On RAFO WoTMB alone, I recall at least two threads posting the claim that no one in WoT shares a given name. Fortunately Fanatic-Templar seems to always be lurking with his list to blow that premise out of the water, but even if it were true, how many works out there often have characters with the same name? Even in works set in the Real World? Not counting, of course, instances of one character explicitly named after another or where the shared name has a specific purpose, I cannot recall it happening very much at all. One might think a martian reading a single work of fiction (however many books it encompasses) might think that no one in the real world shares a first name. This even happens when a character has a fairly common first name. Quick, how many people named "James" "John" or "Michael" in the Lost universe? And those are fairly common names. Even if it were accurrate (which FT disproves), this would be a fairly tiresome complaint.
There are some duplicates in the LOTR universe, but other than that, I can't think of many more. I'm sure RJ has the biggest fictional universe in modern fantasy, and with 1200 characters, it's not a surprise that there are duplicates. I'm actually rather impressed with those - they bring a sense of realism to the series.
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Fan of Lanfear
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How many non-WoT books have characters with duplicate names?
08/07/2010 02:35:08 PM
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It's rare in fiction
08/07/2010 08:39:38 PM
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If you write stories regularly, you understand the problem
08/07/2010 09:14:13 PM
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Re: If you write stories regularly, you understand the problem
09/07/2010 05:20:04 PM
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Actually, I never thought "John" and "Jonathan" were different names.
10/07/2010 12:41:36 AM
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