Treasure Tuesday: Left to Write - The Name Game

The day of reading, writing, and books.

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Years ago when I was first on the internet, I joined a round robin writing group. The rules were simple. 1. You picked up where someone left off. No jumping around. You could create new characters and write from their viewpoint if you wanted. But you had to keep the story moving forward.

That was it. But of course when you're working with creatives, they tend to break rules. Pretty soon people decided that they didn't like where it left off, so instead of letting someone else pick up the story, they decided to just pick a different spot in the story. Often sometime in the future. It screwed up the story as people tried to pick things up where they left off and before long everyone was doing it. Pretty soon it was a massive state of confusion and the whole thing fell apart. But something else was glaringly obvious to me. People added a lot of characters, which is fine. My main character, one of the first created, had a name that began with A. Then someone else added another character with an A name. Turns out, A is a very popular initial and soon there were A characters all over the place. It was hard to keep track of who was who. A couple of years ago I picked up a book where the main character's twin granddaughters were named Audrey and Amy. Further, her daughter-in-law was named Maggie, and her best friend was named Martha. Sigh. If you can avoid it, don't name your same sex characters names with the same initial. Especially identical twins.

And avoid sound alike names. Like Charlene, Darlene, and Marlene. I know it's cute to name triplets that, or the same family members, and people get cutesy in real life, but it sure is hard for your reader to keep track of the characters. Certainly you could do it if Charlene is your character and she just mentions her sisters, Darlene and Marlene, but avoid having those sisters get together. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with character names. In Turtle Soup Studios my three sisters are named Holly, Ivy, and Fern. And they joke about it, especially Holly and Ivy. And since Holly is the protagonist, and she's telling the story in first person, you won't get her mixed up with Ivy. And it's very clear who Fern is. Further, it's revealed in one of the books, that their cousin Skye has a brother Blaze, and sisters Eartha and Ocean whom we haven't met yet. I have a children's book in my computer where the main character is Ruby Stone. Her brother is Roland. Yes, I know that those are two R names, but I think it's easy to keep track of Ruby and Roland Stone. Now there are times when it can become unavoidable. In my Orchards of Marina Colleen series I established Gary, the sixty-something hippy. Gary shows up a lot through each of the books although he isn't the central character and likely will never be (I really don't want to get into his head). In the third book a secondary character came into the picture. Another sixty something man named Gus. Gus and Gary are similar in looks, but Gary is a hippy and Gus isn't, and if you read the books in order, there really shouldn't be confusion between grumpy Gus and crazy Gary. When you write a series book that takes place in a mall, and each book focuses on a different main character, you end up with way more than twenty-six characters. People with the same initials are bound to happen. Don't worry if you read the book, you don't have to keep track of all those characters. They don't all show up in every book. The era you write in has a lot to do with names. It's unlikely that you're going to come across Brittany, Madison, and Piper in a 1600's witch trial. However those names would be fine for modern witches. Better names for them in Salem would be Elizabeth, Anne, and Martha. If you were to write about 1930's witches, you might pick names like Harriet, Beverly and Dolores. Or you could choose names based on the place and heritage. Different cultures have different names and if you are writing about immigrants, they might choose an English name while still retaining their cultural name. I had a Chinese friend whose parents were immigrants, so he had a Chinese name, but he also had an English name that he actually used. You need to be careful with this. Some Welsh and Irish names are lovely, but hard to read. Don't give your character a name that your reader can't pronounce by looking at it. An essential book for your writing collection is a baby naming book. Sure, if people see it on your book shelf they might ask if you're expecting, but you can assure them that you are always giving birth to a story. Even the Harry Potter books had this problem until the movies came along. Hermione is a very English name that isn't uncommon in England, but in North America it isn't heard much and kids had no idea how to pronounce it. Now of course everyone knows it, but let's face it, it's unlikely you or I will ever have a movie made based on our work.

Generally a baby naming book divides the names between male and female, and then will show the main name and the variations, along with what country the name comes from, and its meaning. You could also check on the internet for popular names according to year and/or country. That way you can get an idea of what to name your characters.

Now I'm not saying that you can't name a modern day girl, Harriet or Dolores. They may be old fashioned names, but those names make a come back and people are often named after relatives. And some names, like Elizabeth, are timeless. But if you have a character with a name that isn't common now, or ever, make sure that her friends have names that are more current. The same if you're giving your character an unusual name. Please don't give everyone a weird name too. So it's unlikely that in the 2020's you're going to find Harriet, Beverly and Dolores as sixteen year old friends, but you might find Harriet, Brittany, and Janeesa as friends. And they'll all hate their names for various reasons. The exception is if you are creating a new world. You can create all kinds of names then and it will sound more authentic than if you named everyone Tom, Mary, and Susan. Please don't give your other worldly characters common earth names. Be creative. Even Tolkein, who wrote about middle-earth in an unknown time, used names like Frodo, Bilbo, Aragon, and Gandolph, although admittedly he did throw in a Tom and a Sam but those are names that would likely pop up anyway since they're so simple. He did not use the name Jennifer. But you can use Jennifer for pretty much any decade in the past 150 years because it's so popular. And biblical names never seem to go out of style. Even the ones that weren't heard much when I was a kid in the 60's and 70's have made a comeback, like Noah and Ezekiel. Even the lesser known and more unusual biblical names can be used although you might want to avoid Cain and Lucifer - unless you are using those names for a specific purpose. Think about who the parents are of your characters and what they would have named their kids, because few of us choose our own names. Names are all about the parents, even when we never meet them. I think the main rule I would give you after giving you all this thinking, is that most often the names will just come to you. Don't overthink it. You might have to change it later, especially if you've discovered that your names are all too similar, but there's no sense in fighting with a character over his/her name. Happy writing.