Google your character Names People!

[TheWritingGroup]

I don't care if I accidentally name a character the same as another writer? I don't even understand why there seems to be a consensus that doing so would be embarrassing.

Not embarrassing, so much as distracting to the reader.

If you name your character "D'Artagnan" and he is a dressmaker, people might be thinking about the name, not your story.

--Annie

 

[filthytrancendence]

Not embarrassing, so much as distracting to the reader.

Okay. Seems like you had to reach for a pretty extreme example to make that make sense, but I'll grant it's theoretically possible.

But this is what the OP said about it:

literally takes seconds and saves you from potential embarrassment

 

[RetroFan]

Not embarrassing, so much as distracting to the reader.

If you name your character "D'Artagnan" and he is a dressmaker, people might be thinking about the name, not your story.

--Annie

I tend to agree. Having a character with an unusual or archaic name might be good in a comedy or drama, but even then maybe not so much for the lead characters and in erotica it becomes harder to connect with the character and risks being a distraction. To demonstrate, a story about Jane losing her virginity to a guy named Bronco is more likely to be distracting to the readers than erotic.

I'm currently writing a short story for the nude day contest in which the mother's name is Doris. This story is set in 1967 and the mother would have been born in 1922, so it fits fine. But if in another story I write a character born in the 1980s or 1990s and her name is Doris, it doesn't fit so well. Her archaic name might work better if I lampshade it - for example the character doesn't like her old-fashioned name and gets sick of the jokes such as 'Funny, you don't look 80' or 'How are the grandkids?' or when a guy asks her why her parents named her that and she advises it was after her late grandmother or why doesn't she use her middle name and she advises she doesn't have one, this may be okay. But if I just treat it as normal, it kind of takes the reader out of the story.

 

[Craighalbert]

I tend to agree. Having a character with an unusual or archaic name might be good in a comedy or drama, but even then maybe not so much for the lead characters and in erotica it becomes harder to connect with the character and risks being a distraction. To demonstrate, a story about Jane losing her virginity to a guy named Bronco is more likely to be distracting to the readers than erotic.

100%. The movie Carol is a beautiful love story with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, drastically undercut by the fact that one of the character's names is Harge, which I've never heard anywhere before and made me snicker whenever someone said it

 

[SkyBubble]

I rarely use last names at all, so it isn't really a problem. When I do use a last name, it is usually presented separately from the first name ("Hello, Mr. Smith!") so the reader would have to go out of their way to put them together.

I also like to have different nicknames for the same character when addressed by others in the cast. I think "pet names" give the story depth. Like the way nobody but Kirk calls McCoy "Bones."

The main male character in my newest story (still in the queue) has a silly pet name for the female lead character that derives from their first meeting and a dumb joke he made. (But she laughed.)

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I tend to agree. Having a character with an unusual or archaic name might be good in a comedy or drama, but even then maybe not so much for the lead characters and in erotica it becomes harder to connect with the character and risks being a distraction. To demonstrate, a story about Jane losing her virginity to a guy named Bronco is more likely to be distracting to the readers than erotic.

I'm currently writing a short story for the nude day contest in which the mother's name is Doris. This story is set in 1967 and the mother would have been born in 1922, so it fits fine. But if in another story I write a character born in the 1980s or 1990s and her name is Doris, it doesn't fit so well. Her archaic name might work better if I lampshade it - for example the character doesn't like her old-fashioned name and gets sick of the jokes such as 'Funny, you don't look 80' or 'How are the grandkids?' or when a guy asks her why her parents named her that and she advises it was after her late grandmother or why doesn't she use her middle name and she advises she doesn't have one, this may be okay. But if I just treat it as normal, it kind of takes the reader out of the story.

I'd consider any of those things to be incredibly rude.

Asking someone, "why don't you use your middle name?" would rate a "go fuck yourself."

 

[Zootonius]

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.

 

[iwatchus]

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.

It's why I make up a full name for characters early on, even if I never er end up using it. In my WIP, one of the three characters is unnamed (in the story itself) and a second has no last name. But I know their names. they just never get mentioned.

 

[WittyUserName]

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!

I usually do a web search on new names I'm planning for characters. There's almost always SOME result. My most famous accidental usage was "Brian Thomson" although, my name was before he became well known after his death. And I used "Thomson" instead of "Thompson."

 

[SkyBubble]

It gets better: Fleming intentionally named his James Bond after a real person, without permission. Fortunately the real James Bond enjoyed the joke. One Miss Marple adaptation features fictionalised versions of both Ian Fleming and the real Bond:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(ornithologist)

If I search for my wallet name, I can find both fictional and real people who share it. I worked in one organisation where we had three pairs of people with the same name. Such things aren't necessarily a problem.

Several years ago, there were two relief pitchers on the same team named Mike Smith. Usually, you'd denote them by middle initial (i.e., Michael A. Smith, Michael B. Smith), but in this case the two Mike Smiths had the same middle initial.

One was from Mississippi, one from Texas, so they got denoted Mississippi Mike Smith and Texas Mike Smith.