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Question about character names...

Zeb_Carter

Zeb_Carter

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Just a little curious...

What character name have you used that you found to be the most difficult to type?

Mine? In the current story I'm working on, I chose Lloyd. Why? I haven't the faintest idea why. But talk about difficult. If you're a fast typist that double L is a killer.

So, what's yours?
 
Zeb_Carter said:
Just a little curious...

What character name have you used that you found to be the most difficult to type?

Mine? In the current story I'm working on, I chose Lloyd. Why? I haven't the faintest idea why. But talk about difficult. If you're a fast typist that double L is a killer.

So, what's yours?
Click to expand...

I have a character in my series named Danielle. Every time she shows up, I have to stop to remember if I use Dani or Danni for her nickname.
 
MelissaBaby said:
I have a character in my series named Danielle. Every time she shows up, I have to stop to remember if I use Dani or Danni for her nickname.
Click to expand...

I was going to use Danielle for a character name, but changed it Diane. And not only because of the double ell problem. I knew a Diane that I had a crush on back in eighth grade. I know along time ago for me, but it was a big crush then. It was soon replaced by another young lady in freshman year of high school.

Yes I was fickle back then. Still am actually. ;)
 
In one story I had a problem with a guy named Bob. It kept coming out Boob. I'm not sure if he was trying to tell me something or what. I ended up changing his name to Dave. He seemed happier with that.
 
MelissaBaby said:
I have a character in my series named Danielle. Every time she shows up, I have to stop to remember if I use Dani or Danni for her nickname.
Click to expand...

My holiday story in progress has a character named Stephanie, but only her dad calls her Stephanie. Everyone else calls her Steffi. But sometimes it comes out as Stephie, and sometimes it comes at as Steff, and sometimes it comes out as Stefli, etc. etc.

My semi-autonomous typing skills seem to be constantly experimenting with new ways to screw up her name.
 
Archduke Stanley Kamehameha Ovshinsky was always a bit of a chore to keyboard.
 
In a story I wrote a few years ago I had an Elizabeth that I shortened to Eliz. No way was I going to keep typing Elizabeth.

In my series I'm working on, in the next chapter I introduce a couple new characters including a Sebastian. I'm already regretting that idea, and trying to find a suitable nickname.
 
I've had trouble with the second "h" in Hephaestion from time to time.
 
I have one shelved-might-get-back-to-it story where the protagonist has lost her name, so she's "the one-footed girl" or variants on that. It's a bit of typing.
 
I mainly write using codes such as F1, F2, M1 etc. Then I just search and replace once the story is complete. That way I only have to spell them once :)
All names comes with some association, and I find it limiting when developing the character. Typically, the names evolve around halfway in to the story.
 
Zeb_Carter said:
Just a little curious...

What character name have you used that you found to be the most difficult to type?
Click to expand...

I have extremely stupid fingers, so even a simple name, like 'Al' can cause problems. Where I have had problems is running spelling and grammar checks with a character named 'Frank.' Since Frank can be a verb, adjective, proper name and probably a couple of other word forms, the grammar check had all sorts of problems and the spelling check had problems with capitalization.
 
CoffeeWithMonkeys said:
In a story I wrote a few years ago I had an Elizabeth that I shortened to Eliz. No way was I going to keep typing Elizabeth.

In my series I'm working on, in the next chapter I introduce a couple new characters including a Sebastian. I'm already regretting that idea, and trying to find a suitable nickname.
Click to expand...

I worked with a guy named Sebastian. We called him Seb or Sebby. Ymmv.
 
I have another story where the female protag is named Margaret, not to bad for a keyboard, but I changed it to Peggy or Peg which is what her nickname would have been.

I knew two Margarets in high school, one was Marg, the other Peggy. Back then I could never figure out why Peggy. Mom had to explain it to me. Most Margarets back then used Peggy as a nickname.

From the internet

The name Margaret has a variety of different nicknames. Some are obvious, as in Meg, Mog and Maggie, while others are downright strange, like Daisy. But it's the Mog/Meg we want to concentrate on here as those nicknames later morphed into the rhymed forms Pog(gy) and Peg(gy).
Click to expand...
 
Apart from typos, I find problems keeping the character names consistent throughout a story.

I check, check again, and only see the alteration after a reader spots it.

I did have a story with Myfanwy as a character. I changed her name because the y's slipped around. :rolleyes:
 
rutger5 said:
I worked with a guy named Sebastian. We called him Seb or Sebby. Ymmv.
Click to expand...

A friend of mine named her son Sebastian and they called him Baz.

I'll figure something out, or change the name :D
 
CoffeeWithMonkeys said:
In a story I wrote a few years ago I had an Elizabeth that I shortened to Eliz. No way was I going to keep typing Elizabeth.
Click to expand...

Since I have a series of ten stories whose protagonist is named Elizabeth, I'm pretty sure that gets my vote too. But I never considered shortening it, as her personality really only fit with the whole name.
 
YDB95 said:
Since I have a series of ten stories whose protagonist is named Elizabeth, I'm pretty sure that gets my vote too. But I never considered shortening it, as her personality really only fit with the whole name.
Click to expand...

I never thought of Eliz as a shortened form of Elizabeth, but then my oldest daughter had a friend and that's exactly what she shortened Elizabeth to, and I liked it!
 
Marchand.

I know it's Marchand, my fingers know it's Marchand.
Yet when I went back to proofread my story, I kept stumbling on an epidemy of "Merchant".

Brain, seriously, we need to have words.
 
And here all my life the only shorting of Elizabeth was Beth or Liz or maybe even Liza. Now I have heard an Elizabeth called El or Ellie.
 
Zeb_Carter said:
And here all my life the only shorting of Elizabeth was Beth or Liz or maybe even Liza. Now I have heard an Elizabeth called El or Ellie.
Click to expand...

Princess Margaret called her elder sister, now Queen Elizabeth II, Lilibet.

One of my cousins, christened Elizabeth, has been Betty almost all her life.

One of my collection of baby name books gives nearly 50 variants that are applied to women called Elizabeth, ending in Ysabel.
 
tomlitilia said:
I mainly write using codes such as F1, F2, M1 etc. Then I just search and replace once the story is complete. That way I only have to spell them once :)
All names comes with some association, and I find it limiting when developing the character. Typically, the names evolve around halfway in to the story.
Click to expand...

This is the way to go, even for shorter, easier to type names; but I prefer to use the character's first initial ('J' for 'James') rather than a generic M or F code. Sure, the find/replace function when you're done might inadvertently alter some occurrences that you didn't want to change, but another read-through can highlight those errors.

On one of my stories I had already done the find/replace and was doing a few final polishes. While browsing through some new Lit stories, I started to read one that had a similar setting and was worried the narrative might cover some of the same ground as my unpublished story. Wouldn't you know - the female main character had the same name (Sherry). ARGGH! Even though the new story was well-written and pretty hot, I had to stop reading for fear that I might see other common elements. So Sherry became Sandy - I wanted to keep the same initial and number of syllables – and I did another find/replace, wrapped up the story and submitted it.
 
tomlitilia said:
I mainly write using codes such as F1, F2, M1 etc. Then I just search and replace once the story is complete. That way I only have to spell them once :)
All names comes with some association, and I find it limiting when developing the character. Typically, the names evolve around halfway in to the story.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of doing it this way. Interesting. I always choose names at the outset. It makes me feel closer to my characters to know they have names as I write. They feel more real to me. Sometimes, however, I will change the name during the writing. That's easy to take care of with find and replace.
 
SimonDoom said:
I've never heard of doing it this way. Interesting. I always choose names at the outset. It makes me feel closer to my characters to know they have names as I write. They feel more real to me. Sometimes, however, I will change the name during the writing. That's easy to take care of with find and replace.
Click to expand...
Names are central to my characters - there from the very start, or as soon as the character's name gets mentioned in the story. Even the spelling variant has to "sound" right - I started writing a Gabrielle, but within five hundred words she'd become Gabriela, because the cadence worked better and sounded "right." Then her best friend uses the pet name, Gabs.

Writing F1 M1? That sounds completely soulless and mechanical. I could never write like that, sounds like Slot A into Slot B to me. Shudder.
 
The Characters are their names in the story. I pick a name and picture what they look like, how they act, how they treat other people, how devious they can be, how wonderful they can be... all of that and more. F1, just doesn't do it for me, whereas Fran does.

Most of the names I use have already been associated with people I have known throughout my life, so, I already have someone to fallback on, if necessary. But most are nothing like the people with the name I pick to use except for maybe the way I see the way they may have looked when I knew them. That really helps me.
 
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