The Power of Names

Names have power and I'm not talking about magic properties they might also have in your world. The main power they bring to the table is immersion related.

Names always tell a story, the question of the scale of the story is a different one. The given name or given names are usually chosen by the parents who connected a picture with it. For example I was named after Björn Borg, a tennis player, and that tells you that at least one of my parents knew about that person.

Some names deliver more information, some less in that sense, but all are a decision and that reflects on the parents and on the raising of the child. Friedhelm and Julian are quite normal names, but they bring different meanings along and you can use that for major characters in your world. A kind of puzzle where you just allow the chance to have some amazing detail about the background in full view without anyone realizing right away.

I have a character named "Alexia Rhea Eireen Sotiria Heljarsonardóttir". A made up name to my knowledge, but it can serve as an example about how you can encode information in a name and make readers or players feel smart and share once they figure it out.

The Last Name

The last name is relatively simple, the parts are Heljar sonar dóttir, Hel's son's daughter, meaning the parents of this character claimed divine lineage to Hel as the grandmother. This is a simple one, most people will figure parts of that out by the similarities to the english version, but it rewards attention from the person encountering it at a relatively simple level, think of it as the entry level reward.

The Given Names Acronym

The first letter of each given name builds Ares, the greek god of war. While not as clearly related by blood as the last name claimes she is to Hel, this is at the very least a sign, that someone put effort into picking her first names and likely envisioned her as a warrior of sorts. Reward here is the question about why and how someone might related to two divine figures out of myth.

The Given Names

The given names encode a prayer if you read by meaning. This is the hardest to figure out because it requires googling or knowing the meaning of the single names. The hope here is that the person who found the two previous ones keeps digging a bit longer for the final reward.

The prayer is approximately "Defend (her), Rhea, (grant her) peace after a threat (and) deliver (her).".

Total Meaning

We now know, that the parents likely assumed their daughter was the grandchild of Hel and somehow related to Ares, additionally she was considered under threat, because otherwise the exact prayer structure doesn't make sense to exist in that way. The acronym could have been built with other names after all.

Do you think these three layers are all I encoded here? Do you think this naming has no effect? I'd be happy to hear from you on discord about what else you figure out from the name or your thoughts.