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Author
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Comment
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LostBoyTootles
Registered User
(5/19/03 11:17 am)
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Lead Characters and Names
I've noticed that in a lot of fairy tales, only the leads have names. Of course, many fairy tales name no one, but there are a few that name just the lead...
Jack and the Beanstalk. Sometimes the cow has a name, but not always. Usually it's just Jack.
Rapunzel. The witch, the parents, and the prince are the only characters besides Rapunzel and none of them have names.
Cinderella. The ash girl is the only one with a name, yet that is only her name because she sits amongs the cinders and ashes... meerly a nickname.
Snow White. Perhaps another nickname, because of her skin.
Beauty and the Beast. The youngest daughter is named Beauty.
Hansel and Gretel. True, this story has two people named. However, these two are still our hero-heroine leads.
I believe there are a few more. Do you think this has anything significant about it? Do you think novels of re-told fairy tales should keep the pattern of having just one or two characters named?
Just wondering...
Tootles~~If I can't be anything important, would you like to see me do a trick? |
Kevin
Smith
Registered User
(5/21/03 12:51 am)
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Names as plot synopses
Something you've picked up on, but not named explicitly springs to mind. Namely, the way in which a fairy tale character's name is often a metonym for the plot as a whole.
Sleeping Beauty is almost a summary of the entire tale. Rapunzel is named after the herb her pregnant mother craved and that led to her being in thrall to the witch.
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selkie
no
Registered User
(5/23/03 5:15 am)
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Re: Names as plot synopses
The names you mentioned are names used by Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers. Because their versions of the tales are so wide spred, the names are also common known and seldom changed. But there are lots of more unknown variants where the caracters have different names with a more local flavour - the names variers from version to version. But you still might be right about that only the main caracters are given names. I can`t remember tales where mothers, fathers, witches, etc. have names, but for instance in asian tales I think it`s quite common that siblings, lovers, servants that play a part in the intrigue, etc. are named.
Selkie
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Valkith
Registered User
(5/23/03 11:22 pm)
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Re: Lead Characters and Names
Quote:
I believe there are a few more. Do you think this has anything significant about it? Do you think novels of re-told fairy tales should keep the pattern of having just one or two characters named?
I think it is entirely up to the author who is re-telling the tale, but ultimately it will be up to his/her audience if they like it.
I think that using only one name in the story kept the telling simple, it made remembering the story that much easier.
IE: There once was an old man, named Mugle, no ummm Murgen, no M-something, you know what? His name isn't that important; anyway he had a daughter named Beauty...
PS - Kevin Smith as in NJ's and View Askew's Kevin Smith?
Edit - spelling mistakes at 1:30 am, and PS
Edited by: Valkith at: 5/24/03 1:08:23 am
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Jess
Unregistered User
(5/24/03 6:35 pm)
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What's in a name
Some of the tales have characters that are known by their professions, i.e. taylor, miller, spinner. In reality, many of our surnames come from the same source. It could be that in the early oral tale tradition people WERE known by their trades, for instance, that house is next door to the miller's and is owned by the bakers. So too, many people refer genericly to mother and father, ma and pa. No name was necessary and the character was immediately recognizable and imagined by the audience. The unusual characters had names perhaps because they were unusual and had additional features to distinguish them from the local miller's daughter, princess or prince.
There are tales, however, that do have more than one name, Vasalisa the fair has Baba Yaga too. Many of the Salon tales have characters with names, for example, The Princess Camion, The Island of Happiness, have several characters with names. These tales are literary tales though, if I understand the definition properly, and perhaps that is a distinguishing characteristic.
Jess
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Valkith
Registered User
(5/24/03 10:18 pm)
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Re: What's in a name
Quote:
Vasalisa the fair has Baba Yaga too.
Baba-Yaga is pretty prolific as the villian in many Hungarian stories, almost to the point of making me wonder if perhaps the name Baba-Yaga just became synonymous with witch.
From: www.pantheon.org/articles..._yaga.html
In a number of East European myths, a Baba Yaga (there are more
than one) is a cannibalistic witch who lives in a hut on the edge
of the forest. The hut stands on chicken legs and will only lower
itself after Baba Yaga said a certain rhyme. A picket fence surrounds
the hut and she places the skulls of her victims on it. For transportation
Baba Yaga uses a giant mortar which she drives at high speed across
the forest floor by steering the pestle with her right hand and
sweeping away all traces of her passage with a broom in her left
hand. A host of spirits often follows her.
Baba Yaga is often represented as a little, ugly, old woman with
a huge and distorted nose and long teeth. She is also called Jezi-Baba
or Baba Yaga Kostianaya Noga ("bone-legs", referring to
the fact that she is rather skinny. She is regarded as the devil's
own grandmother.
In old Hungarian folklore, Baba ("old woman" was originally
a good fairy but was later degraded to a witch. A Baba Yaga is a
hard bargainer, and will threaten to eat those who do not fulfil
their part of an agreemen
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Jess
Unregistered User
(5/25/03 11:50 am)
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True, but....
Remember that Baba Yaga retained her "name" in translations and is rarely referred to only as the "witch" or "old woman". So in a sense, she became ungeneralized and a specific character. What is more, and I find interesting, is that she appears in more than one tale with her unique characteristics intact. This makes her something of a serial fairy tale character. Are there others?
Jess
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(5/25/03 11:58 am)
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Re: True, but....
In some respects, Jack also fits as a "serial fairy tale character" since many characters with the name have specific trickster characteristics.
Heidi
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(5/25/03 7:11 pm)
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degraded from good fairy to witch
From: www.pantheon.org/articles..._yaga.html /snip/
In old Hungarian folklore, Baba ("old woman" was originally a good fairy but was later degraded to a witch.
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I wonder when and how she was degraded from good fairy to witch. And if the same has happened to good fairies (or good witches) in other cultures.
Rosemary
www.rosemarylake.com
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(6/2/03 8:45 pm)
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names
Maybe it's that they were generated by retelling more than by writing down in a book, so even the leads' names are often really more descriptions than names, because it's harder to remember "Ebenezer Scrooge" (say) than "The Little Tailor."
Or maybe there's some point about it being generic -- it isn't just some girl out there that had to brave the wolf, in a sense it's every little girl.
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Kevin
Smith
Registered User
(6/3/03 6:23 am)
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insert subject heading here
The fact that we use Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel as terms for those fairy tales at first preference is kind of my point. We remember the versions where the character names function as metonyms better than ones that dont, and I personally prefer doing this than giving the AT numbers, even if it does privilege the Grimm or Perrault versions. The only other fairy tales that spring to mind where the character has a real name are Hansel & Gretel (which are "typical" folksy names, like Tom, Dick & Harry are in English).
Someone mentioned Jack as a trickster figure, which is an interesting insight as in the UK we have a colloquial expression "Jack the lad" which refers to an untrustworthy, cheeky type of character. I wonder if the expression is linked to the fairy tale character.
(By the way, no, another Kevin Smith. It's quite a common name, although it always raises eyebrows in emails for the aforementioned reason.)
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Mary
Unregistered User
(6/3/03 5:57 pm)
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Rumpelstiltzkin
I notice that in Rumpelstiltzkin, only the villlain of the piece is named -- both the story itself and most variation.
(Though in the Three Spinners version, no one is named.)
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(6/3/03 9:27 pm)
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generic
Or maybe there's some point about it being generic -- it isn't just some girl out there that had to brave the wolf, in a sense it's every little girl.
That rings very true to me. A young child wants to imagine herself in the story, doing the things herself. It's not about 'character' much less 'character development'.
Names like Sleeping Beauty keep that generic feeling. It could be any girl who was beautiful and had that curse. Any girl in Cinderella's place might have been given that nickname.
Of course in a slightly longer version, even a retelling, the heroine needs a regular sort of name, or it would all sound funny and dreamlike. But a Dick and Jane sort of name....
When a name starts to really mean a particular, developed character -- that's a whole different sub-genre, to my feeling. :-))))
Rosemary
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Morgana
le fay
Registered User
(6/7/03 12:41 pm)
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Re: generic
wheeeeeeeeeeee! hi everyone. I think if you have more than one person
named in a fairy tale, it just makes it difficult and confusing.
Also, the other characters generally only turn up once or twice
in a story, and it is really the authors decision if they name the
characters or not!
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