On Mastodon there is a writing prompt hash tag called #WritersCoffeeClub one of the questions for November was: 11.15 If you find you’ve used a name from a famous novel, do you change it? My answer was: Okay so, very different books can have the same title. Likewise, sometimes you are going to find out that the fantasy name (or word) you came up with is the same as the name in some other work. I don’t think it’s quite necessary to change the name, but if it makes you uncomfortable you should change it. But essentially, sometimes letters come together and form similar words. Of course, in this explanation, I was extending “name” to include “made up fantasy words,” “made up fantasy names” and “somehow I managed to give my novel the same title as this other novel even though they are actually completely different.”
First, the thing with the book titles. There are multiple book titles that are very similar or exactly the same as each other but this one specifically I bring up because I came across both books when I was very young, and did not understand Sometimes Very Cool Sounding Titles Come Up More Than Once For Different Books. The book(s) in question are “Hellflower” by George O. Smith and “Hellfower” by Eluki Bes Shahar. However, they are two different books with wildly different plots and definitions of “hellflower.”
In the Shahar Hellflower series, a hellflower is a mercenary. IIRC they were something like Mandalorians or Dorsai with a very slight lean in the direction of Dune Fremen. (I say this last mostly because if I’m recalling correctly, they had a) special knives. b) much like the underpining of the Dune series, they really, really hated machine intelligences.) In the Smith sf novel, “hellflower” is a drug. Same name, huge difference. I was extremely outraged that this seemed to be stolen title when I found the Smith book…then I checked the date. The Smith book precedes the shahar book, which means technically the “title stealer” is Shahar.
Next is a similar word! (No, I am not picking on “ansible” or “teleson” which are both words that have turned up/been adopted across many authors/works. Also, they’re the same basic concepts, only repeated, not a situation where it’s “similar but different.”) This one is a little more niche. “Wyrsa.” There are two different books by two different writers where this word turns up. I do not believe the one author or the other borrowed the word. (Though precedence I think indicates P.C. Hodgell as the originator.) “Wyrsan” (singular: wyrsa) in P.C. Hodgell’s Dark of the Moon are canids that resemble wolves though they are smaller and “more fierce.” Mercedes Lackey’s wyrsa however are basically grey hounds crossed with vipers. Both canid, but at the same time, very different!
Now, we go on to actual character names. I am pretty sure that the “same names” referred to are unusual or “fantasy” names. It would be dumb to change the name of your character because he or she had the same name as a character in another book, if it were something like “Anna,” or “Elspeth” or “Danae.” It is possibly also silly to be upset if you had a female character named Raven and someone else also had a female character named Raven.
The example here is a character from Shirley Rouseau’s The Children of Ynell. One of the main characters in the series is a character named Ramad. (He has a sobriquet: “of Wolves” due to Intelligent Wolf Companions.) He is your average abused backstory teen fantasy chosen one protagonist. (Yes I did like these books as a kid. However Murphy had an Platonic Ideal Protagonist for her young adult fantasy series from what I noticed, and they all had horrific backgrounds.) So, there’s that one kid Ramad. Then, I read Witch King and one of the characters is named Ramad. This other Ramad is completely different in background and personality, but the name was so familiar, I kept appending “of Wolves” at the end of the name and giggling. (It was funny to me, okay.)
So again, sometimes letters come together and form words that had been previously formed without the knowledge of the person making the word up. Technically, I don’t even think coming up with words that are the same or similar counts as plagiarism because you just managed to come up with a similar name, a similar title or the same made up word. (Note: “ansible” also doesn’t really count as plagiarism I don’t think. At least, I think I would have heard if there was any attempt on the part of the writer who came up with the “ansible” concept suing any other writers who also used the “ansible” concept in their works.)
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