A Very Particular Set of Skills

Where do pony names come from?

Mine works as a pun, sort of, in that "Leaves" can be from a tree or a book, so when I found my passion for writing, I didn't end up with a weird name. I've always wanted to find a pony named something like "Lemon Meringue" whose parents were bakers, their parents were bakers, back to the beginning, when their firstparents were cast out from a garden, or crawled out of some primordial ooze, and baked a pie; and then to find out that Lemon's true passion was something obscure like Optometry.

I wonder why we don't see that.

When I come up with a good Pony name, I write it on a little Post-it® note next to my computer (at work...not exactly clandestine about my fandom) so that I can use it later. For the purposes of this site, my wife also has a name: Autumn Leaves. The idea is that she took my name (Leaves) when we married, (thankfully it still sounded reasonable), and her name was Autumn Equinox—she's a unicorn.

But that's really stinking complicated.

And it backfired. I was reading a (really good) story and I came upon this passage:

...detailing the Equestrian Navy Special Forces members’ recounting and reporting of the Rescue of Missy Frankfurt and her Friend Autumn Leaves. Below their recounted events was a copy of their oaths to silence over the operation. (emphasis added)

My heart stopped. So enthralled was I in the reading, that I forgot who I was and panicked. Suddenly, in my mind, I was on the phone with my wife explaining that:

RUSTLE

"The next part—listen, this is very important. They are going to take you. I need you to shout out anything you see about them; mane color, height, weight, scars, anything you see."

---

INT OLD BUILDING, NIGHT

GRYPHON

(Panicked, babbling) I don't know!

RUSTLE

(Calm) I believe you. But that's not gonna save you.

---

INT. INDUSTRIAL BASEMENT (Fight Scene)

---

EXT. RIVER, NIGHT
RUSTLE jumps off a bridge onto a luxury riverboat, below.

---

INT, RUSTLE's HOUSE, NIGHT

RUSTLE

I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want...
If you let my wife go now, that'll be the end of it...
If you don't,
I will find you,
(resolved) and I will kill you.

GRYPHON

Good luck.

Good writing should create whole worlds like that. A single sentence and I was elsewhere. Granted, for the passage to affect me like that, a lot of setup was required.

Anyway, I'd love to hear anypony's thoughts on name generation for stories.

Signing off,
Rustling Leaves.

Comments

[6ix]

I'm an historian by profession, so a lot of my names come from obscure individuals that most don’t know about. For example the ambassador of the griffins in my story, ‘Twilight at the Disco’, his name comes from the cold war, his name really does mean iron bird in Russian, and was a major player during almost all the peace talks between soviet Russia and USA. These names only work for non-ponies but pony names are easy. Come up with a character and have a name that matches them.