It's all in the name

I like reading. I read a lot actually, and my personal library of literature continues to grow exponentially every time I enter a book store. But there's something that I struggle with. It's character names. For the most part I'm ok with them. If Bob, Harry and Steve want to solve a mystery, good for them. If Sally, Gemma and Mischa have to throw the best house party ever, that's fine. Foreign names are fine too. Miguel Sanchez and Ferrera Rodriguez can be stealing jewels from Princess Sheherazade of Russia and I'm perfectly fine with that. What I'm not fine with is when character names are stupid, nonsensical collections of vowels and consonants, or if they're named after objects or items.

I can't stand it when characters have stupid names. I don't like it when characters are named after things, and I can't stand it when their names are impossible to pronounce, I despise it when their names are something normal but spelt differently. It takes me out of the story and just makes me think about how fucking stupid it all is.

I'll give an example. Recently I got into the comic book series Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman. I was surprised at how good it was and how much I enjoyed it. Apparently he wrote some books, so the next time I went to the book store I looked for some, and sure enough I found one. I turned it over and read the back, to see what it was about. Then I calmly put it back on the shelf and left the store and never looked back. Why? The main character's name was Shadow. And I can't handle that.

I can't read a book where the main character's name is Shadow. I can't follow the adventures and misadventures of a character named Shadow. It's too much for me. It's too stupid for me. It sounds like the name of a character a thirteen year old would write in English class. His last name would probably be Darkblood or Hellsbane. He'd have long black hair and red eyes and probably had magical powers and some kind of sword. And a motorbike made out of bones or something. To me, it's juvenile. So unless the guy is actually made out of shadows or he can control them (in which case we're entering superhero logic of 'you're named after your powers') then I can't handle that bullshit.

This is pretty much why I struggle getting into Fantasy and Science Fiction. It's freaking anything goes over there, where you can add any number of random vowels to spice up a normal name.
I once started reading a fantasy book where the main characters name was Mykkael. You know what that is? It's Michael, but spelt in a stupid fantasy way. I had to stop shortly after (though that's mostly because it turned out to be a run-of-the-mill courtroom drama, but with dragons and broadswords).

In some fiction it's fine. Dune is full of made-up words and silly alien languages, but I can handle that because the main character's name is Paul. Fucking Paul. Star Wars? That's Luke fucking Skywalker there. Luke. They have normal names, although everything else has stupid bullshit, and I'm fine with that situation.

But other's don't. The Name of the Wind (a book that's basically a generic medieval fantasy version of Harry Potter, but with more violence and sex) has a main character named Kvothe, and while I hate him for many reasons (the entire book is just the author wanking about how awesome the main character is) the name is a big one. I also hate characters who have 'quirky' names because of how quirky they are, but that's another issue altogether.