Wednesday 20 February 2013

What's in a name?


Am I the only writer who agonises over names for days on end?  I guess I find it difficult because I think names are so important in characterisation. They give the reader clues as to what kind of person they should expect. It may seem arbitrary as we are all given names by our parents - when they have no idea what sort of people we will eventually turn out to be.  Then again, many parents agonise over their children’s names too! We give children names and then hope their characters turn out to be what we would want for them. But in the world of fiction we try to choose names that suit the character we are trying to create.
For instance, age and era play a big part in my choices. A woman who was born early 19th century would not be called Rhianna or Stacy. Just doesn’t ring true, does it? But Arabella or Victoria does. The age of characters is also important in deciding names. I can easily imagine an older man called Hector or Jeremiah but not a young boy. I think most readers meeting a character with these names would automatically have in their mind’s eye and older man even before any physical description is given.
Whether your character is the antagonist or protagonist is also important in naming. Although sometimes one might want to increase surprise by giving an evil character an innocuous name… I think it depends on how you are trying to present your story. Male heroes names tend to be strong masculine names – they are not usually called Fred or Bert - but female heroines may also be strong ‘no nonsense’ names too. I wouldn’t choose a name like Ophelia or Primrose if I wanted my heroine to be seen as strong and capable. But then again, it is all a matter of personal choice… In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like Ophelia!!
When we are introduced to people in real life we may be told their names but it is not the only information we have of them. We can see how they behave, what they look like and hear them speak. We can make judgements about what sort of person they are (although we may turn out to be totally wrong, of course!)
But in writing fiction we have to give a strong first impression by words only to have the reader ‘see’ our character in their mind’s eye. I believe this is why names are so important.

How much importance do you give to naming your characters? Do you agonise or go with the story and change the name later to fit the character?

 

11 comments:

  1. Yes, I agonize over naming my characters - as a matter of fact I agonize over it so much that while I write I will just use bland names as placeholders. Strange because I have a picture of the character in my mind, I know where I want the character to go, but the name is hard to choose and attach.

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  2. I don't really agonize over the character names. I already have the character in my head, so I go through a name generator until I find the names I want. I'll also write down names I hear so I can possibly use them as one of my characters.

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  3. I'm like you I think carefully about name. My difficulty is pronunciation. I'm dyslectic and have only been writing for publication just over ten years now, having to learn and understand how English Grammar works as well as spelling too.
    I'm writing a short story at the moment which is set in Africa and have given my characters African names. While reading the story out to my husband he laughed (Kindly) as I struggled to pronounce the names.
    "Why not choose names you can say," he said helpfully.
    "Because you can't call them 'Rosie and Jim'", I said, "as they live in Africa." :-)
    Bless him for trying to help.

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  4. I do like to give my characters the right name. Sometimes that's easy sometimes not.

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  5. I can definitely relate to this post! I can't count how many times I've had to change a character's name halfway through a story because I just kept turning it over and over in my head-- and realized it should be something else. We are kind of like parents, in a way-- to our characters-- and it is hard to give something PERMANENT and everlasting to them!

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  6. My mind is a complicated, twisted place. I like symbology to a fault and most of the names in my stories have a deep reasoning behind. They might be related to famous people (because their association with them will evoke a particular idea in the reader), there are many homages to my writing idols, and then there's the fact that I like to connect all of my stories dropping the same last names, towns, or first names... Because my life isn't complicated enough as it is. :)

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  7. I'll consider names for days/weeks on end for some. Most come fairly quickly. But then I write sci-fi and fantasy mostly, so I make them up. :)

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  8. I agree that character names are important. I've read about a few authors who have written down street names while on vacation and later used them as character names in their novels. I guess I've always been lucky because coming up with names either to name a pet or for a character has always been easy.

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  9. I do think about names quite a bit! They have to fit the character...

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  11. a long long hiatus but I will begin anew...

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