A problem sorted
When I had a character called Ida in one of the scribblings sent in for the writing course I went on ages ago, the comment came back:Is this character a homosexual, because his name infers it
Oh please :-) So immersed am I in the zone of strange Anglo-Saxon monikers, it never occured to me. Ever since then, I've been on the look out for these oddities. There are a lot of male AS names that end in what is thought of the more feminine 'a' Anyway, I later decided to call him Idehere as it might misdirect (for a moment) any rather keen readers who'd cotton on that this was a king-to-be. But he would be back to Ida later on in the story all the same.
It's just occurred to me, I could spell it a different way: Ider. So at least it doesn't look like a girlie's name, and I don't get any resistence to it, should the story go - er - any further. It still gets pronounced the same way, to my mind. Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Those who appreciate the era won't have any problem with Ida, but hf writers seem to get an inordinate amount of flak for anything that is 'unusual', in particular difficult or odd names.
posted by Alex Bordessa @ Thursday, January 25, 2007
5 Comments:
Been there, seen that, decided to ignore it :-)
But yes, spelling it Ider would work fine and wouldn't worry me. I might translate it to Ida since I know the historical figure anyway, or I might just assume it's a different transliteration of the same sound.
I think an already published author would get away with it, but it's just one more thing for an editor/agent to pick on if a new author is looking to get accepted. It's one of the things I would have little trouble compromising on - now I've found a way round it :-)
I'm just appalled that your tutor can't use the word 'infer' properly. ;-)
They also got the word wince and mince mixed up ... No names, no pack drill.
I personally have no problem with unusual names, but if you're going to change things around, Ider seems like a perfectly reasonable substitute for Ida.
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