The Name of Snow White’s Evil Queen

Is this post’s title click baity? Well, I hope so. I did give the Evil Queen a name in the enhanced version of Little Snow-white I’m writing, but the original texts recorded by the Grimm brothers don’t give us a name for them

The bad news here is that I’m experimenting with click-baity titles. I don't really know what I'm doing, so they might not even be all that enticing. The good news is that I’ve found out how to not feel guilty about using them: I’ll address it as the cheap tactic that it is, and attempt to make it humorous.

But let’s assume that you’re interested in that bit I mentioned about writing an enhanced version of Snow-white. Maybe you picked up on the fact that I said I’d given the evil queen a name. If you’re still reading this despite my shameful behavior, I’m going to hazard a guess that you’re interested in reading about it.

I promise to be decent from now on…until I have to come up with another title.

The Second Roadblock as I Wrote My Enhanced Version

Snow-white is the only character that is given a name in the Grimm texts. No one else is ever named, despite what Disney would have us believe. If I’ve gotten you to read the most easily accessible version of this story in a copy of the Grimms’ anthology, then you know that those dwarfs did not have names. And if I remember correctly, it wasn’t even Disney that named them. It was a musical that bestowed names upon those elfs.

And yes, I just called the dwarfs elfs. This is due to the fact that throughout the original tales, and even in ancient nordic texts like The Elder Edda, elf and dwarf are interchangeable.

Anyways, forgive my digression. I wanted to talk about the second roadblock I stumbled upon, and that is, precisely, names. Mainly, who should I name so that the narrative does not get repetitive and confusing?

Villains are, of course, main characters. This led me to name our evil queen. As I sat down to write the chapter in which she made her first appearance, I again had to stop and think. Who else would I be naming?

Even though I had a treatment, or a detailed summary of the book, I wasn’t quite sure who would need a name yet. The king and queen would not need names for reasons that will be apparent when you read my finished story.

The prince? I wasn’t sure. Heck, I wasn’t even sure he would be a prince. For some reason, I thought he might be the son of one of the king’s lords. Politically, at least, I thought that would be a better move for the king. To have a member of a family already subjected to him elevated to king, instead of some foreigner.

But my biggest concern was whether I would have to name all seven dwarfs. This meant having to give each one a detailed and realistic personality, which meant having to stop my writing, and work on the character profiles for the dwarfs.

I did not want to do that. This was supposed to be a short, fun, light project, as I said in my last post. Working on seven different character profiles was a much bigger commitment than I was willing to accept for this endeavor. Besides, the dwarfs didn’t even have names originally, and they barely took part in the story. They were, quite literally, treated as a single entity. I didn’t want the extra work, and I wanted to remain as faithful to the original tale as possible.

Looking at the Problem From Afar

I had to step away from the writing, and think over a teapot about this “little” conundrum. The water had not even boiled when I came to the realization that I either did things right, or not at all.

By the time I finished the teapot, I hadn’t made a decision yet. It would actually take the whole day for me to make up my mind. I have faith in this enhanced version of Snow-white. I enjoy working on it.

I was going to do things right.

The following day saw me sitting down not to continue writing the chapter I’d left incomplete, but to think about the conventions dwarfs would use to name their offspring. Then, I wrote down the seven names of my dwarfs, and worked on their profiles.

I hope, fellow, that you soon get to meet the evil queen Revna, and the dwarfs Mat, Tok, Mer, Roc, Carv, Or, and Tun.

Until then, I’ll see you in the next post, and hope that the runes fall in your favor.

For Your Consideration
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