Character Names

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Sorry to vent.

But what's with these names? We had Jackson Browne as a black manual laborer a few weeks ago, and now we're seeing James Worthy as a white business executive.

We're talking about Hall of Famers here, authors -- people are going to recognize the names and get distracted when they're inappropriate. I do, anyway.

Clarifying my point: the names would be excellent choices in the proverbial vacuum. The trouble is that well-known people with other backgrounds in effect got to them first. (And the characters in the stories aren't the right age to have been named after the famous guys.)

Yes, there are plenty of people with matching names by coincidence. But this is fiction, and the author has control over such things: a match shouldn't happen unless there's a reason.

Obscure namesakes can be cute, in their place. There's a corporation called Burgess & Whitehead in one of the Erinyes stories -- The Wicked Flee, Bek D Corbin's original, I think, at Sapphire's Place -- which matches the name of a 1930s baseball infielder of no special merit. It made me smile, but since it was being used as a company name rather than a person, there wasn't the concern, for those few of us who recognized it, that it would reflect on a character's description.

Sort of in between, an author here about a year ago named the three teenaged bullies who came after her heroine after three professional golfers of the 1950s. (One of them was Tommy Bolt, a golfer nicknamed Terrible Tommy for his fits of temper on the course. The other two seemed to be random choices.) I recognized the names -- you've probably figured out by now that I'm a sports geek -- and wondered what they did to deserve such miserable namesakes (leading me to write either a comment or PM to that effect), but I didn't find it overly bothersome.

It's probably needless to say that names being parodied or used satirically are something else entirely. Ditto real historical figures, celebrities and the like that an author inserts into a story. There's no distraction involved there.

I don't know that it's necessary to look up all your character names in a search engine, or on Wikipedia. (Television executives, worrying about libel suits, used to hire researchers to do the equivalent. They probably can get the info a lot cheaper now.) But if a name comes to you suspiciously easily, I'd suggest that you might want to find out if there's a reason.

Eric

Partially guilty, but...

Zoe Taylor's picture

I am partially guilty of this, but I also try to keep it, as you said, obscure references. :-) A great example is in Becoming Robin Book 3, Katelyn Derrick was originally named Rose Derrick. I named her after a basketball player, and she was only supposed to be a very minor, mentioned-in-passing character at first.

Once I decided I wanted to make her more important to the story though, I changed her name to Katelyn (appropriately enough, meaning "Pure", and a very popular name for the time she was born)

So generally any prominent characters of mine that share a name with a famous person are purely accidental more than coincidental since I try to avoid it, mostly as a personal writing challenge/pet peeve/rule of thumb.

Just my .02 ^_^

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Character Names

Me, I try to give my characters names that can be feminized if they are the main character, or a macho name for the more masculine characters.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

Well, you can't really

Melanie Brown's picture

Well, you can't really copyright a name. There are plenty of people in Real Life who share a name with a celebrity - sometimes on purpose. And it's legitimate to saddle a character with a famous name so the character has to overcome this burden. Of the names you mentioned, I only recognized Jackson Browne, so the other references would have been lost to me.

I like to use famous names for inappropriate things like school names. And even though there are people still being named such names, I try to avoid "old" names like "Betty" or "June". I also try to avoid using names that have become popular character names on boards like this.

Using a famous name might be lazy writing, but it could also be fun.

Melanie

Can't copyright a city either

laika's picture


FROM GROUCHO MARX, REGARDING COMPLAINTS ABOUT HIS FILM A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA

Dear Warner Brothers:

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making a picture, I had no idea that the City of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers.

However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received a long, ominous legal document, warning us not to use the name "Casablanca".

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, the great-great grandfather of Harry and Jack, while looking for a short cut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock, which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common, named it Casablanca.

I just don't understand your attitude. Even if they plan on re-releasing the picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without their permission. What about Warner Brothers -- do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. When Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, we were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers and even before us, there had been other brothers -- the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazoff; Dan Brouthers, an outfielder with Detroit; and "Brother, can you spare a dime?" This was originally "Brothers, can you spare a dime" but this was spreading a dime pretty thin so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other brother and whittled it down to "Brother, can you spare a dime?"

The younger Warner Brother calls himself Jack. Does he claim that, too? It's not an original name -- it was used long before he was born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks -- there was Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk", and Jack, the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day. As for Harry, the older brother, he probably signs his checks, sure in the belief that he is the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. Offhand, I can think of two Harrys that preceded him. There was Lighthorse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of Ninety-third Street and Lexington Avenue. Appelbaum wasn't very well known -- I've almost forgotten what he looked like -- the last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner; but I'll never forget his mother, she made the best apple strudle in Yorkville.

We now come to the Burbank studio. This is what the Warner Brothers call their place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him -- he was a great man in a garden, he was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such a confused and nervous state, that they never were sure whether they were supposed to come in on the meat platter or the dessert dish.

This is just conjecture, of course, but, who knows -- perhaps Burbank survivors aren't too happy over the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures settled in their town, appropriated Burbank's name and uses it as a front for their films.

It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that from this town emerged "Casablanca" or even "Gold Diggers of 1931".

This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade but I don't mean it to. I love Warners -- some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing them an injustice and that they themselves know nothing at all about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that the heads of Warners' legal department know nothing about this dispute for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans "Dr. Gillespie". I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the scheme of some ferret-faced shyster serving an apprenticeship in their legal department. I know the type -- hot out of law school, hungry for success and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion, this bar sinister probably needled Warners' attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., in attempting to enjoin us.

Well, he won't get away with it! We'll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin and we'll remain friends till the last reel of "A Night in Casablanca" goes tumbling over the spool.
Sincerely, Groucho

Stop and Desist

RAMI

Ms Lakia:

STOP AND DESIST.

HUNGUDUNGER, HUNGUNDUNGER, HUNGUDUNGER, HUNGUDUNGER AND MCCORMACK
By, The second Hungudunger

RAMI

Desist and Stop

"We Warner Brothers, of Yakko, Wakko and Dot 'The Cute One', will have to come and visit you, RAMI. As soon as we get out of this water tower again."

I'm protected by Captain Spaulding

RAMI

I doubt that seriously. I am protected by Captain Spaulding, the famous African explorer. He carry's the biggest gun around here. So there.

RAMI

RAMI

Thank you

Finally somebody else at this website cites the Marx brothers. I thought I was the only one.

"I was gonna get a flat bottom but the girl at the boat house didn’t have one."- Groucho Marx in Horse Feathers

Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant

Names

I try to make my characters have 'age appropriate' names. For my characters that end up in high school (Maybe someeone can tell me why I keep writing school aged kids as my MC's...) I have an extensive list of names that I've obtained from seeing them at work. It helps that I work in the school systems, and as we get into the fall in some schools I will see *every* student... I've jotted notes down on names before... I've noticed that girls names come to me easier than guys names... No clue why...

Samantha

names

In the God Bless the Child series, I named my characters after people I know, generally.

Here is the break down

Jeremy (who turns into Jenny) Bergeron, is named after my brother Jimmy; if you remember he pronounced his name Je'my
Curtis, a wrestling teammate who infuriated me
Chase, named after my high school coach Chase (was his last name), Milan, a variation on the aunt who raised me last name Miliano
J.D. Lawson, A college friend
Skeeter Sweet, A college teammate
Jenny, my cousin who I grew up with (lot of doll playing with her)
Shawn- A childhood friend
Christine, my first crush (in first grade)
Don Tidmore, an intellectual i knew
etc.

Now Melissa was just a random name, as was Rachael. I chose Rachael however because the name matched the red hair of the character I guess

K.T. Leone

My fiction feels more real than reality

Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)

Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life

I usually try to pick names

KristineRead's picture

I usually try to pick names that are pleasing names. I do use a name generator at times in most cases.

I have occassionally named characters for other reasons though:

In Jason's Story, his two doctor's are Dr. Daniels and Dr. Adams. This was an in joke, as William Daniels played John Adams in a number of things, including 1776. And of course was a Doctor in St. Elsewhere. I doubt anyone caught it, but I thought it was funny.

The group leader in the sequel, is named Erica, which was an homage to Anastasia's Erica from Camp Kumoni and The Princess and the Plague, and lately The Princess and the Jock series. I did this with her permission, even though my Erica is not her Erica, because that series is one of my favorite stories on BCTS. (And still is! Hope that things loosen up for AA soon and we can start to see more of Eric/a)

In Lucy and the Ghost, the names come from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was clearly intentional.

I have a story I'm working on, where a nosy neighbor is named Gladyss, but she doesn't have a husband named Abner. That is a reference to Bewitched, which is actually called out by the lead characters.

Overall I agree with you in principal, Eric. Though sometimes it does happen by accident.

Hugs,

Kristy

There was also...

Mr. Daniels' OTHER TV role... The voice of Kit... :-) He read the lines cold once a week, not requiring any re-reads (or so he claimed at one time) and said he even enjoyed the work. (unless my memory is failing on this bit which, it could well be... Now, what was I talking about?)

He also played the mentor in

KristineRead's picture

He also played the mentor in Boy meets World, and was in The Graduate.

Maybe I should add a Feeny and Braddock as character names to round it out :)

He played Adams both in 1776 on the stage and in the movie, and in tv series The Adams Chronicles.

Hugs,

Kristy

Naming

erin's picture

I know a lot about the history and meaning of names and try to match the name to the character by meaning or association of some kind. This may not be obvious, in fact, I generally try to make it not obvious.

Sometimes the name of a character is actually a plot point, as in "Sam I Am".

The names in 30 Million Reasons were actually researched, one thing I checked was that I wasn't inadvertently using a name of someone who was well known. I usually remember to do that. Sometimes I will pick a name that is ALMOST the same as someone famous, on purpose. That's usually for minor characters as a kind of shorthand to subliminally send to the reader a message about how they should think of this character.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

I find it a trial to name characters

Angharad's picture

sometimes I cheat using things like Harry and William in my Gaby series - I think someone might have got there first, but then I use local surnames to hopefully make them sound more authentic. Sometimes I'll use surnames that give clues to my intentions for the character, sometimes I'll make up names on a whimsy - but not as much as Dickens, who enjoyed playing with his readers - I'd never do that now, would I?

Angharad

Angharad

Somewhere on the US Census

Brooke Erickson's picture

Somewhere on the US Census site are two files. One is all the lat names from the census the other is all the first names.

I have the ones from (I think) the 1990 census saved somewhere as text files. If all else fails, pulling random entries out of them will give a name.

And if you go far enough back (less than 100 years), you can get actual names along with the info from the census forms. That's more useful for historical fiction, but...

Finally, I seem to recall that there's an application on the census site that will tell you how common various first names were in various censuses. Might be one for last names as well, but I remember messing with the first names one.

I actually got pointed at that app by someone on a TG list. They suggested using it to avoid choosing a named that was too uncommon at the time you were born when you go for a name change.

Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks

uncommon names...

Sometimes extremely uncommon names are EXACTLY what I want to go for with a character... it tends to define people when they have a terribly uncommon name, whichever part of it.

I know the fact that my surname is Patridge has defined me in ways that it wouldn't have if it was Partridge instead.

Partridge is actually fairly common around this part of the US. Patridge is uncommon anywhere.

Where I live I think there's one other Patridge clan not related to us in the entire phonebook. There's a few Partridge clans in the area.

When I order anything out and they ask for a name, I always use "Patridge", resting assured that when I go to pick it up, my order will be the only one under the name. When I tell someone new my name for the first time, I almost always have to remind them in triplicate that I'm not related to a species of bird.

Abigail Drew.

You? Play with your

You? Play with your readers? Nah, that's Bonzi's fault.

Abigail Drew.

Names

I am not to worried about names that are 'almost the same' as some famous person. What does bother me is the selection of names that are similar... eg Jennifer, Janice, Jane, Judy, etc all in the same story. Also Alex, Alexandra, Alice, Andy, Andrew, etc.

Unless it is important to the story line, it would be better to use names that at least begin with different letters of the alphabet. It really does make a difference to us 'Old Folks'. Thanks

Zip

Naming Rites

The basic rule for writing is to lull your reader into a sense of suspended disbelief. Once you've gotten the reader interested and into the world you've created you don't want to do anything (unnecessarily) that will jar them.

Eric is a discerning reader who provides fantastic advice. He cares about our stories almost as much as we, the authors, do.

He once provided a comment on a baseball story of mine that went into such minute detail that I swore only Abner Doubleday could have cared as much as he did.

There is no bigger compliment to a writer than a reader who cares.

Thank you, Eric. When I write I try to visualize what the reader will see, hear, and feel. Knowing there are readers like Eric makes that task quite a bit easier.

I often will use the social security site for most popular names to help me give my characters added authenticity.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/

If the character was born in 1980 I want to make sure her name is one that was popular at that time.

I've named characters by reversing the spelling of a main chracter trait. One of my characters is called Mrs. Recudes. The story is all about how a teenage boy thinks (hopes) she's a Mrs. Robinson.

Why do I do these things? To have fun. It is my hope that if I'm having fun it will follow that the reader will have fun.

Sometimes it works . . . and that is magic.

The other day a few discussions centered on the differences between BC and FM. I think BC writers are mostly writing what they hope is a good story. It's the effort that counts, not whether or not the story is all that good. It appears the main concern of many FM authors is to produce one-hand fiction. These are sweeping generalizations and subject to all kinds of exceptions.

By the way -- I absolutely hate it when a character goes from Carl to Carla, Mike to Michelle, Peter to Petra, etc. Even though I've done it I wish I hadn't -- just like every other cliche I've used.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

I would never name my

I would never name my characters after somebody that really exists, especially celebrities. 'Cause when I myself read stories, I get into them visualizing the characters and their actions. If suddenly a real celebrities name would pop up in a story, it would ruin the whole 'illusion', the feeling of the story for me. - So I try to choose names for my chars which hopefully sound real and fitting to them.

------------
"Die Gedanken sind frei / Sie fliegen vorbei
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen / kein Jäger sie schiessen
Mit Pulver und Blei / Die Gedanken sind frei"

------------
"Die Gedanken sind frei / Sie fliegen vorbei
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen / Kein Jäger sie schießen
Mit Kugeln und Blei / Die Gedanken sind frei"

Names

I do have occasional fun with mine. Annie Price is an obvious one, but it was Robi Hood, IIRC, who spotted the reference to a Woodruff 'key' in my first story here. Well, the Woodruffs were the key to my character's new life, and her neighbours, the Woods (a type of bicycle tyre valve) took a lot of pressure off her. Sometimes I have played a game between two stories, as in where two male characters are both called 'Hall', which is one reason why I will not be tying the 'Viewpoints' stories into my current little universe.

Eric I'm dreadfully sorry

persephone's picture

Eric

I'm dreadfully sorry but what is a 'Hall of Famer'?

My initial thought was that it was an agricultural barn with an R missing but obviously I'm missing something important.

I'm afraid we are in danger of falling into the Churchillian trap, "Two people separated by a common language."

Persephone

Persephone

Non sum qualis eram

Baseball

RAMI

A Hall of Famer, is a great, fantastic, Professional Baseball Player. Once a year, players retired I beleive at least 5 years, are voted into the Hall of Fame, which is located in Cooperstown, NY. (Named after James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans). The voters include a group of baseball reporters.

There are all sorts of rules as to whom can be elected, for how long, etc. But I'll let Eric get to the nitty gritty.

Some players in the Hall.

Babe Ruth,
Lou Gehrig
Mickey Mantle
Yogi Berra
Whitey Ford
and many others. I just showed who I root for and my age. The Yankees were great in the 1950's and 60.

RAMI

RAMI

Bert Blyleven

Bert Blyleven be inducted on into the Hall of Fame on July 24th. That will bring the total number of players honored to 205.

Most sports in the United States have a Hall of Fame.

The baseball Hall of Fame sucks. I grew up idolizing Roger Maris, who broke Ruth's record. First he had to put up with Nasty NY fans who hated him for breaking the record when they wanted Mantle to do it. . .if anyone. Then he had to stomach the asterisk. Thank goodness he died before experiencing the baseball writers' long-term snub.

The Hall of Fame is located in Cooperstown because that's where Abner Doubleday supposedly invented baseball, which has been refuted as a myth. It's a glorified tourist trap that arbitrarily honors people for being friends with sportswriters.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Don't feel too bad

Former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun forgot Mel Ott when writing the opinion for Flood v Kuhn.

My father knew Vince Dimaggio(Not a Hall of Famer, but a very fine player himself) and I believe he knew Joe a little bit. I got a story about my family when I was young involving Joe Dimaggio. It isn't a good one.

Writing is painful, it's lonely and you suffer and there's no immediate feedback.- Actor, writer, playwright Robert Shaw

Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant

Other Halls of Fame

Jackson Browne is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, located in Cleveland, Ohio. James Worthy is in basketball's Hall, in Springfield, Massachusetts, honored for his efforts in both college and professional basketball.

Most endeavors in the U.S. have "halls of fame", honoring individuals in that particular field. The concept's also used by states, cities, schools, etc. (I'm even in an obscure one for baseball board gamers.)

Serious HOFs have plaques on a museum wall, often detailing the honorees' accomplishments. The relevant museums are often attractions in themselves, described as "shrines" in a (mostly) non-religious sense. Minor HOFs are usually virtual, awarded by someone or some organization considered authoritative in its field, at least by those doing the awarding. Their credibility varies widely.

Comparatively few HOFs, nearly all of them involving national or international sports, have national credibility and recognition, to the extent that it's national news when someone's chosen. I'd guess that the ones for baseball and rock music probably have the most. Motion pictures have a Hollywood Walk of Fame, with gold stars imbedded in sidewalk pavement.

The concept's probably more popular here than in the U.K. because we don't have a royal Honours List, for obvious reasons.

My point, though, isn't quite that their Hall of Fame status makes them national figures; it's that their celebrity and popular recognition were such that they were national figures already, with their Hall status effective proof of that.

I don't expect authors from the U.K. or elsewhere to be conversant on American stars, especially in fields that don't carry over internationally. But I think they'd be inclined to change it if it were pointed out to them that many of their readers would recognize the name in another context. By the same token, if a character of mine turned out to share a name with, say, the Australian prime minister or a legendary cricket or rugby player, I'd change it if someone let me know. (The authors of the two stories that inspired my comment are, as far as I know, U.S. residents.)

Eric

(Every once in a while a chosen name creates a presumably unwanted comic effect. A non-U.S. writer at Storysite started her story with the name Jose Canseco, identifying him as a janitor in an office building. The "real" Canseco had been a star baseball player of the 1980s and 90s, notorious for his use of steroids and for other off-the-field activities.)

Jose, Can You See

Canseco is also famous for his lousy (indifferent) fielding and allowing a pop-fly to bounce off his head.

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Naming characters

I suppose any name could be memorable to any reader for a variety of reasons. I couldn't name many baseball players except perhaps the one who married Marilyn Monroe but I'm sure people uninterested in motor cycle trials riders might use (say) Sammy Miller or Gordon Jackson, two of my heroes from the 60s and 70s. I'm afraid it's unavoidable. After all, James Worthy must be a fairly common name - I worked with a John Worthy at one time. Those names are very obscure to most people.

I use the bookshelves over my desk when I've written fiction. I use the authors of obscure books like 'The Art of Electronics', 'Racing Dinghy Sails', 'Model Aircraft Aerodynamics' or 'National Certificate Mathematics' because few people will have heard of Horowitz, Hill, Mahon or Abbot etc :) I wonder if Eric gets confused by composite names? You could have Stirling Hawthorn or Mike Moss, couldn't you? LOL

Dickens was very good at picking names - how could Uriah Heep be anything but slimy and unpleasant? Or Wackford Squeers a nasty schoolmaster.

Many of us here use noms-de-plume, including me. The source of mine is pretty obvious - I went to school in Nottingham.

Robi

i get my villians from my past

rebecca.a's picture

i don't know about dickens. maybe wackford squeers didn't seem that strange when nicholas nickleby was first published, but i found it a very distracting name when i read it.

i get my villains from my past. i knew a czech kid named josef blaha when i was at school in the uk, and he was a mean, evil sonofabitch, with a creepy crawly psyche. hence the psychiatrist in 'wild horses'.

unsurprisingly, i get my heroes and heroines from men and women i've admired.

and i too would have found jackson browne a bit out there.

becky


not as think as i smart i am

Composite Names

I have no problem at all with composite names. In fact, it seems to me that they're a good way of providing an almost subliminal impression of a character -- especially a secondary character -- without distractingly impinging on a famous name. (I think Angela/Jill said something similar above.)

The author who named his protagonist Jackson Browne told me in a PM that it was a composite of two African-American sports stars: baseball great Reggie Jackson and 1950s football star Jim Brown. IMO it would have been an excellent choice if a geeky white singer-songwriter hadn't gotten to it first.

My own composite character name (in a story I referenced here once before, (mostly) outlined but not written) was for the frequently-invoked but never-seen biological father of my teenaged main character. The man was a fill-in for a 60s surf-music group who would later make it on his own as a pop and country star. I named him Bryan Glenn, thinking of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Glen Campbell, who did in fact fill in for Wilson on some road trips a couple of years before hitting the big time on his own. I didn't think that prospective readers would necessarily catch the reference, but it seemed to me to carry the right vibe.

Eric

I'd probably...

I'd have probably found Jackson Browne a tad disconcerting, myself.

I generally TRY to make the name "fit" the character (in my mind anyway - not necessarily anyone else's I know). Sometimes, I intentionally pick a name that does NOT fit... (Many different reasons - but the reason generally shows up in the story.)

One story accidentally used some events from real life (and a lot more made up)... In one case, I even used the actual first name of one of the participants in the event - by accident. I didn't even notice it at the time... it was only a while later, after it was posted and commented on, that I realized I'd done this (I've been VERY careful ever since). Of course, the last name was different... And, it's the kind of event that only the two of us were likely to know... And only a hand full of other people would have a chance of recognizing who the person was from the story context (& none of them are likely reading here!!!).

More recently, I ended up using two names in a story that might have been a mistake. In one case, my protagonist had the same first name of someone else (Dan & Dr. Dan in Hidden Gifts) who already existed... I ended up keeping it, and have taken shameless advantage of the fact ever since. The other "Kate (Katherine) Mayhew"... That's the name of a character in a David Weber story. Physically there's no resemblance in the characters, but there is some overlap in personality. I've read the stories (& enjoyed them)... But the name came from somewhere else completely! Kate was from Katherine Hepburn (personality was NOT!) and Mayhew was a typo for Mahan (Alfred Thayer Mahan)... (Again nothing to do with the character...)

Names are important. I would tend to agree that use of the name of someone well known - is likely to be disconcerting... Unless the reference turns out to be USED in the story. For example, If you had someone named "James Tiberius Kirk" you might well have people asking him about his pointy ear'd friend... That said, the name still needs to help drive the story forward. The use of some name as a "throw a way" that is someone famous IS likely to be distracting and should be avoided!

Thank you for bringing this issue to the forefront again. It IS worth thinking about (& I found it worthwhile reading MANY of the comments as well - okay most of them...) :-)

Thanks,
Anne

The crew of the Seaview

A story of mine once contained many names from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Other characters in the story were named after baseball players(Not big name players, Ted Bowsfield, Milt Wilcox, Ron Taylor, Denny Lemaster, but recognizable to fans of 60's to 80's era baseball) and one former correspondence chess(CC) opponent of mine.

I've named a ton of characters after CC and Over the Board Chess(OTB) players. Four or five years ago I got an email from one of the OTB players who was mentioned in my Altered Fates Chess Prodigy story but he didn't recognize himself because I slightly skewered his first name. Other characters have been named after former classmates of mine, people I knew while serving in the Navy, etc etc.

If you slightly change a name, is anyone fooled. Just recently a rerun episode of the Nanny featured a character named Dakota Williams. He was a southerner. How many people instantly thought of Tennessee Williams?

Writing is painful, it's lonely and you suffer and there's no immediate feedback.- Actor, writer, playwright Robert Shaw

Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant

I've done that sort of thing

Brooke Erickson's picture

I've done that sort of thing on purpose a time or two.

The one that comes to mind is my Whateley fanfic on Crystal Hall, Finders Keepers. I've got a character named Paul Drake who is a private detective working for an attorney. He and the lawyer are aware of his fictional namesake, but the main character in the story isn't.

Whether Mr Drake became a detective because of or in spite of his fictional counterpart hasn't come up yet.

Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks

my names...

Are all over the place, depending on all kinds of things. However, I do have one rule, and that's essentially the same point you're trying to make: Never use a famous persons or characters (from another story/game/whatever) verbatim. If I do borrow a famous name, I tend to bastardize it so much that only the readers who are LOOKING to be distracted will be. Like I had a Yulanaia in a fantasy elsewhere, which came from Yunalesca, from Final Fantasy X.

Here's how I came up with my current story's MC's name: Andrew (Drew), after my own first and nickname, Lee Pattendale because I wanted his initials to be my own, but didn't want him to be me. My middle is Lehi, so Lee, essentially I just take off the "high". I chose Pattendale for the last name because I wanted it to be rare, but still sound Midwestern, so I used the census site, and found that name with like less than 1% of Ohio residents having it, the same as Patridge, and it was a P name. Fit my criteria perfectly. The reason I wanted him to have my initials may or may not become apparent in the course of the story, but trust me, the ALP initials were important to his characterization.

Jack was a masculinization of the name of the female manager at the apartment complex I work at.

Janet I named because I wanted Jack to be married to someone with a J name, for humor value that will hopefully wind up coming into play at some point later in the story. Some readers may already "get" it without me needing to make it more blatant, but I think it'll be fun to play it for full effect if the characters let me.

I chose the surname Thompson for them for the opposite reason I chose Pattendale for Drew, this time I WANTED a common name. Thompson's are all over the place around here.

Abigail Drew.

names

Well... I did a gender bender with names in my family for a recent story.
Or I used a fantasy name generator :D

What's in a name?

No matter the circumstance, I always defer to Google for names. If I come up with a name, I search it on Google to find if there are any real people with that name. If it so happens that there's a famous person with the same name that I've devised for a character, I change the character's name. It's happened once or twice, but I take pride in my creativity.

ChangeDay: Advent: Micheal MacAllister -- Closest match is a Project Director at a software company in Germany (LinkedIn). Mekayla MacAllister -- ZERO matches.

Dream Come True: Melissa Sterling -- Closest match is a professional escort out of Colorado Springs, CO (personal website). I still don't know how to take that. *gglz*

Marked Target: Lawrence McKinley -- Closest match is some hippy guy on Facebook who goes by "Mark". (Unless you include "Laurence McKinley Gould", a rather well-known geologist and polar explorer.) Of course, the other name is known in the Marvel canon with a slight alteration ("Lauren" instead of "Laura", to match with the times). Though, closest match is a promising young photographer from Illinois.

Protean Dilemma: Emergence: Brandon Lange -- First hit was a guy out of Canada. After that, some guy with an IMDB profile, but no picture. I haven't actually conceptualized a female name, yet. However, I can attest to searching several possibilities on Google.

When conceptualizing most names, the SSA site is my best friend. It gives a really good idea of a certain name's prevalence during a given time period. I highly recommend visiting the site for any authors writing teenage characters. A certain understanding of names and how they're used in culture is advised. For example: Nobody uses "Doris" for a female name, any more. Likewise, guys named "William" are rarely called "Bill", anymore. The going pseudonym, these days, is "Will".

If I see one more name or nickname from the 1960's and 1970's, I'm going to scream! >_<

If I see one more name or nickname from the 1960's and 1970's...

Except sometimes it still happens to people in "modern" times. Though if your character has an outdated name or nickname, it definitely had better be a major part of their characterization and they'd better reference the fact that it's an awful outdated name.

Likewise with really really weird names that parents make up on-the-spot that've never been seen before... It happens, but it better be a big part of characterization.

Abigail Drew.

Names...

You'd be surprised at some of the names out there... I work for a company that does school photography and I see so many names that I don't know how to pronounce it's not funny. Let alone try to spell some of the names... A lot of the time, I feel sorry for the kids who have to constantly spell their names because you couldn't guess it if you tried...

Samantha

Actually...

I'm quite aware how terribly odd some of the names out there can be. But then I look at census data as a writing resource...

I'll also be guilty of introducing a couple new "strange names" to the market if I ever become a parent. I want to name a boy Viniece, and a girl, Yulanaia.

Abigail Drew.

Character Names

Personally, I go for wacky 'absurd' names.

Harold A. Buttman (Harry Buttman)
Simelda Buttman
Bertha Buttman
Dr. Callie Mannatter
Katie Goodbody
Horatia Harlie Hoard
William Erwin Whacker AKA: Will E. Whacker
Marylou Mountains
Tanya Tatas
Terry Tush
Jodie Gasm
Doctor Alta Mi Newman
Dr. Desiree Traci-Anne Tiedemann AKA: Dr. Desiree TA Tiedemann
Barbie Bunns
Doctor Jucila Heinonen (Juicy Heinie)
Kati Klara Comely

Just to name a few...

Are there real people with these names?
I hope not.

Wholeman
Yes, the weird author with the boob fetish.

Yes, the weird author with the boob fetish.