: Re: How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? In the point-of-view culture in my story, all of the women in priestly families have two-syllable names beginning with vowels.

@Annie587

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Direct answer: Some consonants in English sound similar. They tend to fall in groups:

b, d, p, t, th, v
c, ch, g, j, k, q, s, sh, x, z
f, p
h
l
m, n
r
w
y

That is, "Emma" and "Enna" sound a lot alike, but "Emma" and "Ecka" sound very different.
I note that even within your "start with a vowel and 2 syllables" rule, you seem to be choosing names that are simpler than that rule requires. Why not "Alish" or "Unkminth", for example? How about "Oomnitz" or "Eiroof"? Etc.
In any case, I wonder if you are not making a mistake common to many writers -- not to mention people in other professions. You made up a rule, now you find that the rule is causing you all sorts of trouble, and so you double down and try to figure out how to live within the rule rather than considering going back and changing the rule to something that WON'T cause you trouble. Why do names have to follow this pattern? Is it necessary for the story to work that all names must follow a pattern? Or if there is some reason why they have to follow a pattern, does it have to be THIS pattern?
I'm a software developer in real life. I've had many times that a company I worked for made some rule that all our software must be written in such-and-such a way. Sometimes these rules turn out to cause problems. And I go to the boss and say, "Rule X is causing us all kinds of problems, it's making every project take much longer to complete [or whatever problem]. I suggest we do Y instead." And often, the boss's response is, "No, the rule is X." "Yes", I say, "I know that's the rule. But that rule is causing us trouble." And he'll reply, "No, you don't understand. The rule really is X. See, it's right here in this memo." And we go around and around until I give up.

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