The Great Fantasy Naming Disaster / 9 Feb 2026

I would like to speak honestly about one of the least glamorous parts of writing fantasy: naming things.

People imagine that fantasy authors are effortlessly inventive, as if marvellous names simply descend from the heavens on silver threads. In reality, the process is often closer to me staring at a page thinking, “No, that sounds like a discount carpet warehouse,” before deleting a name for the fourteenth time.

Creating fictional names is surprisingly difficult because they have to do several jobs at once. They must sound interesting but not ridiculous. Distinctive but pronounceable. Memorable but not so eccentric that the reader feels they’ve accidentally wandered into a tax manual written in Elvish.

This book has seen all sorts.

At various points I have invented names that sounded like minor cough medicines, suspiciously cheerful garden centres, or villains from a low-budget cartoon. Once, after spending far too long trying to come up with something ancient and mysterious, I proudly produced a name that turned out to sound almost exactly like a man who fixes boilers.

There is a special kind of humility in realising your feared sorcerer appears to be available Tuesday morning between nine and eleven.

The trouble is that names matter. In middle-grade fantasy especially, they help set the tone quickly. Young readers know immediately when a name feels right, and just as quickly when it feels like an adult has tried a bit too hard. So I keep circling back, testing sounds, trying rhythms, and muttering nonsense to myself like a person you would sensibly avoid on public transport.

Still, when the right name does finally arrive, it feels like a small miracle. Or at least a truce. I’ll take either.