I'm not going to title this "What's in a name?"

[TadOverdon]

Do character names vex anyone else?

There's a famous old sci-fi writer who just repeatedly named everyone jones and smith and john and mike. Well, that's simple because the name "Mike Smith" will sound almost invisibly "right" to people (in America, at least) the same way that readers don't see the word "said."

But now it's obviously ethnocentric if everyone's named that way.

Said famous writer once had a LatinX character named Juan. Throughout the book he just called him "Johnny."

In something with more than one or two characters, one has to make all the names different enough that the reader doesn't have to work to remember who's who. I know half a dozen Johns. In a book with twenty characters, one John is allowed.

Pairing given names with surnames can be the most time consuming thing. One wants a mix of surnames of different numbers of syllables from a variety of different national backgrounds (again, if it's set someplace like America). Assonance demands that the number of syllables in a given name strike a certain balance with the number in the surname unless you're playing it for humor. "Bob Dobbs" is silly and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" is almost immediately memorable; "Bill Thompson" is invisibly white bread.

There's an unconscious tendency to favor certain names or kinds of names so that the characters all sound like they're from the same village somewhere east of London.

If I come up with a name I really like, I compulsively Google it. If it "just sounds right" the likelihood is pretty high that I've heard it a hundred times on CNN or ESPN and just never noticed. Now that I think of it, come up with a name that sounds really good for a newscaster and...they're probably already a newscaster somewhere.

If "it just sounds right" and it's not connected to a real person with an Internet presence, halfway through the book I remember that I used it for a supporting character a couple of books ago.

99.6% of names in the world already belong to someone who has played school or professional athletics successfully enough that their statistics and probably picture are online in more than one place. Dicey, IMHO.

No Alexises, Brittanys, Jessicas, Jennas need apply...all the porn performers in the world are passing six names back and forth.

Oh, and "Kalisy?" That one's kind of mainstreamed. But no fifty-year-old woman is named Kalisy.

Just me? Yeah, I know it's just me. I'm blathering and putting off looking for new names for two characters who have so far been Silveri, Palmer, Hopkins, Baker, Palmieri and a couple of other variations that I was tired of halfway through the book.

 

[8letters]

Go to the SSA's Popular Baby Names web page, enter the year your character was born, and you've got a list of names to pick from.

 

[TadOverdon]

Go to the SSA's Popular Baby Names web page, enter the year your character was born, and you've got a list of names to pick from.

This is a good one, yeah. I use it, and also other lists around the web that also do the same kind of breakdown of most popular names by decade and so forth - like 50 or 100 most populars.

Now, I do that trick with surnames - let's see, "100 most popular Italian surnames" in the U.S." - and it's shocking how Hollywood has virtually cannibalized the heritage of an entire national group to use as heavies in the movies. I swear at least half of the list matched memorably unpleasant characters I could remember from movies I could name. Seemed like it anyway.

I'm always concerned about coming up with names that connect with a lot of readers from some character in pop culture who I personally happen to be clueless about. In terms of the writing process it's worse if it turns out to have an association for me that I momentarily forgot. Hopkins? No way. For a tenth of a second there I wasn't thinking of Sir Tony, and once I did Hopkins the porn character was toast.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My character names usually arrive with the first entry of the character, and in most cases the name is "right". I'll often use names with a literary or mythical legacy - Clio, Lilith, Alice, Juliette - but most are picked because I like the names. Names are important for my writing process, and they inform the character development. The one that I checked most was an alien name - I wanted one that didn't have any cultural connotations, and came up with Ixtil, which worked perfectly.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Go to the SSA's Popular Baby Names web page, enter the year your character was born, and you've got a list of names to pick from.

Yep, I also use that extensively for US names. Behind the name generator has many more options.

Most of the time I get away with no last names, which makes colliding with famous names less likely. And if it does, sometimes a change it spelling is all it takes (Hello, Amee Addems )

 

[TadOverdon]

With longer stories, if I don't give 'em surnames I limit the range of interactions between characters other than very close associates.

I think I'm going to rename the Hopkins character "Schwarzenegger." It's distinctive enough to be memorable without having any well-known associations.

 

[NotWise]

I don't sweat names for characters in current settings. I try to use names I haven't used recently. My most recent pair was Renée Sand (female protagonist) and Aaron Wheeler (male, both antagonist and protagonist). I don't think the names have to be completely memorable, but their character and what they do needs to make them memorable.

Naming is a lot more difficult for historical stories. There are resources, but they're specific to times and places and it may be hard to match them to a story. Research is required.

 

[TadOverdon]

Brooke. Porn name.

I want to do a novel where no woman has a name ending in an "a." Having just noticed that of five named women so far in the current book, three end in "a."

 

[Bramblethorn]

If "it just sounds right" and it's not connected to a real person with an Internet presence, halfway through the book I remember that I used it for a supporting character a couple of books ago.

Did this, when I realised I decided to let them be the same person. I think it improved the story.

 

[TadOverdon]

Did this, when I realised I decided to let them be the same person. I think it improved the story.

That'll work. In the case I stumbled over there was a thirty-year age difference and different locale. And "Althea" was just a shade too noticeable a repetition.

This is all very self-involved, of course. No one may ever read both of these books and would probably not pay any attention or be bothered by such things at all. But I'll sort of half-stop and be pulled out of what I'm doing sometimes by it.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Said famous writer once had a LatinX character named Juan. Throughout the book he just called him "Johnny."

I'm going to take a stab at that and suggest you're referring to the protagonist in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Juan Rico. If so, my initial read on that when I read it a couple of centuries ago was that Heinlein had so-very-subtly painted an Earth which had been blended into one solid, equal society. We bumble along as Rico tries, stumbles, succeeds and survives. He's just a guy to us. It's not until the very end that we find out that his milk tongue is Tagalog, ergo, he's from not from Philly or London or someplace we might consider 'normal', but very clearly from the Philippines. And he's been treated exactly the same as everybody else, no better, no worse. And he's succeeding. As a teen growing up in the times of racial tension, I found that warming, something to hope for.

Two kopeks on one paragraph. Your basic point is, I think, valid.

 

[Bramblethorn]

That'll work. In the case I stumbled over there was a thirty-year age difference and different locale. And "Althea" was just a shade too noticeable a repetition.

Yeah, that might take some explaining, unless you wanted to go with "daughter of".

 

[TadOverdon]

Yeah, that might take some explaining, unless you wanted to go with "daughter of".

Yeah, I just changed the name to "Simone." LOL

At least for the evening the Palmeris Silveras Pearsons are the Navarros.

I mean, the alternative to fussing over this all evening would have been to work on writing the scene at the tide pool. So, evasion accomplished.

 

[AlphaLyon]

I usually go in reverse. I do a search for "what name means (quality)" and pick from the list of names that way. Sure, it's a little cheesy, but it helps me keep my characters unique and true to the essence I'm going for with them, at least in my mind.

 

[MetaBob]

I'm going to take a stab at that and suggest you're referring to the protagonist in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Juan Rico.

Interestingly (at least to me), I got the name of the female main character, Carmen, in my The Dog Whisperer from this same work, but the film rather than the book. I read the book long enough ago that I don't remember much of it, but I'd started watching the film, went on a trip, got the idea for my story on that trip, and thought I'd just pulled Carmen's name from the aether. Then I got back home, resumed watching the film, and realized the provenance.

 

[TadOverdon]

Yeah, it was Starship Troopers.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Pairing given names with surnames can be the most time consuming thing. One wants a mix of surnames of different numbers of syllables from a variety of different national backgrounds (again, if it's set someplace like America). Assonance demands that the number of syllables in a given name strike a certain balance with the number in the surname unless you're playing it for humor. "Bob Dobbs" is silly and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" is almost immediately memorable; "Bill Thompson" is invisibly white bread.

I’ve only used surnames for two characters because they were being introduced in a business setting. As they are Indian, I had to ask my co-writer what they should be. There’s a whole level of cultural complexity there I’m completely in the dark about.

 

[TadOverdon]

All my characters have given and surnames but as I think about it I don't believe I've ever given one a middle name. I'm sure I must have assigned someone a middle initial at least once.

 

[NotWise]

Yeah, it was Starship Troopers.

I think I was ten when I read Starship Troopers.

 

[TadOverdon]

I saw the movie first. My Dad had a lot of "golden age" sci-fi, mostly paperbacks. I eventually read Starship Troopers and some other old Heinlein. The shorter books were better. I thought Stranger In A Strange Land probably seemed hip in the 60s.

 

[NotWise]

I saw the movie first. My Dad had a lot of "golden age" sci-fi, mostly paperbacks. I eventually read Starship Troopers and some other old Heinlein. The shorter books were better. I thought Stranger In A Strange Land probably seemed hip in the 60s.

"Stranger in a Strange Land" was a huge hit among fourteen-year-old girls (say, 1968) when I was growing up. I read it a few years earlier and a lot of things went over or around my head.

 

[MetaBob]

"Stranger in a Strange Land" was a huge hit among fourteen-year-old girls (say, 1968) when I was growing up. I read it a few years earlier and a lot of things went over or around my head.

Stranger In A Strange Land and Dune were the pinnacle of SF when I read them in high school.

I've re-read Dune (and some of its sequels -- I have one on my desk right now) several times since then (and of course watched both celluloid adaptations, with another on its way later this year) but have not re-read Stranger In A Strange Land. Well, not all of it. I thought it was Heinlein's masterwork then, especially with the callback to Red Planet, which was the first SF novel I ever read, and changed my life forever.

This doesn't mean I endorse any of RH's worldviews, of course, some of which have become controversial through the veil of decades. Just that I appreciated his writing then, and probably would appreciate some of it now (I thought even then that he also produced some schlock).

Grok?

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Yeah, like when Homer and Marge Simpson decided to call their son Bart, so he wouldn't get teased in school, because think of anything rude that rhymed with that!

I should not be on here when I'm tired. What I meant to say was: Like when Homer and Marge Simpson decided to name their son Bart, so he wouldn't get teased in school, because they couldn't think of anything rude that rhymed with that!

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I just use a forename until I have a reason to need a surname. Unfortunately with a cast involving lots of scientists needing to be described as Dr X or even Prof Y or having a paper by Z et al., I usually end up needing surnames. Luckily the internet can usually provide lists of, eg, "commonest surnames of Chinese Canadians" to assist with picking. Some are easier than others - a guy with Welsh parents was likely to have one of a dozen common surnames so I picked one, an American from whitebread America I modelled a bit on Bill Bryson and "I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." so I picked a surname that was about 200 most common in their phone book. Ditto for an Iranian name.

A few others I've thought of a surname about the same time as the forename, but one I wrestled with for ages. I figured a placename should work well, nothing too common, and eventually picked a satisfactory town off a map. Just like the Wombles.

I do look up the full names before publishing - any non-zany name combo will exist, but I did nearly have the hotshot in a certain field (with a fascinating list of kinks) have the same name as an actual head honcho in that pretty small field. The name was similar to Mike Smith, so easy to change!

 

[TheRedChamber]

I don't have anything constructive to add to this thread, but love how the first page currently has one thread called 'What's in a Name' and one thread called 'I'm not going to title this "What's in a Name"' - almost as if TadOverdone is trolling Agiel, except this thread is a year older anyway.