Fantasy Names

First, apologies again for not posting last night. They threw a big party for someone leaving the company, and since it was my last day there, well...there was a lot of free booze.

But with that out of the way, I have an urgent, burning, pertinent question about naming in fantasy. Oftentimes fantasy names contain references to fantastic things. Robert Jordan in particular does this all the time. See Rand al'Thor, Shai'tan, etc.

I'm of two minds about this. It doesn't usually bother me, but sometimes I find myself thinking "Really? In your world people name things after gods that don't even exist there?"

I did this myself. The last name of two of my characters is Jinn, which needs only a D to become Djinn. This happened because waaaay back in ancient history when I was first conceiving the novel, there were going to be summoned creatures in my world, and one of my characters was going to be a Djinn. As the book simmered in my mind, however, he became a human and the brother of the main character, who inherited his last name, which had just gone from Cole the Djinn to Cole Jinn.

So now I have my main character named Litnig Jinn. It's not a bad name, really, but I worry about what having a reference like that on the back cover of my book (or in my pitch) would do to people's expectations. Will they read it and think "Oh, just another fantasy novel?" (I fear this less of their encountering it in the story itself, because by that time they'll be hooked---or so I hope ;-p).

I'm considering, in what would be a brutally painful decision for me, changing his family name to Jin. But while it would eliminate the Djinn problem and make the novel sound more original, it would also, I think, change the impression he immediately gives. I won't explain my reasons for this, as I'm hoping to be wrong about it and I don't want to color anyone's impressions, but I'm looking for comments. Which is a better last name, Jin or Jinn?