Names are important. They have power, they indicate things. And they’re also sometimes confusing.
A reader mentioned recently that this can be confusing (alas, yes, though more below about how I try to make that a little easier). Today, it’s time to talk about why those different names and forms of address matter.
What’s in a name?
Britain – and Albion – in this period indicate a number of things through form of address. Some of them are subtle, others are much less so. (Or look subtle to a modern eye, but are decidedly pointed in the period.)
These come in all sorts of forms, but when it comes to Albion, we can talk about some common groupings:
- Titles (and how and when they’re used)
- Degree of friendship or trust (last name vs first name or nickname)
- Familial structure or habits
- Other traditions
And then we’ve got Alexander and Geoffrey, who are their own thing, while also intersecting with these. (And a few words about Naming magic in specific here.)
Avoiding confusion
I do my best, when using alternate names for people, to signal them as clearly as I can and indicate what names belong to the people in the conversation. There are times this is easier than others, especially since some internal narration isn’t going to spell that out.
(Gabe is always Papa to Avigail or her siblings, for example, so it depends on if I can wedge the other things Gabe gets called in that conversation in there by other means.)
Titles
The easiest set of name layers has to do with titles.
Unlike non-magical Britain, “Lord” is a specific job title. Where in Britain the title and the surname are most often different, in Albion they’re reliably the same. You become Lord (or Lady) and you put that in front of your existing last name name. That’s the same as you would with Master, Mistress, Magister, Magistra, Professor, Portal Keeper, Healer, Penelope, or a military or Guard rank.
For those other forms, Master and Mistress indicate an adult who’s completed an apprenticeship or the equivalent. They’ve reached journeyman status if there’s a formal guild. Magister or Magistra are for people recognised as having particular mastery of their field (and are recognised as a master in guild terms if relevant).
People who haven’t done so use Mr or Mrs or Miss. The convention is that staff in a house (or equivalent roles) use the form that staff in a non-magical household would. (Mr Whoever for the butler, Mrs Whoever for the cook or housekeeper or other senior roles, and so on. This avoids problems if the household is out shopping in non-magical stores.)
Other forms of address
Students at the Five Schools generally get referred to by their last names in classrooms and other group settings. Their first name or birth order might be added if disambiguation is needed.
During apprenticeship, the more formal version has them referred to as Miss or Mr Lastname, and calling their apprentice master or mistress by proper title. If there’s more affection there, the apprentice gets called their first name, and refers to Master or Mistress Firstname. (Even when Magister or Magistra might be correct, it’s not used as often in informal mode.)
So, for example, Cassie is Mistress Cassie to her apprentices. Rathna and Ferdinand shift to the less formal mode part way through Old As The Hills. Ursula refers to her apprentice mistress as Mistress Renata.
Degree of trust
The second category has to do with degree of trust. People normally start out more formally, using last names and the appropriate title. At some point, one or the other might cautiously suggest moving to first names or a nickname. That offer might or might not be accepted. (Strictly speaking, it should be the person with more social status making the offer: that isn’t always what happens.)
This is often a pivot point in the romance arc, if you pay attention to those romances where the two don’t start out as friends already.
Of course, there are exceptions. Benton remains Benton to Geoffrey Carillon (and Lizzie and Alexander) long after they might reasonably have switched to first names. Benton refers to Geoffrey as ‘my lord’ or ‘his lordship’ most of the time. The man has habits.
Family names
Of course, names can also reflect specific relationships.
Some of this comes out in what children call their parents. There are a lot of nuances to this one, especially when it comes to class in Albion.
- Mother and Father are more formal, and tend to be used by people who are not emotionally close to their parents. (Mater and Pater would also be an option, but none of my characters have yet gone for that one.)
- The Fortiers interestingly go for Maman and Father, a mix of French and English, even though it’s the paternal line that’s always French-descended. Family relational name traditions are weird.
- Mama and Papa are the more intimate form for folks in a higher social class. Both Ros Carillon and Avigail Edgarton use this for their respective parents (as do their siblings).
- Mum and Dad are distinctly not posh. Thesan and Isembard deliberately choose these with their children (it’s what Thesan grew up with) because Isembard wants the regular reminder to do things differently than his parents did. Also, it drives Garin up a wall in a way he can’t do anything about. (Jasper also uses these, as do a few others.)
In terms of other family, this is one of the places where you can see some complex dynamics. Ursula and Leo both refer to a ridiculous number of people as Aunt or Uncle (it’s a running thing in Ursula’s romance, Grown Wise) – both their actual relations, but also the professors at Schola, and a number of family friends.
Nuances of family names
Sometimes it’s more nuanced: Edmund refers to Cammie as Aunt Cammie, but not Hypatia, Orion, or Claudio (or Cammie’s Duncan, for that matter). He’s got a different relationship with Cammie because she apprenticed with Giles (a long time friend of his father, Geoffrey), she’s a generation older than he is, and it’s the form of respect that fit best.
One thing I’ve been figuring out in recent writing is how Benton and Edmund refer to each other. The answer is “Master Benton” (as a formal and deliberate acknowledgment of Benton’s skills and role as steward on the estate), and “Young Master Edmund” (lengthy, but more intimate than “Master Carillon” or something similar). Mostly, they try to avoid needing names, at least in the writing so far.
Here’s some more examples.
- Ursula, Leo, Edmund, Merry, and Ros all refer to Alexander Landry as Uncle Alexander (he’s in a familial relationship to all of them). Avigail, however, asks at one point (in The Changing Door extra) what she should call him, because she isn’t in that sort of relationship to him.
- Edmund (and his sisters) refer to Giles and Kate Lefton as Uncle Giles and Aunt Kate (long time friends of their parents). To others, they’re Major and Captain Lefton (Earned military rank for Giles, and Kate’s Guard rank).
- Thesan and Isembard are Professor Wain and Professor Fortier professionally, and often Professor Thesan and Professor Iz with students they’re closer to. (Thesan is Mistress Fortier socially if people are being fussy.)
An example group
A Patreon extra coming in April (from February 1947) gets into what Ursula calls various people:
- Uncle Garin (uncle by blood)
- Uncle Alexander, Uncle Orion (both of whom are longtime family connections, uncles by choice).
- Lord Richard (the use of the title is a nod to the generational choice, but the families are close)
- Gabe says Ursula is an adult and can call him Gabe now.
- Achilles and Edmund by their first name (family connections, relatively close to her age rather than a generation different).
- But she refers to and thinks of Geoffrey as Lord Carillon, because there’s more distance there. (It’s not bad distance, just the Carillons are more protective of names and privacy in specific ways. Even if Ursula doesn’t know the reasons why, she will use the formal mode until invited to do something else.)
Other traditions
Nicknames are a thing that comes up – they’re a staple of British boarding school (and non-boarding school) experience, both good and bad. But various characters also use variations on their names at times.
- Giles is officially Aegidius, and thank you, no, he prefers to be Giles. (Giles is in fact a related derivation from Aegidius). His wife Kate is properly Katherine, but that’s a much more common nickname.)
- Gabe is Gabe in preference to his full first name, Gabriel, because of the tendency for people to assume they’re getting a woman.
- Merry (Edmund and Ros’s middle sister) is properly Meraud and almost never uses her full name.
Alexander, Geoffrey, and Naming magic
Finally, we get to Alexander, Geoffrey, and the question of Naming magic.
As a response to the trauma of the trenches (and specifically some of the early gas attacks in Ypres in 1915), Geoffrey Carillon begins to think of himself in his own head simply as Carillon. Sometimes that needs disambiguation, and he never explains to his brother and sister-in-law that he doesn’t think of himself as Geoffrey. When he meets Lizzie, she uses Geoffrey (at his request), but it’s not an entirely comfortable name for him.
It’s not until Best Foot Forward – a book where Alexander’s Naming magic skills feature for other reasons – that Geoffrey becomes Geoffrey again inside his head. From that point, he keeps it up. But it’s also at this point that Alexander and Geoffrey both enjoy trading relevant epithets (Geoffrey’s relate to Horus, and Alexander’s to Set. I have lists, and I pick depending on what makes sense in the scene.)
The larger question of naming people and renaming people is also coming up in Apt To Be Suspicious (Edmund’s romance in 1947-1948, out in November), not least because Alexander is teaching that particular form of magic for the first time since he taught Perry before the Great War. It’s a particularly potent form of magic, but one barely practiced in Albion. The idea that words are magic – and names are words – is a key aspect of ancient Egyptian magical theory.
In other words, there’s no simple answer to any of this! But which names people use and how they use them are character information, among many other pieces of it.
