Safehold certainly isn't the first series I've read with weird names. Tolkien had a few in his more obscure works, and some of the fantasy writers I've read come up with some pretty wild names - so unreadable and difficult to pronounce that merely recognizing the sequence of letters that make up the name is easier, and I'm a lazy reader in some respects.niethil wrote:I am in awe of your, and other's, random character string differenciation skills. I have no idea how you do it. As for me, I am the very exemple of the reader in Azimov's letter about names.McGuiness wrote:Like many of you, I merely note the spelling of most names without trying to sound them out, especially of minor characters who we won't see again, such as during battles when the point of view shifts to a red shirt with a very limited lifespan.
I recognize the names visually if the characters appear again.
So I suspect I'm far from the only person who reads this way, and recognizes character names that are difficult to pronounce by their spelling (as a group of letters) and not by how that combination of letters is pronounced.
It's sort of the same phenomenon of learning a new word, then encountering it several times in the next few days while you read, which has happened to me dozens of times. That indicates that I was automatically skipping that word and assigning it meaning based on the context in which it was used. For example, I see the word "sardonic" all the time now that I finally looked up what it means, although I subsequently seem to have forgotten its definition, so I'm back to gauging its meaning based on context although I realize now why I keep noticing the word.
I really ought to look it up in the dictionary again!
