I am working in feverish fits and starts to get the last few thousand words into my first draft of Ghosts of the Old City. It was supposed to be volume one of “The Fairworth Chronicles.” (That is, in fact, what my Scrivener project is called.) A few weeks ago, I read a blog post about names and languages, along with another about a writer having to rename her protagonists to move them away from stereotypes. The combination of those two posts set the niggling worms of doubt to work at the back of my mind. Sometimes—this time—those worms were simply the precursors of an uncomfortable but necessary change. I have to find one of my heroes a replacement surname.

I loved “Fairworth” as a surname. It sounds great. It has interesting connotations for a character who doesn’t always think of himself as worth much, and particularly for a family that has done some pretty unworthy things. It also just works for a pulp hero. Those characteristics were particularly important for Maedoc’s original incarnation, years and years ago, as a character for a short-lived online game. (The game never got off the train it started on.) The concept for that character—“unlucky dilettante who sees ghosts”—didn’t change much for the novel, but the novel has given that thumbnail a chance to develop into a full character.

More importantly, I’ve developed my own world around him. That game had trains and elven cults fighting the erosion of magic (with dynamite!) and a world vaguely defined by a recent war between magicians and technologists. I didn’t really keep any of that, instead building a culturally divided city, partly made of magic letters. There are humans and, in the background, seal-people—no elves or dwarves or (FSM forbid) gnomes. There are trains but not automatons or dirigibles or other steampunk staples.

…and that world has its own languages. More importantly, I’ve worked hard to avoid it becoming some undiscovered part of England. One language is based loosely on Bulgarian and associated with a culture formerly reliant on horses. The other language features a phonemic rune alphabet. Neither has a place for “Fairworth.” The name makes it too easy to think of the faux-Bulgarian Parukhi as British (and thus substituting France or a vaguely-defined Far East for the opposing Shehru rune alphabet culture). It also just doesn’t fit with all the place names I’ve used. I had, at one point, a half-baked theory about the Parukhi aristocracy all having adjective+noun or noun+noun names: Fairworth, Stormcliff, Briarwood, usw. The Parukhi commoners had one-word surnames drawn from common objects: Wood, Needle, whatever. (Gene Wolfe does a lot with those object-names in his Book of the Long Sun, by the by.) In theory, it’s not a bad idea. In practice, there’s absolutely no spot to explain or demonstrate that in the novel. I’d end up with something forced or confusing. Never mind that even with that distinction, squashing together English words for names just doesn’t fit with all of the other things I’ve created.

So I spent Sunday afternoon playing with Google translate and trying out different surnames. I’m testing one of them now, but am not wholly sold on it. It’s hard to take a name I’ve been living with for over a year and replace it. My initial feelings are that it loses some of the sonic “essence” of Maedoc, but deepens the sense of his family history. Given that the name was originally created for a character with minimal background, this isn’t surprising. I think the change will ultimately help anchor poor Maedoc to the world, make him more a part of his family (not necessarily a good thing for him!) and help the world stand better on its own. Like so many things in writing and in life: necessary, but not necessarily fun at the time.

In the meanwhile, there will be much find and replace. So much find and replace.