What’s in a Name?

Readers have picked up on my love for unusual names. I undertake serious contemplation regarding the names of my main characters, mulling over possibilities for weeks, sometimes months.

I like using unusual names in my writing, because in my life I find they are far more memorable than standard, everyday names. It is also important to me because most people will not know a person called Bay, Navy or Anika. As a writer, the disassociation with the real world allows me to fully create a unique individual without real-life idiosyncrasies to get in the way. I love that my readers have this same freedom.

I have to admit that coming up with new and interesting names is sometimes difficult. Pouring through baby name sites is a tedious task, and one you can only do for so long before complete overload sets in. I have been blessed to have a very creative friend, who I have ‘stolen’ names from for past characters. I have used two on the top of her list, and she has been happy to pass them on to me.

My current work in progress will be no disappointment to those who love my unusual character names. As I am in the editing process, and contemplating changing some names of my minor characters, I wondered today how other writers come up with their names. Are there those who, like me, don’t want a name of a person they have known because of the unavoidable association? How do you choose the names for your characters? 

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The Craft of Naming 2

By Anne Hamilton

I cdn'uolt blveiee I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. Arpetpanly, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. And you awlyas thguoht slpeling was ipmorantt.

If you can read the text above, and most people can, it’s because of typoglycemia. When my niece was learning to read, her school was going through one of those fads – word recognition rather than phonics. As a result, she couldn’t tell the difference between ‘my’ and ‘mummy’. After all, they both started and ended with the same letter and that was how she was taught to recognise words. It makes a certain sort of sense to teach this way (though I don’t recommend it) because this is the way the brain operates.

It might seem like a small thing but, as someone who has had to simply toss some books aside, I assure you naming needs to take typoglycemia into account. I threw in the towel on Tolkien’s classic fantasy, The Lord of The Rings because I’d become thoroughly confused by Sauron and Saruman. I thought they were the same character, under a relatively transparent disguise: c’mon, Black Hand and White Hand; orcs and superorcs; dark tower and iron tower – and so on.

I didn’t come back for decades to The Lord of The Rings. In the majority of cases, I’ve never gone back.

So, let’s have a practical look at what not to do. Here are some don’ts when it comes to character combinations:

Annie and Alice.
Andrea and Anastasia.
Catherina and Cordelia.
Darren and Davin.
Dotti and Dannii.
Elaine and Elle.
Garthe and George.
Joanne and Janice.
Jamie and Jesse.
Kay and Kerry.
Marie and Madeline.
Narelle and Nancye.
Paul and Percival.
Terry and Tommy.
Ian and Neil.

The last one probably wasn’t obvious but you’d be surprised how many people mix up those two names in their heads. Ask any Neil how often people call them by the wrong name! There’s even been a psychological study done.

It may seem a small thing—almost too small to worry about—but it’s small things that make or break our novels. As Zechariah says: ‘Do not despise… small things.’

As writers, we need to pay attention to detail and consider not just our characters’ names but whether or not we’re making our book more readable through the choices we make.

Anne Hamilton learnt a lot from Tolkien’s mistake. She decided in her own fantasy writing the reader should be able to tell the difference between the elves and goblins just by looking at their names. (Though she wonders, in retrospect, whether prepositions for goblin names in Many-Coloured Realm was really such a good idea.) In her upcoming fantasy Daystar, all the major characters have names starting with a different letter in the alphabet.

You can find out more about Anne at her website, Fire of Roses.

Canstock Photo by ra2studio

The Craft of Naming

By Anne Hamilton

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So Shakespeare famously wrote. The ongoing implication is that names don’t really matter.

Many authors, following this philosophy, treat names as interchangeable labels. Their plotlines don’t alter at all when the heroine receives a global re-branding and moves from Mary to Anastasia-Sophia. The storyline doesn’t budge in the slightest when John, the name of the hero, is swapped out for Virgil.

I find this kind of attitude remarkably odd. I find it baffling when the author hasn’t taken the time to proofread the text, thus overlooking the fact Mary and John still appear once or twice. It’s a huge jolt to me as a reader when such names appear.

Should authors care enough about their characters to select their names carefully and not randomly?
This may seem too trivial to worry about but names can make or break a story. Names carry such a huge payload for the reader that, if authors overlook this aspect of a novel, they’ve undermined it completely. One step wrong with a name and you’ve put your reader off-side from the get-go.

A fantasy starring Prince Bob will lose me on the first page. A historical romance featuring Kylie and Dwayne won’t get to first base. Likewise a biblical retelling focussing on Lisa and Ace or a contemporary drama about Hildegarde and Athelstane. YA steampunk with Jo and Sid might just work if they are really Josephine and Sydney… but even these are right on the edge of the conventions.

Amongst the unwritten rules about writing are naming conventions. Names create immediate expectations in readers’ mind. None are neutral. Most of us mentally envisage entirely different characters, even body shapes, for heroes named Flint or Fred… and do so the moment the character is introduced. As readers, we expect different outcomes and choices from characters named John, Johnny, Johnnie, Jon and Jonny.

An entire set of anticipated behaviours is already built up in readers’ minds from the first time we see the hero’s name. When another character in a story uses a nickname for the hero, a new payload comes into play, telling us—in a single word—the nature of the relationship between the two and what they think of each other.

My first fantasy, Merlin’s Wood went through over a dozen drafts before I found a publisher. At one stage one of the beta-readers made a curious comment about the villain: ‘He’s cardboard. I think the problem is his name.’ This was long before I was as deeply into studying names as I am now but I took the thought on board and pondered what names gave me a sense of darkness as soon as I saw them. I chose one of these and was soon beset by a different problem: the character came so alive with so much evil I had to tone his behaviour back, given it was a children’s book.

We tend to overlook the fact that, quite apart from the extra depth the right name automatically adds to a story, there is a spiritual aspect to naming. In Scripture, naming is a prophetic action, speaking out the identity and destiny of the individual (or even town). This is why, I believe, we get so much satisfaction from certain stories: in the best books, the characters finally into the destiny their names have prophesied for us as readers.

So, how have you chosen the names of your characters?

And: have you ever asked in prayer whether God wants to have some input into your choice?

Anne Hamilton is fascinated by names and their role in the process of inspiration. She has written extensively on name covenants in her multi-award-winning book, God’s Poetry: The Identity and Destiny Encoded in Your Name. She sometimes writes about naming at www.fire-of-roses.com/wp