Sunday, November 30, 2014

The Great Horse Poop

I really hate having to rename characters.  It's like having to re-invent who they are.  After two and a half books of writing them under one name, now I have to backtrack and name them something different.  Why?  Because I was an idiot and named my Hero's horse a stupid name.

Bae.  That was what I named a white stallion warhorse.  He's got muscle, he's got attitude, he's got horse snark and a wicked smirk.  He's Ian right hand, partner in crime and all around the COOLEST pet on four legs.  Bae, in my head, is the epitome of everything I'd love to have in a real and fictional horse.  He's just that cool.  Until my editor put the kibosh on him and for good reason.

As quoted from the immortal movie The Princess Bride:  You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.  –Inigo Montoya

Yep.  I probably should have done a quick internet check on 'Bae' before I fixed it to a character.  Apparently it means 'babe' or slang for girlfriend or boyfriend.  In fact there were many slang usages, most of which I won't repeat because I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.  My favorite translation is from the Danish language where BAE means poop.  Oops.  Can't have that!

So, it's back to the character naming drawing board and it has become crystal clear to me that, when it comes to figuring out a name for a horse, I suck.

I came up with all kind of bae (and in this context I'm referring to the danish poop translation).  I had Baridi, Gaeef, Talu, Kuda, and a really lame Shimmel.  I considered Hamo, Dmitrei, Jurian and Larkin.  I thought Furgus would be cool... but the horse isn't Scottish, so that won't work.  I even made up my own language and assigned him a truly grand name of Theovan Hugrok.  But –and feel free to correct me if I am wrong– if you sound it out slowly, it has the same tonality of a cat hurking up a seriously nasty hairball.  Not good.

After days of banging my head against my desk, I figured that anything would be better than Bae at this point.  In fact, I'm starting to consider calling him all sorts of unsavory cuss words in several different languages.  Anything would be better than what I was coming up with.

Heck, I might even call him Bob.  Bob the Horse.

Oh crud.  I think the horse formally known as Bae just got a new name.

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