname only (Zhao, Shen, Guo, Chu, Zhu etc) or by first name only (Yunlan, Wei) or always by full name (Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei, Shu Hong) or a mix depending on context? I read that this can be context-dependent and I just want to be consistent without jarring the eyeballs of anyone trying to read.

For some reason I have no problem writing out Shen Wei every time but I keep wanting to default to just writing Yunlan (when he is POV character) and writing Zhao Yunlan *every* time feels like overkill, lol. And I want to call Guo and Chu just that but I keep writing out Lin Jing every time too. Is it because 2 syllables feels better? Augh. Halp me do better.

Comments

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Replying to myself but thinking of the actors, I suddenly remembered: While appending brother/sister like -ge, -jie, -mei to the end of someone's name is a very common thing to do as well, be very careful in Guardian!

Bai Yu calling Zhu Yilong "Long-ge" - A-OKAY. Guo Changcheng calling Chu Shuzhi "Chu-ge" - Awww. How cute.

Zhao Yunlan calling Shen Wei "Wei-ge" - Nooooo. That means viagra.

[galaxysoup]

That is super helpful and also made me ugly laugh. :D

[no_detective]

that is HILARIOUS omg!

[lynndyre]

*undignified snickering and also taking notes*

[mecurtin]

Zhao Yunlan calling Shen Wei "Wei-ge" - Nooooo. That means viagra.

Novel!ZYL, at least, would *totally* do that, you know. Hopefully only in private.