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FYI I've totally decided not to read certain books because all of the characters in the description have outlandish names, and I know I'm not the only one.
This is true of all genres, including fantasy. Some of those made-up names are wonky af and unpleasant on the brain.
It's not that I won't ever read a book with names I don't like, but I generally won't request them for review, because, in my experience, I have a much higher rate of not liking other aspects of books where I don't like the names.
I would also like to clarify that when I talk about "weird" names, I'm not talking about non-white names. Obviously books in other cultures will have names from that culture, and I'm all for that.
In fantasy, as an example, it's when the names are hard to pronounce or seem randomly pulled from existing cultures in ways that don't seem to fit with the fantasy world.
I do this a lot with romances. Historical romances with names that absolutely would not be given to kids in that era is a sign it's probably not my sort of historical romance. And this thread was inspired by a romance with men named Summer and Fox.
Obviously authors and readers can feel any way they want about this, but I do hope authors/publicity understand that often the names we see in the book description are the first sense we get of the world building, whatever the genre.
