What’s in a Name?

William Shakespeare penned these classic lines for his play Romeo and Juliet,
“What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”.

So, what is in a name? And how difficult can it be to name our characters?

Consider the problem facing crime writer Anthony Bruno (1952-2014), author of The Iceman and co-producer of the film by the same name, as he pondered various names for the hero in a new mystery series he was about to write: “If the name doesn’t feel right, it becomes a speed bump in the writing process. It slows me down and makes me think about it every time I see it. I become like the guy who bought a metallic orange car because the price was right. Every time he looks at it, he feels a ping of regret.”

Names matter, and everyone who ever put pen to paper writing genre fiction, I dare say, at one time or another has been faced with a problem naming his or her characters. In some cases, perhaps, the answers came easy. In my first mystery/thriller, Frozen in Time, a post-modern novel loosely based on research I performed in Antarctica in 1961-62, I simply changed my name from Cohen to Stone and inserted myself as one of the characters. As well, I picked some common names out of the air for the other two graduate students on the expedition, Grant Morris and David Green. And with a bow to a former professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M), I searched a database of Irish surnames for the last name of the UW-M professor who accompanied us, finally settling on (Ethan) O’Mhaille. Not too strenuous.

But then things got a little more difficult. The novel, which takes place largely in Chile and the Chilean Antarctic, would involve a host of characters needing Spanish/Chilean names. And beyond that, given that some of the themes I wanted to inject involved elements from Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as the Catholic Church, things suddenly became more complicated. Problems related to the Church were solved, in part, my naming one of the characters Lieutenant-Commander Christian Barbudo, the last name being my wife’s high school Spanish teacher. However, finding names for some of the characters with which to bring elements of Paradise Lost into the book was a bit more difficult. Lucifer was among the ‘characters’ for which I sought representation, so it took some searching of various databases before I finally felt comfortable naming one of the antagonists, a Chilean Navy Chief Warrant Officer (CWO), Raul Lucero. His ‘lieutenant’ is Chief Petty Officer (CPO) Eduardo Bellolio, named after the fallen angel Belial (a deceitful, lustful and lewd god). Also looming large in the story is CWO Gabriel Osorio, ‘Gabriel’, of course, being the messenger angel. This is just a sampling of the thought processes that guided my name selections.

Frozen in Time, however, was only Book I of what eventually became my Antarctic Murders Trilogy. So other—many other—Chilean names were needed as I went forward. What to do? And then I hit pay dirt…pure gold (or, oro puro, you would say in Spanish!). I stumbled upon a Website that listed the names of the graduates from the Chilean Military Academy in Santiago. Using that resource alone, and by simply combining, at random, first and last names from the various columns on the Website (but never using the actual first and last names of any given person), I readily ‘populated’ the book with the names I needed. These included such characters as Admiral Don Marcelo Altamirano, Vice Admiral Víctor Madariaga, Ship-of-the-Line Captain Gustavo Palazuelos, and Corvette Captain Daniel Troncoso . . . all legitimate-sounding names, to be sure, but all totally fictitious, I assure you. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, as we say, is purely coincidental.

I took a slightly different tact when it came to writing the first book in my Detective Louis Martelli, NYPD, mystery/thriller series, Death by Wall Street. Here I needed a strong protagonist . . . someone who was cool, cocky, and flippant, came down hard on the murderers, rapists, and arsonists I would throw in his path, and when necessary, operated on the shady side of integrity. ‘Martelli’, in Italian, means ‘hammers’, and it didn’t take too many tries to match the first name Louis with the surname I had selected. As for his wife, I simply used the name of my younger daughter while Missy Dugan, NYPD’s principal IT specialist, bears a strong resemblance, in name, looks, and skills, to my eldest. What can I say? In many respects, it made writing the books simpler, given I knew the two women in Martelli’s life quite well. And that being the case, I often found myself laughing out loud at the exchanges between Martelli and his wife and between Martelli and Missy . . . especially the latter, when Dugan reaches out and busts the detective’s chops.

Other than these acknowledged exceptions in using characters who closely resemble real people (all done with permission, I should add), I assiduously avoid doing this in my writings. So, I was somewhat startled over lunch some months ago with a long-time friend and editor of my books when one of his other guests, a woman in her early 80s mentioned, “I was reading your book Eighth Circle the other day and was amused by the fact Martelli’s captain in the First Precinct is named Hanlon.”

“Why is that?” I asked, putting down my fork and taking a sip of water.

“Well,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “because my maiden name is Hanlon, and my father was a police captain in the Philadelphia Police Department.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding!”

“No,” she said, “it’s the God’s truth. And even more interesting, you’ll be surprised to know that just like Martelli’s captain, my father used to call my mother ‘the War Department’.

What’s in a name, indeed?



Captain John Hanlon, Philadelphia Police Department, and Leona Gast Hanlon, ‘The War Department’

October 21, 1950

(Photo courtesy Mrs. Leona Hanlon Smith)