Question about a literary term

[Omphalos]

I have no idea if I have placed this in the right thread. Hope so. Here goes. A friend recently asked me this question:

Hey, what do you call it again when an author inserts the (usually altered) name of a friend or acquaintance into a work?

Like Holjance Vohnbrook.

FYI, Holjance Vohnbrook was what Frank Herbert did with Jack Vance's name in Dune. He used that in the Glossary.

I have heard a term for this before, but I cant even get a glimmer of what it is in this old brain of mine. The only things I could come up with so far are 'homage' or 'cameo,' both of which are miserably stupid answers to this question. Anyone know what the term is?

 

[Culhwch]

In the words of Moe the Bartender, that's the dumbest name I ever heard.

I don't know if there is a term, but I would say homage is pretty close. A nod? A special guest appearance (well the Emmys do give out an award for those)?

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Why anyone would even consider doing such a thing for a story I have no idea.


I don't know what the term is officially called, if it even is a common enough term to have a name, but never go for names that you haven't made up on the spot-or made up at all, to be perfectly honest. I suppose it's okay to go through a name generator for science fiction, but fantasy I tend to tell others to come up with their own names. Or, if they are unable to, ask close friends to help come up with names.


I NEVER use name generators nor do I use names of anyone I know, altered or unaltered. It just seems......unimaginative and unoriginal to me somehow.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

No, there is a name for it, and I actually know it ... can't remember it, but I know it.

 

[iansales]

There's Tuckerization, which is where you use a friend's name - often after selling the privilege in a charity auction.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Well, I still consider it an affront to character building.


Then again, I'm not published and I doubt I ever will be, so maybe I'm wrong and those who perform such a deed are right.

 

[Omphalos]

I believe that's it, Ian. Thanks.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

That's right, Tuckerization. I'm sure the term would have come to me in a year or two ...

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

That's right, Tuckerization. I'm sure the term would have come to me in a year or two ...

Come on, TE, you're smarter than that. After all, you managed to write out numerous novels good enough to get through publishing. And I hold a deep respect to you for that.


But that's going off topic and I'll shut up now, hehe.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

There's smart, and then there is being able to remember things you once knew perfectly well.

I actually have friends who have been Tuckerized, and very flattered they were, too. I think I wouldn't like it myself. It would be wise to ask first (unless, of course, they ask you).

And I am moving this, belatedly, to Aspiring Writers, since I don't observe any writing resources being mentioned, and our regulars in AW might find the term useful some day. Also, it would give our friends who love obscure words the opportunity to expatiate on the origins of the term, which I am sure they will appreciate.

 

[Boneman]

So, if you're all tuckered out, you've used every friend's name...?

 

[The Judge]

Well, I've learned something new today. I've never heard of that word at all, and I could only think of roman a clef for the whole novel when I read the opening post. Have just googled tuckerization to satisfy my curiosity - and it seems to apply whether the name used is the correct one (eg Smith) or a anagram/soundalike/close match (eg Smythe). Perhpas in time it will split and different extents of tuckerization will have different names (kucterization, perhaps).

 

[Ursa major]

Tuckerisation sounds like a surgical operation to remove crows feet - and to deal with droopy lids - on a woman's face.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Also, it would give our friends who love obscure words the opportunity to expatiate on the origins of the term, which I am sure they will appreciate.

Ask, and ye shall receive!

Tuckerization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Briefly:

The term is derived from Wilson Tucker, a pioneering American science fiction writer and fanzine editor, who made a practice of using his friends' names for minor characters in his stories.

 

[Toby Frost]

Well I never knew that! I did once do it, though, when I wrote a friend into a story to thank him for help in proof-reading it. However, my publishers demanded some changes - including making him more Welsh - which rather damaged the resemblance.

I remember Lovecraft featuring a high priest called Klarkash-Ton. I always wondered whether it was a reference to Clark Ashton Smith.

 

[RcGrant]

Well I never knew that! I did once do it, though, when I wrote a friend into a story to thank him for help in proof-reading it. However, my publishers demanded some changes - including making him more Welsh - which rather damaged the resemblance.

I remember Lovecraft featuring a high priest called Klarkash-Ton. I always wondered whether it was a reference to Clark Ashton Smith.

Excuse my ignorance here (and my nosiness), but you were asked to make a character more Welsh? For what particular purpose?

 

[LauraJUnderwood]

I've been Tuckerized several times, once by one of my editors who is also an author, though in one case, the writer didn't name me, but one of my coworkers at the library told me to look at a certain page...

It was an unflattering description of me as a librarian making me wonder if the guy ever really met me...

Laura J. Underwood

 

[Toby Frost]

Excuse my ignorance here (and my nosiness), but you were asked to make a character more Welsh? For what particular purpose?

Well, the guy I based the character on is Welsh and has an obviously Welsh name, although he has an English (home counties/London) accent. As a result, I wrote the character without giving him a clear accent, as appropriate to my friend, and put in a number of other, non-stereotypically Welsh traits that would clearly identify him when my mate read the book. The publisher read it, wondered why Jones the Laser didn't say "boyo" very often, and so I made a few additions that made him a bit more recognisable (although he still didn't say "boyo"). He ended up more like someone from Rorke's Drift than a realistic portrayal of my friend, but he was still pleased with it (I suppose having your alter ego promoted from "realistic" to "VC winner" is a plus)!

It's a strange place, space.

 

[RcGrant]

Well, the guy I based the character on is Welsh and has an obviously Welsh name, although he has an English (home counties/London) accent. As a result, I wrote the character without giving him a clear accent, as appropriate to my friend, and put in a number of other, non-stereotypically Welsh traits that would clearly identify him when my mate read the book. The publisher read it, wondered why Jones the Laser didn't say "boyo" very often, and so I made a few additions that made him a bit more recognisable (although he still didn't say "boyo"). He ended up more like someone from Rorke's Drift than a realistic portrayal of my friend, but he was still pleased with it (I suppose having your alter ego promoted from "realistic" to "VC winner" is a plus)!

It's a strange place, space.

Wow. See, I would never have guessed publishers would ask something like that. Clearly I have a lot to learn.

Thanks for elaborating. Now I'm wondering which of my friends I can shove into my book. Hm...

 

[j d worthington]

I remember Lovecraft featuring a high priest called Klarkash-Ton. I always wondered whether it was a reference to Clark Ashton Smith.

"It's from N'kai that frightful Tsathoggua came -- you know, the amorphous, toad-like god creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon, and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton."

-- "The Whisperer in Darkness"​

Yes, it was Smith; Commoriom is the original capital of Hyperborea in Smith's series of tales on that land; hence the mention is a play on the exoticism of the setting and Smith's having devised a cycle of myths or legends about it.

This sort of thing was not at all uncommon with Lovecraft in his later career: "Robert Blake" of "The Haunter of the Dark" was Robert Bloch, to whom the tale was dedicated; the "farnoth-flies" and "efjay-weeds" in "In the Walls of Eryx" were for Farnsworth Wright (editor of Weird Tales) and Forrest J Ackerman (both of whom had annoyed HPL considerably) respectively, and so on. It became something of a game with the writers in his circle, and even to some degree outside it (the sf writer Stanley G. Weinbaum, for instance, played this game a bit, too, in his novel The New Adam).