Come for the Mysteries. Stay for the Characters.
Finding the right name for characters is critical to me. Something about their faces or personalties suggests suitable names. So for the last prompt for this month’s theme of characters, I offer a naming game for characters.
Look at the photos and the brief, character descriptions. Then tell me how you would name these characters.
This month, JPC Allen Writes is all about characters. Since I’m a character writer, this is one of my favorites themes. Naming a character correctly is crucial to me for his or her development. Names have fascinated me since I was a kid, and I have several naming books in my personal library, including The Character Naming Sourcebook, which I’ve reviewed in another post. I’m very excited to give a book review of Baby Names Made Easy: the Complete Reverse-Dictionary of Baby Names by Amanda Elizabeth Barden because its arrangement is tailor made for writers.
Instead of the names being arranged alphabetically or by country of origin, the names are arranged in categories by meaning. Some of the categories are astronomy, animals and insects, colors, courage and bravery, seasons and time, and mercy and forgiveness. In all 49 different categories for names, which are selected from all over the world.
I find this kind of grouping particularly helpful when creating names for a family of characters. Since fiction is an illusion, fiction writers need all the help we can get to support the illusion. Creating names that people would use in reality helps the illusion. And when you have a whole family of characters to name, it makes sense to name them in way a real family would.
Families name in patterns, and your fictional families should reflect that. Also having a naming pattern for each family helps your reader keep the characters straight. In my Rae Riley mysteries, Rae has two cousins, Amber and Coral, both nature names. Her best friend has two daughters, Liberty and Serenity.
For another example, if the father and mother of a fictional family are new age hippies, then you might want to select names for their children from virtues the parents admire. Or let’s say your family is pretty functional, supporting and loving each other. The names could reflect that without the reader even knowing it. Under “Happiness & Joy”, you find the names Abigail, Beatrice, Felicity, Isaac, Tate, and Felix.
Do you spend a lot of time naming characters? Where do you find names? What are some of your favorite names for characters?
My theme for July is names, how to create characters and place names in your writing. My prompts will be more prompts for discussion rather than for a story, starting off with taboo names.
What are taboo names? These are names that are so closely associated with a person, fictional or real, that it’s difficult or even impossible to reuse the name for a character.
Sherlock Holmes has had the lock on his first name for over a hundred years. The same goes for Ebenezer Scrooge and Ichabod Crane. Scarlet O’Hara had her first name pretty much to herself for sixty years, but now enough time has passed that parents think they can name their sweet daughters Scarlet and people won’t immediately think of the strong-willed Southern belle.
Wilbur and Orville have been reused–Wilbur the pig in Charlotte’s Web comes to mind–but people still think of the Wright brothers as soon as they hear those names.
What names can you think of that authors should steer clear of because they have already been taken by memorable people or characters?
JPC Allen Writes