A character's name

[geronimo_appleby]

so i use a name i plucked out of thin air. then get this?

by Anonymous
10/14/16
USING MY NAME

GERONIMO APPLEBY.. lol kinda fuckin pissed you used my full name in your story, so Bangkok eh?? Lol You talk about hidding behind anonymous.. whats your real name so i can return the favor??

 

[MLClifton]

..........

 

[Hypoxia]

I believe Groucho Marx said that if your script contains a venomous lawyer named Phineas T. Quackenbush, you'll be sued by a venomous lawyer named Phineas T. Quackenbush. So stick to safe names like Jenny Jameson and Ronald Tramp.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

I believe Groucho Marx said that if your script contains a venomous lawyer named Phineas T. Quackenbush, you'll be sued by a venomous lawyer named Phineas T. Quackenbush. So stick to safe names like Jenny Jameson and Ronald Tramp.

hafta catch me first. i was last seen in bangkok, apparently.

 

[barefootgirl69]

Well, it isn't as if you knew him OR his real name, until he made it obvious to the world! (at least the Lit world)

 

[MLClifton]

I try to pick really generic names for my characters. One of my stories has a character with an extremely popular first name in the U.S. I received feedback from a reader who told me that she also has this name, so she was kind of offended, but turned on too. I guess that's a favorable review?

 

[EverLux]

Can't they just be flattered? You liked the name enough to choose it for one of your characters. Unless that character is a massive tool, I don't see the downside.

Now, if I were to read a story where a character had my name and also happened to look exactly like me... I might be a little creeped out. But I definitely would not alert the author to my existence.

 

[sr71plt]

Gotta be careful. I used just the real first name for a real person in a particular job/location, and someone from Lit. (putting that together with other story details) was able to trace that back to who I really am.

 

[EverLux]

Gotta be careful. I used just the real first name for a real person in a particular job/location, and someone from Lit. (putting that together with other story details) was able to trace that back to who I really am.

Not that is creepy...

 

[Kantarii]

Nearly all the main characters I create are ultimately based on my characteristics and real name that is often used at some point in the story. I doubt I will be suing myself over bullshit. My supporting characters all have qualities of me about them, but are usually based on people around me. "A Slut's Triangle" was my first storyline where I let the supporting cast be themselves based entirely on people I have met in life. Kant

 

[Sammael Bard]

Poochy Cottontail - use this one. I'm sure there'll be no future complaints.

Or votes. Or favourites...

 

[RetroFan]

I always put a disclaimer at the front of all of my stories to state that the characters and events are fictional and any similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional.

One thing I try to be careful of is to make sure that my characters have names that seem to fit.

For example, I named a posh English girl Felicity, a spoiled rich girl Madison and a seductive daughter of a New York Mafia boss the Italian name Marissa, all of which fit well. Others have names for a specific reason, for example one of the characters set in a story in Australia is called Tracy, and because she is a bitch other characters refer to her as 'Cyclone Tracy', after the massive storm that destroyed Darwin in the 1970s.

Conversely giving a character an ironic name can also work, for example naming the office slut Chastity.

Some names, however, don't really work as sexy. Try naming your erotica character Muriel or Mervyn (and apologies to any Muriel's or Mervyn's reading this and are offended) and it probably won't work. You could have them as supporting non-erotic characters such as Muriel being the office spinster; or Mervyn an aging sleezebag nicknamed 'Merv the Perve' , but I just don't see them as erotic characters.

 

[NicoleZ]

I believe Groucho Marx said that if your script contains a venomous lawyer named Phineas T. Quackenbush, you'll be sued by a venomous lawyer named Phineas T. Quackenbush. So stick to safe names like Jenny Jameson and Ronald Tramp.

This is so true! Even should you use an obviously fictitious name such as Dragoslaviniya Zprszhtzchkukokokoviya, you will most likely get an angry reply from some joker who claims that he is (and obviously ignorant of the fact that both names take the female form).

 

[ChloeTzang]

I try to pick really generic names for my characters.

I do that for a lot of characters, but for the rest I quite often jump on the web and look for popular names and surnames and just whack them together. I guess the exception would be my "Strawberry" character, and for her I went and did this search on weird english names chinese pick and that one just grabbed me.

The other thing I will do is throw readers in as characters if they ask me too. That's kindof fun, but again, first names only. I make the last names up regardless.

 

[TamLin01]

Director David Fincher was talking about casting for the movie "Fight Club" on the DVD and mentioned they discovered that there really is one woman in America named "Marla Singer." Which was a problem; if there were LOTS of Marla Singers around then none of them could claim that the movie was an attack on them, but a sole Marla Singer could allege she was being singled out and defamed.

Fortunately the woman in question signed off on "her" name appearing in the film, and one more potential crisis was averted. But apparently this is a problem that any work of fiction can run into.

 

[oggbashan]

Director David Fincher was talking about casting for the movie "Fight Club" on the DVD and mentioned they discovered that there really is one woman in America named "Marla Singer." Which was a problem; if there were LOTS of Marla Singers around then none of them could claim that the movie was an attack on them, but a sole Marla Singer could allege she was being singled out and defamed.

Fortunately the woman in question signed off on "her" name appearing in the film, and one more potential crisis was averted. But apparently this is a problem that any work of fiction can run into.

The author Richard Adams encountered that with his novel The Girl in the Swing. The first edition had to be withdrawn because a woman with an unusual name complained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_a_Swing

Of course the first edition with the original woman's name is worth more than the revised version - but it won't make you rich.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

The author Richard Adams encountered that with his novel The Girl in the Swing. The first edition had to be withdrawn because a woman with an unusual name complained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_a_Swing

Of course the first edition with the original woman's name is worth more than the revised version - but it won't make you rich.

what about the gerald seymour book, the fighting man? it's about a former SAS man working as a mercenary in guatemala. his name? wait for it ... gordon brown!

 

[oggbashan]

what about the gerald seymour book, the fighting man? it's about a former SAS man working as a mercenary in guatemala. his name? wait for it ... gordon brown!

Any Google search will produce many Gordon Browns.

Richard Adams' first character name (Käthe Geutner) was unusual and possibly unique.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I had a reader who asked me how I knew a person sharing the same name as the main character in one of my stories. When I told her that I did not know this person and the story - including the characters- were entirely works of fiction, she advised me that I had described the person to a T, even down to her marital status.

 

[Kantarii]

<striking the names: Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein ,Gandalf, and Bilbo Baggins of my list of available names to uses. Watch out Stalin... Anything I do to your character would be an improvement
Kant

 

[jehoram]

I find that facebook is useful for this sort of thing. If you want to use "Barbara Brown" and look for that name, you'll probably find a hundred of them. So the odds that some woman named Barbara Brown writes you and tells you that you're writing about her, you can simply point to that and ask, "Which one of the hundred Barbara Browns are you, exactly?"