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It's rare in fiction Sidious Send a noteboard - 08/07/2010 08:39:38 PM
On RAFO WoTMB alone, I recall at least two threads posting the claim that no one in WoT shares a given name. Fortunately Fanatic-Templar seems to always be lurking with his list to blow that premise out of the water, but even if it were true, how many works out there often have characters with the same name? Even in works set in the Real World? Not counting, of course, instances of one character explicitly named after another or where the shared name has a specific purpose, I cannot recall it happening very much at all. One might think a martian reading a single work of fiction (however many books it encompasses) might think that no one in the real world shares a first name. This even happens when a character has a fairly common first name. Quick, how many people named "James" "John" or "Michael" in the Lost universe? And those are fairly common names. Even if it were accurrate (which FT disproves), this would be a fairly tiresome complaint.


There are some duplicates in the LOTR universe, but other than that, I can't think of many more. I'm sure RJ has the biggest fictional universe in modern fantasy, and with 1200 characters, it's not a surprise that there are duplicates. I'm actually rather impressed with those - they bring a sense of realism to the series.
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How many non-WoT books have characters with duplicate names? - 08/07/2010 02:35:08 PM 995 Views
Well, for me... - 08/07/2010 04:22:13 PM 630 Views
It's rare in fiction - 08/07/2010 08:39:38 PM 645 Views
Not true. It's rare in genre fiction. *NM* - 09/07/2010 11:30:38 PM 223 Views
If you write stories regularly, you understand the problem - 08/07/2010 09:14:13 PM 867 Views
Re: If you write stories regularly, you understand the problem - 09/07/2010 05:20:04 PM 571 Views
Actually, I never thought "John" and "Jonathan" were different names. - 10/07/2010 12:41:36 AM 559 Views
It's fairly rare - 08/07/2010 09:53:59 PM 630 Views
The Bible would seem to be a good place to research this - 09/07/2010 04:10:32 PM 526 Views
That's cause the Old Testament rocks. *NM* - 09/07/2010 06:14:22 PM 292 Views
There are lots of repeated names in the Old Testament. - 09/07/2010 11:36:40 PM 521 Views
It's fairly common in Russian literature at least. - 09/07/2010 11:35:24 PM 535 Views

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