UGLIES CHARACTER NAMES
“David? That’s a weird name.” It sounded made up, to Tally. She decided again that this was all a joke.
Fans often ask me where characters’ names come from. Like most writers, I do think a lot about what to call my characters, but there are no hard-and-fast rules. Some are easy, some take months of tinkering to get right. But here’s how the major characters of the series got their names. (Those of you who read my blog (scottwesterfeld.com/blog) may have seen some of this before. Sorry.)
Tally Youngblood
Tally’s name was an important one. We’re stuck inside Tally’s head for 240,000 words! Obviously, her name can’t be annoying or unwieldy. My original name for her, “Panzercrappitastica Bonechomper,” was dropped for this reason. But I had to keep in mind that Uglies takes place three hundred years in the future, and after a huge world-wrecking disaster. Names probably wouldn’t be the same as they are now.
So I needed something that’s not a current name, but that doesn’t make your brain go on the fritz when you read it. So I chose a regular word in English: “tally,” as in “count.” As in “Banana Boat Song”: “Hey, Mr. Tally Man, tally me bananas.”
The cool thing about using a real word is that the little spell-checker in your brain doesn’t ping every time your eyes scan across those letters. (And the real-world spell-checker doesn’t draw a red squiggly line under it.) “Tally” is capitalized, of course, so you know it’s a name, but otherwise it reads like a perfectly normal word.
But “tally” isn’t too common. When’s the last time you actually used it in a sentence, like, “Let me tally those Scrabble scores for you, old chum?” Names that are common words are very bad. I suggest to all you budding writers never to name a main character Said, Her, or The.
Actually, it’s Tally’s last name that’s the most interesting. Youngblood is sort of halfway between “Young Turk” (a political upstart) and “fresh blood” (a newcomer). You can tell from the start that Tally is going to disrupt the system. In fact, her last name might have been a bit too obvious, except that last names don’t get used very often in that world. Usually it’s Dr. Cable or some other authority figure who uses her last name, like when your parents yell, “Get back in this house, Scott David Westerfeld!” (Okay, your parents don’t yell that, but mine did.)
I knew I’d chosen the right last name for Tally in Pretties, when the savages who see her as a renegade god fallen from the sky started calling her “Young Blood.” It just fit.
Shay
Shay is a real name, but it’s not very common. If you check the U.S. Social Security baby name rankings (ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/) you’ll find that it hasn’t cracked the top thousand in the last ten years. It made 981 back in 1995, but that was as a boy’s name. In its place of origin, Ireland, it’s a girl’s name that means “fairy palace.”
I’m not sure where in my brain it came from, but I like that it shares two letters with “Tally,” because they’re more alike than most readers realize.
David
David has the only “normal” name in Uglies, and of course he’s from outside the system, so he should stick out. Because he grew up in the wild, David’s kind of old-fashioned and out-of-place.
And yes, David is my middle name, and I have a tiny scar across one eyebrow. I actually don’t know where David got his scar, but I got mine fencing. (Wear the mask, people! That’s what it’s for.)
Zane
Zane’s name started out as “Asher,” after a friend of mine’s kid. But ultimately I didn’t want any city-dwellers to have such normal names. My wife, Justine, suggested Zane, which has the science-fictional Z thing going on, so I liked it. It rhymes with “sane,” and in both Pretties and Specials, Zane is Tally’s main link to sanity (or at least to her real self, which may or may not be sane).
A lot of fans have written to ask me if I knew that both “Zane” and “David” mean “beloved,” because it just makes so much sense. But I had no idea. I’m just lucky that way.
Az and Maddy
I’m not sure where I got the name for David’s father. But “Az” is recognizable to the eye: we think of A and Z as the two ends of the alphabet, and “AZ” is the abbreviation for Arizona. Maddy is a name I’ve used before, a nickname for the character Madeleine in my Midnighters books. I like that it sounds slightly crazy, and Maddy does go a bit crazy after her husband’s death (from Tally’s point of view, anyway).
Peris
Peris sounds like, but isn’t quite, a real place-name: Paris. Again, it’s familiar and yet not quite twentieth century. Also, Paris is a mystical city of lights that people fantasize about going to, sort of like New Pretty Town, where we first meet Peris.
Trivia: In the original outline for the series, Peris was named Peri, another girl. But their first conversation was easier to write using “he” and “she,” so I changed Peris’s gender. (How lazy is that?) Also, I liked that Tally had a BFF who was a boy, and that it wasn’t about romance.
FAQ: Were Peris and Tally ever an item?
Answer: No! Boys and girls can be just friends, you know.
Dr. Cable
Like Peris and Tally, Dr. Cable has a name that is recognizable as a normal word. But “cable” brings to mind electronics and suspension bridges, so it’s much more technological and cold than, say, Peris/Paris. Think steel cables and wiry muscles, or all the wires in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.
Andrew Simpson Smith
Like David, Andrew was raised in the wild, so he has an old-fashioned name. Plus I like it that he’s a “Smith” even though his people haven’t invented iron yet. (Smiths all got their name from being blacksmiths or silversmiths or whatever.) So his name is sort of out-of-time, just like his village.
Part of me finds it amusing that the barbarian is the only character in the trilogy with a middle name, because triple-barreled names sound posh and non-barbarian to me.
An, Sussy, and Dex
Just to remind you: An, Sussy, and Dex are the trio of characters who write “The Smoke Lives!” to create a distraction in Uglies. An is a Chinese name (pronounced “ahn”), Dex is short for Dexter, and Sussy rhymes with “fussy.” Since these three appeared together, I wanted their names to be different and balanced: one Asian, one European, one purely futuristic.
EXTRAS CHARACTER NAMES
“My name is Aya Fuse.”
“No kidding. Every feed in this city seems to know you. And stop bowing!”
—AYA AND TALLY
Unlike the names in the trilogy, most of the character names in Extras weren’t made up. This is partly because very few of my readers are Japanese, so regular Japanese names were unfamiliar enough. But those of you who read manga may have run into some of these names before. (Before I go on, let me thank fellow novelist and friend Chris Barzak for his help with getting these names right!)
Aya Fuse
Aya was one of the first Japanese names I ever ran into, because the daughter of a dear friend of mine is named Aya. I’ve always liked the sound of the name, and it was particularly good for the main character of Extras, because it sounds so much like “eye.” It was also important to me that “Aya-la” sounded good, because I knew that Tally and her gang were going to show up and call her that.
The last name Fuse is also a real Japanese name. I loved that in English a fuse is something you use to start an explosion, because the story that Aya kicks results in many explosions, including a few literal ones. Just so you know, her name is pronounced “FOO-zeh.”
Hiro Fuse
English-speaking novelists find it irresistible that there’s a Japanese name that sounds just like “hero.” In Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the main character is actually named Hiro Protagonist, which is probably taking things a bit too far. But I liked it as a name for Aya’s older brother, because despite being stuck up and annoying, Hiro really is her hero. She idolizes him, and he’s probably the reason she got into kicking.
Al
so, a big chunk of the first draft of Extras was written from Hiro’s point of view, so he really was the book’s hero for a while. (See “Miscellany” for more on this.)
Frizz Mizuno
Frizz is not a real Japanese name. But I wanted one completely made up name, because it is three hundred years in the future, after all. I’m not sure why “Frizz” popped into my head, except that his Radical Honesty makes him the comic relief in the novel, so I thought his name should be something light and, um, frizzy. His last name is real, though.
Ren Machino
Ren is a name you may recognize from the manga series Shaman King, by Hiroyuki Takei. A guy called Ren also appears in Nana, my favorite series. But originally, Ren’s name was Rez, which was completely made up. It sounded too much like Frizz, so I changed it.
Ren’s last name is also common in Japan, but I used it for its English-language connotations. Ren is good with machines and inventions, so calling him “Machino” was just too good to pass up.
Ai
Wait . . . there’s no character named Ai in Extras, is there? Well, Ai is the secret real first name of Jai/Kai/Lai, the name-shifting leader of the Sly Girls. Every time she gets too famous, she just sticks another consonant in front. The name Ai will be familiar to readers of Princess Ai, which is written by Courtney Love, who I think would probably hang out with my Ai.
Note: Jai/Kai/Lai’s names change in alphabetical order, which makes no sense for someone who doesn’t even speak English.
Nana Love
The manga series Nana, by Ai Yazawa, is about two girls with the same name sharing an apartment in Tokyo. It’s my favorite manga, so I had to use “Nana” somewhere. Her last name fits perfectly because everyone in the whole city loves her. Yes, you actually can be that obvious as a novelist, and no one ever seems to notice.
SLANGUAGE
I’ve found that there are only two kinds of slang that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Anything else is apt to be passé before it gets into print.
—RAYMOND CHANDLER, RAYMOND CHANDLER SPEAKING
I think Chandler is totally right here— you can’t use up-to-the-minute slang in a work of fiction, because books take too long to write and publish. So you have to use the classics or make up stuff. Another way is to steal your slang from a faraway place or time. (As you’ll see in the glossary, much of the slang in Uglies comes from present-day Australia and from 1920s England.)
But how do you make up your own slang? One concept I try to employ when inventing words is called FUDGE. It was created by Allan Metcalf in his book Predicting New Words, and explains why some slang sticks around and some disappears. FUDGE stands for:
Frequency of use
Unobtrusiveness
Diversity of users and situations
Generation of other forms and meanings
Endurance of the concept
Frequency of use is important because to get a word stuck in our heads, we have to say it often. When I introduce a new term, I make sure the characters repeat it over the next few pages, just like new vocabulary in a language textbook. Words that mean basic concepts like “good” and “bad” (“bubbly” and “bogus”) are the easiest to introduce, because you get lots of chances to use them.
Unobtrusiveness means that the slang word can’t be too distracting, because that will just annoy the reader. For example, I love the word “chillaxing” (from “chilling” and “relaxing”) but don’t see it being used three hundred years from now. It’s just too obvious and silly. Most of the slang terms in the series are just ordinary words used in a new way—“icy,” “tricks,” “crumbly.” They’re much less obtrusive than made-up words. My favorite of these is “surge,” which is both short for “surgery” and also a normal word on its own. (This also means no little red squiggle under it in my word processor.)
Diversity of users and situations is important for any major slang word—think about all the ways we use “lame” or “cool.” I used “bubbly” to mean “happy,” “stimulating,” “good,” and even “champagne.” And later when Tally is a Special, “bubbleheaded” means stupid and compliant, which shows how much she’s changed—happiness has become a foreign concept to her.
Generation of other forms and meanings is part of the glory of slang. Once we have “hoverboard,” we can move on to hovercar, hovercam, hoverbounced, hoverskates, hover-lifters, and hoverstruts. This explosion of forms shows the reader how important that technology is to Tally’s culture. It also interconnects the different pieces of her world, which makes it all seem more real.
Endurance of the concept simply means that slang about like, love, and happiness will probably last longer than slang about, say, High School Musical. That’s kind of obvious, so I like to replace Metcalf’s E in FUDGE with my own . . . euphony.
Euphony means pretty-sounding-ness, and that’s the secret key to slang. If a made-up word isn’t fun to say, the characters won’t sound believable using it. So as I introduce slang into my books, I practice it myself out loud and in public, which tends to confuse strangers (and annoy friends). But if a word isn’t good enough to say in front of a perplexed shopkeeper, it probably shouldn’t exist.
Another part of euphony is making all the slang for one culture sound similar, in the way that Italian words all sound, um, Italian. That’s why so much of Tally’s slang ends in a y sound: crumbly, icy, Rusty, bubbly, ugly, pretty. They all sound like they belong together. And as I said earlier, much of the slang in the series was stolen from Australian, which also has lots of words ending in a y sound: “brekkie” (breakfast), “stickies” (sweet wines), and even “Chrissie pressies” (take a guess).
Having put all this work into my slang, it’s very happy-making when readers tell me that they use pretty-talk at school. It shows that my slang passes the FUDGE test!
FAQ 1: If the people in Aya’s city aren’t bubbleheads, why do they use pretty-talk?
Answer: Because it’s so much fun. Since the mind-rain, people can talk any way they want, after all. So why not enjoy it?
FAQ 2: But wait! In Aya’s city they speak Japanese, right? So how can they possibly be using phrases like “happy-making”?
Answer: I’m glad I made you up so that you could ask that, FAQtoid. The Japanese are particularly enthusiastic about borrowing words from other languages. (They even have a special alphabet for loan words, just to make sure foreign words aren’t confused with real Japanese ones.) After Tally became world famous, lots of people in Aya’s city started to use pretty-talk borrowed from Tally’s city.
SCIENCE #3:
NANOS
Shay and I had a bad experience with nanos.
—TALLY
Here’s the funny thing about fire: a cheery blaze on a cold night will keep you warm, but one stray spark can devour your whole house. Fire can cook your food, or burn your fingers. It’s very useful to have around, as long as it doesn’t get out of control.
Nanotechnology is a lot like fire. That’s why nanos keep popping up in the Uglies series. They can do lots of amazing stuff: heal your body, make clothes appear from a hole in the wall, even change your brain. But they’re pretty much guaranteed to cause plot complications.
So what are nanos? Well, they’re basically machines—really small ones.
HOW SMALL IS A NANO?
The word “nano” means “a billionth,” so a nanometer is a billionth of a meter. Nanotech machines are between one and one hundred nanometers across. But how small is that?
Often we compare small things to the width of an average human hair. But that’s 100,000 nanometers, way too big. A spec of dust is still about a thousand nanometers across. For a truly nanoscale object, we have to zoom down to a strand of your DNA, which is about two nanometers wide.
Obviously, nanos are way too small to see. But enough of them together can become visible. Here’s the head of a pin with a thousand medium-size nanos clustered together:
But these things don’t exist yet, do they? Isn’t this all future stuff? In fact, nanos are pretty old. They go back to the time of moon missions, Pac-Man, and bell bottoms.
ANCIENT NANO HISTORY
The term “nanotechnology” was coined in 1974 by a visionary scientist named Norio Taniguchi. He realized that if individual atoms and molecules could be combined in certain ways, they could work together like the parts of a clock.
But actually, Professor Taniguchi’s inspiration came from an even earlier source. Evolution has been using nanos for about 3 billion years. The proteins in your body, like DNA, are basically nanoscale machines. (This close relationship between nanos and life makes some people nervous—but we’ll get back to that soon.)
It wasn’t until 1985 that anyone actually created a nanoscale object. The first one was called a “fullerine,” after an engineer named Buckminster Fuller. Most people just call them “buckyballs,” because they look a lot like soccer balls.
Bogus to Bubbly Page 7
