User blog:Matt-256/Overuse of American names

Characters are the lifeblood of any story or series; without good, interesting characters, the story suffers. So obviously, the goals of both game/book/tv show studios and fanfiction-writers are to create compelling characters. We each have our different inspirations for characters; some of them are based on ourselves, some on people we know, some on famous people, or even some we just think of out of thin air. Regardless, we tend to make characters of our own nationality or ethnic origin. While that in and of itself can be a cool thing, it does create an issue of disproportion in the Halo Universe.

Basically, the disproportion issue lies in the fact that the majority of Halo Universe characters (or at least important characters), canon and fanon, have American names and/or are of american origin. It's understandable, considering that an american game studio was behind the franschise, and the majority of the users on this site are americans (or at least english-speakers), but considering that the Halo universe is supposed to be about a unified humanity, that is, all humans stand together, you start to wonder why more than half of these characters are american and not, say, chinese. You might say "But the halo universe haz lotz of non-american characters, stop saying halo is racist!", but let me bring up some of Halo's main cast;
 * John-117 - John's a popular american name, he seems to solely speak english, he has an american accent, need I go on?
 * Cortana - She isn't a real human, but she was based on Catherine Halsey, a person with both american accent and name
 * Jacob Keyes - American voice actor, american accent, hinted to be from america, have american names, need more convincing?
 * Avery Junior Johnson - One of what, two black characters? And still born in america, have american names, american accent...
 * Miranda Keyes - Almost the same as her father
 * Terrence Hood - Ooh, a brittish guy, finally some diversity- oh wait, he still has an american accent *sigh*
 * Carter-A259 - american name, american voice actor, but he does have a different appearance
 * Catherine-B320 - also a different appearance, and of german nationality judging by her accent, which is refreshing
 * Halsey - explained above
 * Emile-A239 - a non-american name for once, but he still has an american accent. Can't comment on his appearance because it's never shown
 * Jorge-052 - non-american name and accent, that's new (with the main cast, with the exception of Jun and perhaps Romeo)
 * Jun-A266 - non-american accent and name a nice change, as with Jorge
 * Noble Six - generic american accent regardless of gender

See the pattern here? The minor character list is a bit more diverse, true, but not by a whole lot. If I've been counting correctly, the conclusion is that americans make up the vast majority of characters, followed by spanish-speakers and russians, below them japanese, chinese and africans, with arabic/muslims practically nonexistant. If you take a look at Earth's current population levels divided nation-wise, I hope you'll notice this isn't a very fair representation.

Now, to the point of this rant blog: I'm not telling y'all to stop creating american characters, I'm simply saying that some diversity when it comes to naming characters would be a good thing. So when you plan out your next character, at least consider giving him/her a non-american name. I understand that it's easier to pick names you're familiar with, but visit some name sites, see if you can find some interesting "foreign" names (I strongly recommend this one), for diversity's sake, give a more varied feel.

Feel free to comment, and think about it :)