Literary comment: Melissa Ott is presumably named after legendary New York Giants right-fielder Mel(vin) Ott. As is Buck Herzog, Claude Jonnard, Frederica Lindstrom and Art "Pancho" Snyder. I have a vague recollection of Turtledove once mentioning the five were all in the starting lineup of one season of, maybe, the NY Giants. Perhaps the Lit. Comm. would be better in the Ares III article, assuming this is confirmed? ML4E (talk) 18:49, September 11, 2016 (UTC)
- I think we have enough to put that info in the Ares III article. All three being in the Giants at about the same time is enough for that. TR (talk) 18:55, September 11, 2016 (UTC)
- Wow. HT sure went overboard with this one.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:36, September 12, 2016 (UTC)
Now for the Brooklyn Dodgers:
Billy Cox aka William Richard Cox.
Santos Amoros aka Edmundo "Sandy" Amorós Isasi.
Jim (The Road Not Taken) aka James William "Junior" Gilliam.
Lt. Shotton commanding the platoon, Burt Shotton manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers (1947; 1948–50).
Charlie Ebbets was the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers until his death in 1925.
Hilda Chester, Brooklyn Dodgers superfan.
For all I know, the named aliens might be anagrams of still more baseball players. I haven't tried it but leave it as an exercise for the student.
I'm not sure how to document this. My first thought is a note and list in the characters category but maybe a separate article would be better. ML4E (talk) 21:31, September 23, 2016 (UTC)
- Some of the alien names are Luof, Egelloc, and Reffo, just everyday words spelled backwards, though the first has a specific baseball connotation. The alien POV character Togram, which spelled backwards in Margot, a common name with no obvious baseball connections. Ilingua merely suggests language.
Edieva, Olgren and Ransisc are suggestive of something but I'm not sure what. Olgren sounds vaguely Swedish, and Ransisc sounds like Francis. Maybe Edieva isn't a baseball reference - has HT ever expressed fondness for Eddie Van Halen?
Maybe a note in the story page saying "A lot of the characters are named for baseball figures," plus a character-by-character note in each article ("X is named for Y, a such and such in this baseball team."), would suffice.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:58, September 23, 2016 (UTC)
- I do not care for the Lit. Comm. in this article and am proposing a single list somewhere else to do away with it. It makes more sense since it can show the patterns rather than disjointed comments with each character. ML4E (talk) 16:22, September 24, 2016 (UTC)
- I feel much the same. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:46, September 24, 2016 (UTC)