WHAT’S IN A NAME?

INTRO

            I’ve talked about this in 2013 and as recently as 2018. I thought it worth revisiting again since it’s come up multiple times on the Facebook forums.

            Yeah, you hear me quoting Facebook a lot here at Fred Central. Especially since COVID, that’s the main way to communicate besides Zoom or some other remote forum app. Little if anything is done in person anymore. In fact, going back, a lot of my articles were inspired by forums anyway, if not from my writer’s group meetings or our annual writer’s conference. While some people deplore Facebook, it does have it’s merits when it comes to open forums, if they’re properly monitored.

            Where was I?

            While I AM going to repeat info I’ve conveyed before, I’ve been inspired to add to that. There’s stuff I failed to mention before when it comes to naming your characters. Without further adieu, let’s get going.

WHERE TO START?

            It may seem like an easy task to come up with character names for your story, whether they’re fictional or real (and you generally have to use fictional names to protect the innocent or avoid lawsuits) (more on this later). You can pull the names out of a hat, out of the air, or mix and match them from a baby name book if you want. Maybe you can pull them randomly out of the phone book. Some well-known authors even run contests to publish fan names in their novels. As new writers, you probably don’t have a fan base for that purpose, so you’ll have to rely on other means.

            Most of us, I imagine, pull them out of the air, probably inspired, like me, from random people and events around us at the time. Maybe they’re from something that happened in our past.

            The inspiration for the name (not the actual character) Joseph “Detach” Datchuk, the main character in my Gold series, came from a guy I knew in elementary school.

            On the other hand, in that same series, I pulled Mildred Pierce out of the air. It wasn’t until almost nine years later that I learned she was the name of a very famous character in a novel from the 40’s that I’d never heard of. That was purely coincidental.

            Meleena, from my fantasy series is completely made up. I’d never heard of anyone with that name until recently when I discovered a disc jockey on Sirius XM radio with a similar, but different spelled version of that name.

NO BEARING ON REALITY

            I must make one thing very clear. These character names, even if inspired by real people, have no bearing on the real people! One has nothing to do with the other. The kid I got the name Detach from in no way resembles the character in my novel in either appearance or personality. The same for Mildred Pierce, or any other character I’ve named, so far at least. Maybe someday, the fan that wants to be in one of my books will get a little piece of their appearance or personality added to a character. Not much, but maybe a tiny bit, as a tribute.

            I could go on and on. For you, sometimes you just hit it right and sometimes without realizing it, you nail some famous or infamous name and don’t know until someone tells you about it. As for Mildred Pierce, she’s a sidekick in the Gold series and I’m very fond of her. I have no intention of changing her name. I may throw in a comment about the famous novel but maybe not. There are probably hundreds of women named Mildred Pierce, so I don’t see changing it. It’s not like her character is named Angelina Jolie. That would be too unique to get away with.

FANTASY NAMES – PITFALLS

            An issue with making up names, especially in fantasy and science fiction worlds (world building) are similar sounding names. During a recent Facebook forum, this exact subject came up. My response was part of the following, but a shortened version. Below is the long version.

The subject of similar sounding names came up in Meleena’s Adventures – Gods Of The Blue Mountains. The main character is, of course, Meleena. That name is totally unique. In this first sequel, she’s hanging with a female Elf I’ve been calling Alinda. One of my critiquing friends pointed out that Meleena and Alinda sounded too much alike. I referred to my handy-dandy Meleena’s Adventures encyclopedia. I hadn’t alphabetized it yet, which prompted some much needed housekeeping. I have sections for names, places, creatures and things. It was enough of a sidetrack just to get through reordering the names. With that done, I went through every character name, one-by-one, from both books. Since then, I’ve added more from the third book as well. Since Alinda and Meleena did sound a lot alike, I had to find something unique, something that didn’t sound like any of the other common character names. It wasn’t long before I settled on Niin. There’s no other name like it. Where did I come up with it? I pulled it out of the air. I could’ve spent all day doing the same with random names, but that was honestly the first one that popped into my head. No indecision, no agony or worrying. Guess I just got lucky.

            When you’re creating names for your story, similarity must be a consideration. Sound-alike names tend to confuse the reader. After a while, readers may not be able to distinguish between characters and that’ll weaken the impact of your prose. Each name should be different and distinctive. Alphabetizing my encyclopedia, which I should’ve done a long before this point, helped me see the big picture. It’s especially important in fantasy world building, where I have to make up names. I can’t be using Karl and Joe and Fred.

            In a conventional novel, you don’t want your common characters to be named Ted and Fred and Jed. Or Jan and Fran and Nan. That would drive a reader nuts, and it wouldn’t be long before they’d lose track of who’s who.

            There should be a distinct difference between names.

COMING UP WITH THESE NAMES

            Where do I come up with these quirky fantasy names in the first place?

            Maybe that goes with my fascination with foreign languages. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been keen on foreign tongues. Then, as an adult, I lived overseas and was exposed to multiple foreign languages. I got used to alternative tongues, accents, spelling and such. Making up my own words and names is no big deal. In fact, I’ve seen that in plenty of other fantasy authors. I can’t vouch for how easy they came up with the names, but they do.

            Over the years, on multiple threads on the Facebook fantasy site, many people have polled the forum for ideas for names. While that’s one way, to me, these names should come from you, the writer, not from others. If someone else gives you the name, then it’s their idea, not yours. You don’t completely own it. Of course, if you take their name, modify it to make it your own, you could say you came up with it, but I, personally, wouldn’t want that. That’s just me.

            However, you have to do whatever works for you, and if polling others is the method that gets you there, go for it.

EASY TO PRONOUNCE

            The final thought on made up names is to make the names easy to pronounce. Don’t have them tongue twisters that need pronunciation guides just to figure out. Words with lots of punctuation, or with “French” or Gaelic spellings that don’t correspond to how they’re pronounced in English isn’t a good idea either. Okay, maybe a little, but only one or two…maybe. Give the name, how it’s pronounced, and leave it at that. Don’t have a whole bunch of names like that, or the reader is going to skip over them and blank out your “finely crafted artistic expressions.” I know I would. In fact, I often just make up my own pronunciation, regardless of what the author says.

Sometimes getting hung up on a pronunciation can be a distraction too. This can be a major way to jerk a person out of the story.

WHAT ABOUT REAL-WORLD PEOPLE IN AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OR NON-FICTION STORY?

            When you’re writing an autobiography or real-world historical story, things can get tricky. If your story requires you to use real people, you must be aware of possible lawsuits and slander and the whole gamut of real issues. Even using someone’s name supposedly in an innocent fashion can lead to major heartache if the person doesn’t want their name in print. It’s a lot more difficult to vet something like that. In some cases, it might be better to substitute fictitious names rather than deal with all the legal implications.

SUMMARY

            Whatever the case, naming characters can be fun or a real headache, depending on how you want to approach the issue.

            Happy writing!