bonibaru (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sid_guardian2019-02-10 09:47 am
bonibaru) wrote in sid_guardian2019-02-10 09:47 am
Entry tags:
the naming of names
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.
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.
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Only because you're not used to the way Chinese names are used yet. Take it from me - I started out thinking exactly the above. But it's shifted to the point where I literally went back and edited 50k of WIP I started posting a couple of months ago because now it feels so wrong to use "Zhao" by itself that I couldn't stand it anymore. I've also used "Zhao Yunlan" all the way through in explicit fic where he's the POV character and nobody has complained, because that's what people on this fandom have come to expect. (I have also used "Yunlan" only for his POV in a one-shot.)
Again: using full name for the POV character feels clunky - but only until you get used to it. Which native speakers already are, and readers in this fandom tend to become. I would seriously advice against using one name only, because I did, and that didn't work out for me in the end despite having very good and logical reasons for it.
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