Sourang Names (Patreon)

When I wrote Small World/Fair Trade, I thought that the sourang should have a language that's very different from the other races—so much so, that Kanti would not have any hope of learning it. I imagined it as sounding like the chitters of squirrels.

The inevitable fallout of that decision, however, was that sourang names would be similarly unpronounceable. I love shooting myself in the foot! (Paw?) I was mostly able to work around this inconvenience by making it taboo for slaves to say their master's name. Yeah, I'm a cheat. I also created a nickname for the antagonist, so much of the book could simply refer to the main three sourang as "mistress", "master", and "Blaze".

But the sourang do have names, so I wrote up some of Kanti's best-guesses for them, and put them in italics whenever they appeared: Tikkatikkachitter, Tititichitterti, Chittertrrrrr, Trrtrrchitter, and Yichitteryi. One of the nice things about being a writer as opposed to someone who makes movies or TV shows is that I didn't have to worry about it much beyond that. I did have a sound in mind for each of these names, but that was largely irrelevant unless someone asked while I was on a panel.

Then I decided I needed audiobooks for the trilogy and it became an issue.

When I emailed my VA, I warned him that sourang names weren't to be easily represented, I apologized over and over, explaining that I hadn't planned ahead for audio, but Rafe is a complete pro, and I swear he never blinked an eye at the challenge. I sent him my usual list of names that appear in the book, an .mp3 of how I wanted them pronounced, and left it to him. He read all of the names as if he had been fluent in sourang all along.

Anyhow, I thought it was neat and that you guys might like a little advance peek at what these names will sound like in the upcoming audiobook, so I grabbed some snippets and pasted them together in a single .mp3 for you to enjoy.