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On Names in The Last Goblin Queen

A deliberate choice in The Last Goblin Queen is the use of familiar, real-world names rather than heavily stylized fantasy ones.

Part of this is readability. Simpler names keep the focus on story and character instead of pronunciation or linguistic decoding. But it also helps avoid the Kingdoms’ cultures feeling like stand-ins for real-world peoples or histories, which fantasy can sometimes drift into unintentionally when names are overly coded or exoticized.

In the Kingdoms themselves, Lineage already carries structural weight: Goblin names begin with “G,” Human names with “H,” Ogre names with “O,” and so on. That system does most of the worldbuilding work in terms of identity and origin, so individual names don’t need to do that job as well.

The result is a naming approach that stays grounded, keeps characters distinct, and leaves room for the Lineages to feel like people rather than symbols. 

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