What’s in A Character’s Name? A Lot, As It Turns out

I went down a rabbit-hole of my own making the other day, when an honest review of So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison devolved into explaining why the novel fell so flat for me. In short: I don’t think enough attention was paid during editing and research.

Maybe someone rushed through the developmental edit; maybe there wasn’t enough time to research the characters’ backgrounds, names and origins; maybe the editor didn’t flag that the vampires in the novel read like an amorphous mass of vaguely Eastern-European sidekicks rather than distinct, well-rounded characters. 

Maybe it was flagged and no one listened, or no one had time to listen, or no one considered it important to distinguish between the various flavours of Eastern-ness in the characters’ names, grammar and backstories. Maybe neither the editors, researchers, nor the author herself thought it would matter.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not trying to throw shade at Harrison or her publishing team. I understand that an awful lot of work goes into getting a novel to print and, between all of the different people and commercial entities involved in the process, more pressing issues take priority over what to name your characters. I get that.

Nor am I trying to take away from anyone’s enjoyment of So Thirsty, just because I found fault with the character-building. It was overall an enjoyable, if cringe, read with some glaring editing and research red flags that, in my opinion, could have easily been avoided.

This is more of an exercise for me (and you, if you find this at all interesting) to see where a closer line-edit could have improved the reading experience.

With that out of the way, allow me to nerd out for the next thousand words.

I was ready to love So Thirsty

 

I looked forward to a roadtrip-gone-wrong story, a wild, vampiric romp across America, where the stakes (pun intended) are both really high and insignificant in the face of eternity. 

The back cover blurb reads, “A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes. Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life. Her husband surprises her with a birthday weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi.”

What an exciting, original premise! I hoped it would be equal parts egregious and camp, bloody and fun, tropey and genre-defying in the right ways. I expected too much.

Part of this is my own fault. Even while reading a novel I love, it’s almost impossible to switch off my editor brain. I pick on typos, character inconsistencies and gaps in research and before I know it, there goes my immersion. My disbelief is no longer suspended. This is exactly what happened with So Thirsty – and especially its characters.

In my opinion, there were several issues with character building and the overall story arc: many reviews complain that the story goes nowhere and I agree; the narrative doesn’t challenge the main character’s self-limiting beliefs, so any growth she’s supposed to have achieved by the end feels artificial; the gift-wrapped ending seemed tacked on as an afterthought. These all could have been solved with a more thorough line edit. 

But it was the vampires’ names that really soured my reading experience. I couldn’t believe for one minute that two of the undead hotties meant to help the main characters accept their vampiric desires are called Ilie and Costel. Maybe it’s just the Romanian in me.

What’s in a name? A lot, as it turns out

As an editor and as an avid reader of fiction, I believe character names can make or break the reading experience. A character’s name should fit their background (cultural, historic, ethnic etc) and personality and ideally, it should align with the role they play in the plot. 

On the research side, this means looking into names that would have been popular in the time and place your character is from, among people of their social class, occupation, religion etc. This will also mean having an open channel of communication with your editor, making them aware of your research blindspots and listening to their input. 

On the editing side, it’s making sure the language used to describe a character matches its vibe – the expectations set out by the plot and by the author. This includes double-checking names, speech patterns in dialogue, dress, behaviour etc for inconsistencies. 

When names don’t pass the vibe-check

About sixty pages into So Thirsty, Harrison brings out the first vampire, an attractive twenty-something with a nondescript Eastern European accent, named Ilie. For Sloane and Naomi, he is an introduction to the gang of vampires that will shape the rest of their story.

Wearing an impossible outfit composed of tight black satin pants and a loosely-buttoned sheer top, Ilie picks up the girls in an ostentatious sports car that may or may not be stolen and delivers them to the gang’s hideout to party. That’s when we get brief descriptions of the other vampires and a glimpse into their glamorous and unconventional lifestyle. 

In these first scenes and throughout the rest of the novel, Ilie acts and talks like a carefree character whose main objective is to have a good time, consequences be damned. He’s meant as a foil to lead vampire Henry’s serious, brooding, world-weary vibe. 

The other vampire with an unfortunat name is Costel. When we first meet him, he is shirtless, covered in tattoos and gnarly scars. Between his buzzed white-blond hair, barely-there eyebrows and reptilian eyes, Sloane decides he must be “among the most intimidating creatures on the planet”.

Costel is less defined as a character and we mainly get to know him in the context of the gang’s collective hijinks. That’s why, in my opinion, even more attention should have been paid to choosing his name to help set him apart.

Both Ilie and Costel are fun additions to the story, playing with vampire tropes like hypersexuality and speaking with vaguely European accents. Beyond their dangerous, alluring exterior, however, they’re deeply loyal with remarkably solid morals for a bunch of undead monsters. 

But as a reader, I learned these things about them in spite of their names. Now, I understand many non-Romanian readers won’t have the same hangups about these names, but bear with me. 

Ilie is an outdated Romanian name, which peaked in popularity with rural families around the 1950s and 1960s. Associated with a Christian Orthodox saint celebrated on July 20th, the name originates from the Hebrew Eliyyahu, meaning “my God is Yahu/Jah”. Already off to an odd start for a vampire.

The Orthodox cult of Saint Ilie overlaps with pagan folk traditions around the midsummer grain harvest, which is what made the name a popular choice for baby boys born into farming households back when Romania was mostly rural. And while Ilie may be many things, a farm boy he is not.

Ilie is a decent name with a strong background, but ultimately the wrong pick for a glamorous, flamboyant vampire traveling the world with a gang of polyamorous bloodsuckers.

The case for a Russian vampire

I don’t remember if the novel explicitly confirms where the vampires are from, but guessing from clues like their names and from popular genre tropes, I’m almost 100% they are supposed to be Romanian. Ilie, Costel and Elisa are all names from that part of Europe and there are strong hints that Henry is Dracula (of Transylvanian infamy) himself. We also learn that Henry and Ilie are relatives and the gang speak a foreign language among themselves when they don’t want Sloane and Naomi to eavesdrop.

Still, I’ve read some reviews of So Thirsty that assume Ilie is Russian and I can kind of see why. For one, his lines of dialogue are in broken English with grammatical markers borrowed from Russian, such as article-dropping (“I am safe driver”). This suggests a character “thinks” in their native language and translates it on the fly into English when speaking. 

But in this case, his name is typically Romanian while his first language seems to be Russian (Romanian doesn’t use article dropping and is not related to Russian). In my opinion, this points to poor research or, even worse, underestimating your readers. They won’t know the difference, right?

If what Harrison really wanted was a Russian vampire – I can see the appeal of a Romanov-adjacent nobleman getting turned so he can party forever – and was dead-set on the way Ilie sounds, she could have named the character Ilya. It’s a Russian name with the same origins and phonetics as Ilie, and it would have matched the character’s grammar. 

A massive missed opportunity

Mysterious sidekick Costel could have been a much cooler character. Though he appears in almost every other scene of the novel, he is inexplicably relegated to the background. Less developed than Ilie, we mostly get to know him through the general lens of the vampire gang. A well-researched name would have really made him pop. 

Costel is a typically Romanian diminutive of Constantin – a much better vampire name. Just like Ilie, Costel was seldom used outside of rural families circa the mid-20th century. For a well-traveled, tattooed representative of the undead class, this is an incongruous choice. 

Constantin would have been a better fit on many levels: it has an Eastern European ring, sure, but also calls to mind Byzantine Emperors and a literal demon hunter, played by Keanu Reeves in the 2005 cult classic movie of the same name.

If there was research done into these characters, it was likely not thorough enough to spot these issues. The names seem assigned at random, chosen without any consideration for the characters’ personalities, backgrounds, origins and the role they play in the plot. It’s odd that, in a novel that seems otherwise self-aware and plays with genre conventions, such an important aspect of character-building got overlooked. And odder still that, between everyone involved in editing, researching and proofing it, the issue went unnoticed.

As an editor, I believe it’s important to make an author aware of gaps in research and, if needed, to even try and fill them yourself. And as a reader, when I trust an author with my time and attention, I expect them to have researched the culture(s) and language(s) they, or their characters, are drawing upon. Or, at the very least, I expect them to listen to their editors when they flag it.