Google your character Names People!

[iwatchus]

Appreciate this. My new protagonist was going to be named Jesus Christ but after a quick Google I think that name could lead to some confusion.

middle initial F?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Put an accent over the e. It gets a lot more ambiguous that way...

Had a big whiteboard in the break room of a place I used to work. Walked in one day and written on it in big letters was "Thank You Jesus for cleaning the break room."
I probably stared at it for a solid minute trying to figure out what had happened before I remembered the new guy was a Puerto Rican named Jesus.

 

[Voboy]

We all need to make a habit of including a character named Bront Hambler.

Let's make this a Thing.

 

[Belegon]

Some parents should be disciplined for the names they give their kids.

Agree. Once had a client whose last name was Broccoli and her parents saddled here with the first name Bambi at birth. Ver sweet and highly religious attractive young lady who had to negotiate life with a stripper name on her driver's license.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

My mom went to school with Barbara Streisand.

Not a namealike, she went to school with the future actor and singer. They weren't in the same grade and she hardly knew Barbara, but ....

 

[gunhilltrain]

Agree. Once had a client whose last name was Broccoli and her parents saddled here with the first name Bambi at birth. Ver sweet and highly religious attractive young lady who had to negotiate life with a stripper name on her driver's license.

Nobody should be named Bambi unless they are a deer. I've known people with the last names of Slutksy and Stankus. I might change my name with those. Some parents named their son Spangler Arlington Brugh back in 1911. Weird choice, but Hollywood fixed it as Robert Taylor. Looked much better in the advertising.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M...zgyNjgwNzUxXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

 

[MillieDynamite]

He used the name for years before The Maltese Falcon. Miles Archer and Effie Perine appear in many short stories along with Sam Spade, in Hammett's Spade series that appeared in Pulp Fiction Magazines. But you can't really copyright names as long as they aren't the same character that's used in copyrighted material.

I'm reading a best selling novel by a popular mainstream author. For some reason, the author gave their main protgonist the name "Miles Archer." Now as names go, it's not bad, even clever if you want to make the charater's arc that he is moving towards a target. HOWEVER Dashiell Hammett already quite famously used that name in the "Maltese Falcon" for Sam Spade's partner who was killed on the job and sets the investigation into high gear. I mean the name Miles Archer has been in every movie adaptation and the novel has never been out of print and has millions of fans. So when I read the name "Miles Archer" in THIS novel I think of the Miles Archer from THAT novel. Googling your charcter names literally takes seconds and saves you from potential embarrassment. Joel, Mike and the bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a rule when riffing a movie "Don't make reference to a good movie in your crappy one." Similarly, don't remind people of a much different character in a book by another author who is a far better writer that you are!

 

[big_cane_sugar]

My mom went to school with Barbara Streisand.

Not a namealike, she went to school with the future actor and singer. They weren't in the same grade and she hardly knew Barbara, but ....

I once knew a black man named Michael Jordan. Not the famous one. By the time I met him he'd learned to have fun with it.

 

[BeautyInTheStruggle]

I usually don't use last name. But in one series, by ch 3, a student would refer to his professor by her last name. Had to reread everything to make sure she didn't already have one.

This is exactly why my new working plan on books that interconnect or series is to have a full character document that I can refer to, if I don't have anything on there - cool, I'll add something. Because rereading back where I mentioned some obscure name or detail that later turned out to be rather more important than I had thought at the time was time consuming and confusing!

 

[Kelliezgirl]

middle initial F?

I thought it was H, at least that's what my Dad said.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I once knew a black man named Michael Jordan. Not the famous one. By the time I met him he'd learned to have fun with it.

Michael Bolton on the other hand...

 

[iwatchus]

I thought it was H, at least that's what my Dad said.

Yeah as an initial I hear H more. The F is usually given fully.

 

[SkyBubble]

Would any one recognize the name Gertrude Burkhalter without looking it up?

Would everyone?

I remembered it.