Ah, you know I couldn’t resist posting this pretty dragon with a name like that, right!  This is Azure-Winged Dragon by American professional artist Jennifer Miller, posting on deviantart as Nambroth.  Jennifer is on Facebook and Twitter, you can support her at Patreon, and she also has a StorEnvy site where you can purchase prints of her work as well as her handmade jewelry.

I’m always, always torn when I see the word Azure written out, in all honesty.  When I first named one of my main characters Azur, short for Azur Nuthatch, in my work-in-progress novel Finding Dragons, it was specifically after the color (since the naming convention in their band is “adjective” “bird” and their ‘short’ name can be either one of those).  However, I specifically left off the final “e” in Azur, and I thought I had sound reasoning for doing it at the time.

Besides just liking how Azur looks without the e, I thought that, since these characters come from a pre-writing culture, they wouldn’t necessarily use the silent e on the end of words, would they?

I think Azur’s name looks and sounds perfectly fine without the e.  In fact, I feel like a reader is more likely to pronounce it right — “Az-UR” rather than “Az-URE” when it’s spelled this way.  But it isn’t the correct spelling for the color, I know.

Black Kite’s name would look odd as Black Kit.  And Kite’s mother’s name, Swift Peregrine, would look odd as Peregrin.  I run into the same problem with Winter Wren’s mother — do I name her Calling Crane, or Calling Cran?

Here is another piece by Jennifer Miller called Spirit Caller Dragon… I wish I could get some guidance from the spirits on this!

I can’t help but worry people will think I just don’t know how to spell if use an alternate spelling of normal words like Kite and Peregrine and Crane.  But Azur…?  I can’t decide.  As I see Azure spelled out more and more often, I’m wondering if I made a mistake, but so far I can’t bring myself to change it.

I’ve been calling her “Azur” for a few years now, in my head and on paper, and I can’t help but wonder if this one time, maybe I can get away with a weird spelling.  I’m all for creating rules for a fantasy world, and then following them, but maybe, just this one time, it might be okay.

I know I’m completely rambling now, but it’s the end of the night, and this pretty Azure dragon has dredged up something I guess I’ve been sitting on for a while now.

Thanks as always for reading.  Any feedback is appreciated, and here is one more beautiful dragon by the artist Jennifer Miller called Green Dragon Vernation for you to enjoy.  Stay creative!

Image credits:
Azure-Winged Dragon by Jennifer Miller
Spirit Caller Dragon by Jennifer Miller
Green Dragon Vernation by Jennifer Miller