Imagine a reviewer whose major complaint with a fantasy book manuscript was the number of times that words weren’t recognized by MS Word spell check. This person even provided me with the total–all names of people and places within the story. Fantasy is not the same world as we live in. Why expect the names to be the same?

Wishing to avoid another encounter of a book rejected based on names, I requested help from other writers for an historical novel. I could select each name and change the language so I know it’s spelled correctly in the original tongue. Then, I would have to add them all, including the possessive form, to the dictionary spell checker. Eventually, I would overload it. 

So, I provided the writers with a list of possible Welsh and Cornish names and asked which ones they preferred. “Choose the ones that are pronounced like they are spelled,” was the only advice I received. That’s quite a challenge. The double l in the Welsh name Ellyn is pronounced by sticking your tongue behind the top of your teeth and hissing.  

Spell checkers are a bad way to determine legitimate names. I pasted the Latin names from an article about Marcus Aurelius into MS Word, and other than Marcus Aurelius, it didn’t recognize any of the other names. They were all real historical Roman people.

Why would I defend unusual names? I have one myself. My middle name, Neree, is a new family tradition inherited from my mother, who received from her parents, who read it in a book. A family of Slavic origin, Neree de Babberich, included a notable symbolist artist, Karel de Neree tot Babberich. Perhaps, this is the very person my grandparents read about. My middle name could have roots in the slavic word Nera. But, no one knows.

Neree occurs with the highest frequency as a surname among French African families in Haiti. It is also a first name found in older French Canadian men. What does Neree mean in French? Again, no one knows. Most genealogy sources say Neree is a French version of a name from another language. I bear a name that others frequently mispronounce (in case you’re curious, it rhymes with Marie). I don’t even know the meaning of it. Cool isn’t it?

Neree was not passed on to my own progeny as my husband only accepted normal names–ones from his family, such as Otsy, which is not recognized by MS Word spell check either. It is a German nickname for Arthur, so that became our compromise. Arthur is also a Welsh name and one of the few people recognize due a certain famous king never actually existed. However, Neree has not died out in my family. I have both a cousin and a niece with that unusual moniker.

AI scrapes internet for the most popular names and those are the ones found in spell checkers. Some people’s minds work just like that. They have room only for the most familiar names, which could be considered a kind of xenophobia. Why does a personal preferences for certain kinds of names have to affect how people judge writing?

Art by J.W. Listman