This is not a very consistent blog. However, if my blog was my book and each entry was a chapter, I would be quite happy. That's an uneven comparison. Whatever.
Here, I will list some of the names in my universe, their origin, and possibly their meaning.
SumodudeSalad - I might as well start off with the most prominent name of this blog. To explain the blog's title, I must first explain the origin of its root nickname, Sumo.
When I was but a three-year-old, right around the
budding of my imaginary universe, my family took a trip to Maui. I was a rather chubby child, and let's just say I could have been cheek-pinch adorable. Like most little children, I s'pose. In addition to being having excess baby fat, I tended to... run into things. One of my Hawaiian uncles called me a "little Sumo Wrestler", and the name apparently stuck. We never liked wrestling, though. That part of the title was soon dropped.
In elementary school, I befriended a kid named Scott, and one day (on the swings, as usual) he asked me if I had a nickname. I briefly told him the backstory behind mine. Later that same day, another friend of mine, David, (who would typically call me "dude" or "jedidude") called out to me with, "Hey Sumodude!". I liked the name, so it stuck.
In these days of the internet, we use too many passwords. I used to use "Sumodude" as my universal password (it's a different one now, so don't try anything), but one stupid website (Lycos Zone, I believe) would not accept my password as it had to be "greater than 8 characters". Frankly, that is simply too much to ask on a children's site, but I'll digress. Not wanting to take the easy route with "Sumodude1" or something similar, I somehow came up with "SumodudeSalad" on a whim.
I didn't especially care for the name until I told one of my greatest friends - Dennis Lindberg - about it. He would crack lame jokes whenever we had salad with dinner (which was always). The name grew on me, and I started to use it as the title of one of my old blogs (which I didn't really care for). After Dennis passed away, I created a blog here on this site. That blog was lost somehow... So I created another one. And that's what you see today.
Not knowing the plot of my book, some of these upcoming descriptions might not make sense to you Earthlings.
Eathös - There really isn't anything special about the creation of this name. During the first months of writing my book, the main character didn't have a name, so I temporarily named him Skywalker just for kicks. When I was ready to show my first chapter to somebody else, I decided that it would be best to change his name. After five minutes of brainstorming, I invented "Eathos". When my first reader tried to pronounce it, however, it came out as "EE-THAHS". I told him he was wrong, then added the little umlaut for clarification and for decoration.
Eathös just looks better with those two little dots, I think.
His last name, "
Ivana", I simply thought sounded cool. As an Earth name, it means "gracious as God", which is an unintentional irony.
*It should be noted that Eathös is the character most modeled after myself, as I was the unofficial leader in the recess-game STU. Completely by coincidence, as I created names for other characters, I realized that "Eathös" contains all the letters of my first name (and then some). In addition to myself, Eathös is also slightly based off of the characters Ender Wiggin and Eragon. Funny that they all start with "E".
Ariana - Honestly, I had no idea that this name actually existed at the time I came up with it. I really liked the name, and it sounded a bit familiar, but I really thought that I had invented a really cool name that sounded Earthy enough to use for one of my own children.
Then one day, I re-watched Jurassic Park. "Ariana Richards" came up in the credits. What?!
Ariana, as a character, is an inspired mix of three childhood friends of mine, most notably Brienna Pryor and Whitney Brown, whose influences helped shape who I am today.
Pavol Rialonav - Pavol, as a character, is slightly based off of Paval Niemeyer, an old school friend and a primary participant in STU. I always thought Paval was a cool name, so I kept it mostly intact.
The King of Mya in STU was called "King Rialonav". Paval was Myan royalty in the game, and he still is in my book, so the last name just made sense.
Salvao Sen - Name-wise, I pulled "Salvao" out of a hat. Character-wise, Salvao fills the slot that Braydon Neviadomski occupied. Although there are some major differences between Braydon's and Salvao's personality, Sal has probably remained closest to the original inspiration.
Salvao is a definite favorite of mine, as he is based on my best friend of my earlier childhood. I tried to come up with a name that stayed closer to "Braydon", but none seemed to fit. I did come up with "Barhe" and almost went with it, but it didn't sound young enough for my tastes. Barhe has not hit the trash heap, though, and will be the name of Salvao's dad.
Olan - The character of Olan is one of my favorites, simply because of what I have planned for his story arch. Olan fills the shoes of Aaron Wham, and although he's vastly different from his inspiration, there are a few key, if vague, similarities. "Olan" is a little like "Aaron", I think.
Frandere Thurion and
Vashiel Dreshdae are not based off of anyone, officially. However, some parts of Frandere's personality remind me of my old classmate, Scott, and some of Vashiel's mannerisms could be a bit likened to my old classmate, David.
Jiavon - General Mialo Jiavon is very roughly based on Drew Sequoia, who was an intermittent STU player. As Drew would tend to turn against us at random times and screw up our plans, I was inspired to make Jiavon the main antagonist of Book 1.
Cabo is roughly based on Caleb Chase, one of the three original STU team members. Cabo Ajere is a personal favorite character of mine. Other than his name, I'm not sure how much of Cabo is actually based off of Caleb, because, well... In the book, he's a confused villain.
Meltri Volta - The name "Meltri" came from the name "Melanie". Originally, she was going to be a villain based roughly on some of Melanie Taitano's traits. However, I eventually decided to change her character into the rebellious daughter of the evil C. Volta.
Commander Volta - Oh, there we go. Yeah, she's somewhat based on Melanie. Keyword: somewhat. Volta's aversion to physical violence and preference for using persuasive words could be seen as parallels to her inspiration. Of course, C. Volta is far more... malicious.
"Volta" is another cool-sounding last name that I decided to use on a whim. Simultaneously, I tribute Alessandro.
Major Seri - Directly under Volta's command, Galvani (hint hint) Seri will prove to be an important character in my first and second book. Seri is very roughly inspired by Si Sharma, a classmate who enthusiastically tried to join us at recess one day. He never tried to play again, although he was always welcome.
There are many other names and inspirations that I could detail, of course, but they won't come up until well into the series... So, I'll stop here.
