Posted by: @col-klink

I assume that the reason C. S. Lewis did this was because he didn't want to distract from the characters' relatability with exotic names. But does anyone want to come up with an in-universe reason why the mysterious Tom and Nancy are the only ones in this world with generic English names?

An in-universe explanation you say? Challenge accepted.

The Tom one is easy - I'd say that in this instance that "Tom" is the name of the man's cat which died. He misses it very much, therefore his ultimate dream is to see his Cat alive again. This is based on the fact that Narnia uses regular English names for Animals, therefore they would presumably still have the association of a "Tom Cat", and thus naming a Cat by the name of "Tom" would not be uncommon.

For Nancy, i'm going to have to work a little harder.... Let's start by assuming that all of Queen Prunaprismia's friends called her "Pruny" for short. Therefore, starting with the similar name construction of "Nancy" and working in the other direction, i'm going to assume this lady's full name is "Nancaprancia"... the Telmarine sailor who is in love with her though calls her Nancy for short though. 😊 

Don't forget the "Gwendolyne" in Prince Caspian, also an Earthlike name.

The Tom and Nancy annoyed me too.

@cobalt-jade    Gwendolen or Gwendolyne are actually real names, which run in my family! They are Welsh in origin, and Lewis had a Welsh grandfather, so it is possible some relation on that side (or a servant) was a Gwen/Gwendolen/yn.

@icarus I like your suggestions! Mind you, those names have honestly never bothered me in the slightest — I don't recall even noticing them as an anomaly when I first read VDT as a child. Same with Gwendolen (to spell her name as Lewis does). The thing is, the entire world that Lewis created is so quirky and full of oddities and inconsistencies, and these names aren't anywhere near the greatest of those. As we've all discussed before, he wasn't trying to write on anything like a Tolkienesque scale; he was largely making things up as he went along, putting in whatever elements he felt suited the story he was telling at the time, and I always get the impression he had a lot of fun doing so. And even a couple of very significant names from the Telmarine era of Narnia — Caspian and Cornelius — are names from our world, if fairly unusual ones, so maybe it's not all that surprising if there are other people in Narnia with quite ordinary English-sounding names, or names that can be shortened to sound like English ones. (Lewis presumably hadn't yet thought up Frank and Helen when he wrote VDT, but those are definitely two this-worldly names for the first King and Queen of Narnia, as a precedent — even to the point of Helen's pet name being Nellie, which is a very English thing, like Billy for William.)

Talking of Tolkien, too, I've never yet heard any critics moaning that he gave a number of his characters very ordinary English-sounding names in a fantasy world (one that admittedly is supposed to be our own world in an older time, but long before the English language developed). Sam, Tom, Bill, Hugo, Rosie, Daisy, Angelica, Primula, just to grab a few from TLOTR itself and the hobbits' family trees in the appendices — and even a lot of the more exotic names among them are still ones from our world. Meriadoc is a Welsh saint and Peregrin comes from a Latin root meaning "wanderer" (our word "pilgrim" in English has the same derivation). But names like those help to create the familiar, cosy, rural-English-idyll atmosphere that Tolkien was aiming for with his hobbits in particular, so there they are.

Of course, Tolkien's conceit there — perhaps in response to actual or anticipated criticisms of English-style names in a world where that language doesn't yet exist? — is that the real names of those characters come from their own language, which he has "translated" into English equivalents for our benefit as English-speaking readers. I remember finding it a bit jarring when I first read the appendices and discovered that Sam and Merry, for example, were "really" called Ban (short for Banazir) and Kali (short for Kalimac) respectively — so there are definitely some good reasons for authors to pick this-worldly names for fantasy characters, in at least some cases!  

Maybe I should clarify that the names Tom and Nancy don't bug me per se. Technically, they're an inconsistency but I can see why the inconsistency happened. The dialogue I quoted is supposed to evoke "dreams" that lots of people have. (Love being requited, dead loved ones coming back to life.) I'm guessing C. S. Lewis realized that Narnian/Telmarine names might interfere with the relatability.

It actually didn't occur to me until recently that Cornelius and Gwendolen are English names because they blend so well with the Telmarine ones. (Revilian, Mavramorn, etc.)  

"Cornelius" is also the name of a Roman soldier that Peter talked with.

I guess I have never realized that there were some minor English names in Narnia- Nancy and Tom in VDT. Then who knows what CS Lewis could have done.

He obviously would have used different language sounding names in various parts of Narnia. As for Tom and Nancy, I have no idea what he could have been referring to. Then maybe we're not meant to know. Sometimes it's best to leave things, especially in Narnia, a bit of a mystery.