Names. Pick 'em or just label 'em?

[dr_mabeuse]

In the SRP forum, I nearly always give my characters the name of a typeface. Candy Helvetica, Grace Palatino. It reminds me that they aren't real.

I like Truman Wingdings or Larry Arial or Ms. Daley Times New-Roman.

---dr.M.

 

[angela146]

Would Condoleeza Rice have been taken seriously if she'd been Candy Rice?

... and what would have happened if Adolf Schickelgruber had stuck with his original name instead of tracking down his father?

 

[angela146]

There is an Edwardian-era novel where the two teenaged characters are named Emily and Gladys.

When I first read it, I was the age of one of the characters and cringed at the cruelty of a parent naming her child Gladys. After all, only really old people are named Gladys.

Of course, those old people had to have been young at one time. A child born in 1890's named Gladys wouldn't have felt at all out of place.

 

[Boxlicker101]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by shereads
Would Condoleeza Rice have been taken seriously if she'd been Candy Rice?


Probably not but I think Candace would have been okay. Maybe not because everybody would have called her Candy anyhow.

Of the last ten presidents, three had one-syllably names (Ford, Bush, Bush); five had two syllable names (Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton) and Kennedy and Eisenhower, with three and four syllable names respectively.

 

[SlickTony]

Would Condoleeza Rice have been taken seriously if she'd been Candy Rice?

Everybody calls her Condy as it is. It's a difference of a vowel. She lucked out. In my job I see a plethora of names like hers, under circumstances that would suggest that they all mean, in their owners' ancestral languages, "she who will spend half her life in court, suing some dog for child support or obtaining a paternity order."

Oh, and Dr. M, thank you for straightening me out about the mark in Egbert Souse's name--I'd heard it wrong from my husband, from across the room. Either I'm getting old or my son has the TV on too damn loud.

Come to think of it, both these statements are true anyway.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

In my job I see a plethora of names like hers, under circumstances that would suggest that they all mean, in their owners' ancestral languages, "she who will spend half her life in court, suing some dog for child support or obtaining a paternity order."

LOL!

Know what you mean. I never will forget this one customer at a place I worked whose name was Cleatorius.

"That's KLEE-ah! KLEE-atorius!"

Sure it is.

---dr.M.

 

[KenJames]

LOL!

Know what you mean. I never will forget this one customer at a place I worked whose name was Cleatorius.

"That's KLEE-ah! KLEE-atorius!"

Sure it is.

---dr.M.

Several years ago, while driving through Bastrop Texas, we passed a big sign which read "Jimmy Fuick - State Farm Agent."

Of course, I had to look at it three times to read it correctly. It's probably pronounced "foo-sick," but I can just imagine what growing up was like for him.

 

[SlickTony]

Looks like it rhymes with Buick. Still, it must have been challenging to carry it around. There's a street in Houston called Fuqua--I think it's pronounced few-kway, but I always hesitated to say it at all.

 

[herecomestherain]

Font family names...

Originally posted by shereads

In the SRP forum, I nearly always give my characters the name of a typeface. Candy Helvetica, Grace Palatino. It reminds me that they aren't real.

Originally posted by dr.M.

I like Truman Wingdings or Larry Arial or Ms. Daley Times New-Roman.

I'd like to do a story featuring some of these characters;

The aristocratic and haughty, Lucida Sans Serif, the lass who married that foreigner, the handsome rogue and star of the screen, Ransom San Serif. She used to be known as plain Lucida Bright.

The Baroness, Perpetua Titling

The pillar of society or the rakish cad, Garabond Bold

The Gatekeeper or blacksmith, Goudy Stout

The artiste and playwright, Calisto Light

I had occasion once to do a little promotional radio interview over the phone with an announcer whose name was Dick Horniblow...took all my so called professional maturity to keep myself together...

 

[cloudy]

LOL!

Know what you mean. I never will forget this one customer at a place I worked whose name was Cleatorius.

"That's KLEE-ah! KLEE-atorius!"

Sure it is.

---dr.M.

someone that once worked for me, for a very short time, carried the moniker of "Aquanetta" - I had visions of hairspray....

 

[SlickTony]

Oh, that's kind of common down here, I'm sure I've met at least one grocery clerk by that name.

 

[Ann Vremont]

generating names

this and that. I've been known to snitch some from the Devil's Dictionary. In a six-pack of anal erotica that I did, I had one character named Vincent Bowers. In another, Josh Hardwick. (From the ConLaw case of Hardwick v. Bowers. Most aptly named case in legal history?)

One novella, I took names from a tarot elemental deck that used ancient gods, demigods--Athemay, Ptah, Hurukan (on of my faves). I also searched for the associated meanings of names, e.g. Colm (dove)--rather unbefitting for a vampire.

For a novella I'm working on now (Shadow Island), I took myth names, Arawn (a sort of Hades), and Kordelia (daughter of a Welsh sea god). (Only now I realize how poorly read I am and that Shakespeare already wrote the story. Ah well, he didn't write it with all the sex thrown in, at least I can do that.)

Sometimes I go on babelfish.altavista.com -- e.g. for a dragon story, the last name is Gargouille (French for gargoyle and a famous French dragon), for a grandmother that betrays her granddaughter, the last name is T'rahison (French trahison for exactly what it sounds out as).

I definitely put a lot of thought into the names though. Wish my parents had done the same.

Ann