let's talk: naming in canon

[turtletail]

hoooooooo boy, where to begin?

naming in Warriors, lbr, is a Mess. a hot mess. there are no rules, you can name your kit whatever u want, and no one seems to follow any rules of a naming system at all.

in the first arc, it /sorta/ seems like there's some sort of system in place, albeit a strange one for sure. Firepaw's a ginger cat, Bluestar is blue, Tigerclaw is brown...

and after that, everything goes off the rails. Feathertail, Leafpool, Hollyleaf (who, is neither white /or/ red, or a medicine cat) Jayfeather (homage to Crowfeather? ugh) etc etc.

so much i could say here, but i wanna hear what you guys have to say ! \o

so

gimme some thoughts

[Gingercloud]

Over the years I've grown more and more convinced that their never was any sort of naming system in place, the Erin's have simply always aimed for character names that sound "pretty" or roll off the tongue nice and easily. The simplest and most obvious names were used in the first arc because it was written first, from the second arc on (And most annoyingly, in all of the prequel books) the names have been getting stranger and stranger because the Erin's have been increasingly forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel of their creativity. Because they clearly consider it a sin to reuse prefixes, given how they rarely use the same prefix twice. (Especially for main and major characters, but even minor characters have been getting hit with this in more recent books.)

As such, any naming systems are purely fanmade because ultimately the only things the Erin's have contributed are- 1. A prefix followed by a suffix. 2. The fact that names change throughout the cats lives. 3. The fact that the cats are only named after things found in nature. (I would also like to point out that the third thing didn't even come about until someone else pointed out that cats logically shouldn't know of things like hammers.)

[turtletail]

yeah, tbh. like, there's a /Windflight/ in Thunderclan, which should be considered offensive to Windclan but.. it's not. in fact, i don't think it's ever brought up at all.

and yes, the Erins have a hangup about reusing prefixes (though /four/ Robinwings is a bit much, but whatever...) though, there is an instance of Thunderclan having two Mouse- prefixes (Mousefur and Mousewhisker...) alive at the same time, least until Mousefur passes away.

[Gingercloud]

Well since all of the books Windflight appeared in are prequels, he doesn't fall into the whole "The first arc had the most reasonable names" thing. But regardless, his name is quite strange. Something even Erin Hunter herself (Themself? I mean, their are three of them...) has acknowledged and apologized for. I always assumed that he was named in honor of his father's original clan WindClan, but frankly even if the name was well intended, I can't see any sort of leader signing off on it because it does trivialize WindClan's name. Not to mention it's a blatant acknowledgement of the kits half-blood origins, and what leader is going to be okay with that? Bad enough that a warrior of theirs mated with a rival clan cat and this action resulted in a kit! Now this kit is going to have to be raised extra carefully in order to ensure their loyalty, but said kit having the name of their fathers original Clan won't help with this at all.

Windflight's half-clanner status doesn't even seem to be widely known even in ThunderClan. Bluefur/star didn't even know he was half-Clan until Oakheart, a cat from yet another Clan told her he was! I can understand this to some extent, as he's already a warrior (With an apprentice no less) in Goosefeather's Curse, and according to Vicky, this novella takes place before all of the Super Editions and about two years pass from the end of it to the very beginning of Bluestar's Prophecy. Shockingly for once, one of Vicky's timelines make sense. GC does appear to take place before any of the cats from the Super Editions are born, and the two year gap also fits in nicely with what the Super Editions laid out timewise beforehand.

So Windflight has been a warrior for quite some time by the time Bluekit is born, and he remains a warrior throughout her apprenticeship and well into her warriorhood. He's the father of six (As he had another mate and they had three kits together before Bluekit was even born, plus Bluekit grows up alongside his other three kits) and he's even mentored another apprentice by the time Bluefur gets involved with Oakheart. Clearly the Clan trusts him on multiple accords, so I can see why his half-Clanner status wouldn't really come up during Bluefur's lifetime... But I just find it so bizarre that Windflight's parenthood is well known to RiverClan, enough so Oakheart uses it to comfort Bluefur when she tells him that she's pregnant.

WindClan I could understand, since said comforting conversation also implies that Windflight's father left WindClan to be with his ThunderClan mate and kit. (Not that theirs any evidence in the books themselves, but that passage can't really be read any other way.) So Windflight's situation remaining common knowledge amounst that Clan I can get, but RiverClan knowing? This Clan has no reason to know of Windflight's parenthood, or at the very least Oakheart doesn't! He's like, only a year older then Bluefur! So it's not like he was around to monitor the fallout from Windflight's parents affair, I have my doubts even his parents were around to watch this situation occur! So him knowing isn't supported anywhere, therefore rendering the whole conversation he has with Bluefur about Windflight a plot hole. Excellent writing there Kate, and great job planning ahead Vicky.

So Windflight on a whole isn't brought up because the Erin's aren't clever enough writers to do so, he and his name should cause a stir, but it never does because he is a minor character. And therefore he isn't important enough to devote book time towards.

I have yet to understand just exactly why their appears to be a huge hangup with regards to reusing prefixes. I could understand being hesitant to reuse prefixes in ThunderClan, because they are always the main Clan, and since the books are marketed towards children, I can get the push to make sure that every character has a "unique" name. I personally don't agree with that kind of reasoning, but I can see why the Erin's as writers wouldn't want to cause confusion.

But why don't the same prefixes get reused in ThunderClan? The other Clans are used as generic antagonists half the time anyway! We barely see anything about how they work or operate in the main arcs, so why make sure that even the most minor of characters in the other Clans have "unique" prefixes? This is not only annoying, but it makes no sense on a society-wide scale! I frankly can't see the Clan going on for well over half a century without repeating prefixes, yet this is the direction that the main arcs have been heading in for quite some time.

But yes, outside of the main arcs (And even within them sometimes! Way to stay consistent Erin Hunter) and the Super Editions, names are reused over and over again. And weirdly enough, it's almost always the same names too! What the heck is that supposed to mean? That Erin Hunter collectively really loves the names Robinwing and Frecklewish? It's confusing to say the least.

Poor Robinwing has been hit hard by this... phenomenon. First the name was used for a SkyClan tom with no known description from Code of the Clans, then it was used for Frostfur, Brindleface, (Longtail), Dustpelt and Ravenpaw's mother. A "dusky brown molly with a ginger patch on her chest", who prodimentally appeared in Bluestar's Prophecy. The third time it was used was in Dawn, for a WindClan molly whose's "light brown with blue eyes". (This "character" never makes an actual appearance in the book and isn't even listed in the allegiances ever again). Then our fourth and final Robinwing is a RiverClan tom, who is described as "pale and tortoiseshell-and-white". (So yeah, yet another tortie tom.) This Robinwing interestingly enough first appears in Eclipse, and as an apprentice no less! He's only dubbed "Robinwing" in The Fourth Apprentice. So yeah, all we need is a ShadowClan Robinwing now and we'll have the complete set.

The situation with Mousefur and Mousewhisker was pretty odd, and it also proves that one can in fact have two characters with the same name in the same Clan and not confuse the readers! I seriously doubt this situation was produced to see if that could be the case, more likely then not, the Erin who wrote Twilight forgot that Mousefur was well... in the Clan when she named Mouse and his siblings. This wouldn't be the first time Erin Hunter has plum forgotten a character.

Anyway, this situation worked out for the best mostly due to sheer dumb luck. Mousefur was already an elder by the time Daisy and her kits joined the Clan, and she had -fur as a suffix. Mouse was a very young kit when he joined the Clan, and he ended up earning a very different suffix anyway. These cats also looked different enough to not confuse them, and that's not even taking account of the fact that they're of opposite sexes and of vastly different age groups. So this whole thing wasn't as confusing of a situation as it could've been, which makes it stand out all the more.


So in short, Erin Hunter is consistently inconsistent when it comes to names and naming, much like how she/they are with everything else to do with Warriors.