Racefail in NaNoWriMo forums

[asterroc]

Working on my primary NaNoWriMo story since I finished the short story. I realized my brain was dry and I wasn't coming up with good names for my characters, so I turned to online name generators. All the names sounded too bland, so I picked Irish from the dropdown menu. Then I realized I'd only been picking white names, so I found me a nice Hispanic name. Then I wanted something else for my last character and decided I wanted part of the name Asian, and part Islamic, mostly for variety. I could retcon that this hodge-podge fits her do-anything character, or that it demonstrates the genetic mixing that takes place in a fixed population, but really I just wanted something new. I posted to the NaNoWriMo forums b/c I was having a hard time finding an Islamic name generator online, and the Asian names I found were either androgynous (to American me) or else were stupid anglicisms like "Beautiful Tree" or "Strong Wind". I got a bunch of helpul replies too, and then I got this one.

The thing is the name should fit the character and their heritage, so if you're not going to have a particular reason to make them of a particular ethnicity, but just want a name for the sake of having a "non-White" name and not really reflecting the culture that comes with the name, then I think you're better off sticking to Caucasian names. [source]

Her (?) point was I feel two-fold: (1) names should have meaning, (2) white is the default. I could argue the first for hours, but the latter really ticked me off. I replied.

But why should Caucasian names be the default? I'm not Caucasian, does that mean I should make all the names of all my characters be the same race as me? Of course not, that'd be a ridiculous thing to do unless I was writing for an audience that I knew was composed primarily of people of my race and I wanted to exclude people NOT of my race. It is similarly ridiculous to have every single name be Caucasian unless I'm writing for an audience of only Caucasians and I want to exclude non-Caucasians.

Who knows if she'll read it, or if it'll get through, but at least I think I made my point for anyone further who reads it.

Edit: She may have also been making a third point that using a non-white name but giving the character all white personality characteristics would be insensitive. *shrug*

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It's set on a generation ship at least a few hundred years after the ship set out - long enough that the people on the ship have forgotten their origins, lost their original technology, and redeveloped/rediscovered a lot of the original technology. As a result, the group that I am dealing with is pretty homogeneous culturally/racially, with the original people's names mixed all over the place (or perhaps even drifted to a set of naming conventions not currently present on Earth). (Hence I have reconned why Nasira Shen would have a strangely mixed name but act the same as everyone else, and Ignacio as well.) But this has just brought up to me that when they run into another isolated group, that that group would not necessarily have the same culture/race/names as my primary group.