A Rose by Any Other Name
I have children, two boys and one girl and with each of them the same dilemma was faced. Names are tricky things, and whether you believe it or not, play a big role in a child's life. A name is permanent, etched in… well computer records at city hall but still, just trust me, they are permanent.
As writers, our characters are our children, our extended family. Sure we don't remember their first steps, first day at school or their first football game, but we could… if we wrote about it.
To be honest, I feel more pressure trying to conjure up character names than I did for all three of my children combined. With characters we create everything, we command their personalities, we govern their fate and so need to create a name that at least fits, while remaining in the genre and audience range.
There is no point writing an adult book and calling your lead antagonist Creepy McStrange – a name that would be perfectly suitable for a much younger audience – yet at the same time a normal name like Martin Douglas doesn't quite convey the right sense of drama or villainy.
Personally I find naming the villains a much more difficult task than naming the hero's in my writing, and while I may be alone in this, I firmly believe that anybody can be a hero given the right circumstances, but not everyone can be a villain… a true villain I mean.
Every author knows the text that claims "All characters in this book are fictional, any resemblance they may bear to real people is purely coincidental." Now that has to be true, not for any reasons other than people get pissed off by seeing themselves described in words. However true that may be, so of course we create our characters from scratch. Whether you use a fake CV, a character questionnaire or good old-fashioned bubble charts and brainstorming it doesn't matter. However, where does that golden literary (unwritten)rule lie with regards names?
When naming our children my wife and I had a long list and of course the first round of eliminations always came to names we hated based on personal preference. Nobody is going to name their child or hero(ine) after the person(s) who bullied the or they disliked at some point in their lives. Likewise, when thinking of names for the female characters we are drawn to names that have a meaning to us. (Read attractive women from our past).
We can't help it, names have certain associations with them that stick, and the name is one of the most important characteristics of a character. Not to mention the literary rules such as avoiding characters whose name ends with s because of the issues surrounding pluralising the name and keeping reading smooth.
How do you help figure out the names of your characters? I often write the character first and then pick the name that I feel fits, but I know people who pick a name that they like and write the character around the images and thoughts that particular name evokes.
