When an idea for a book first comes to me, I generally have a fairly good idea of who my characters are and what their conflicts and challenges are going to be. But I don’t always know their names. Occasionally, they arrive with a name that instantly fits them. More often I have to give the matter serious thought. I may even write a few chapters using different names before I settle on permanent ones. Naming characters can be a complicated process, and involve research, time and intuition. But until I find the right name for my characters, the story struggles to progress past the first few chapters. The right name makes my characters come to life.
Because I write historical fiction, one of the first steps in choosing a name for a character is finding out what names are appropriate to the time and place they live in. I have a book on historical names and their meaning and also collect lists of popular names in different cultures and time periods. I also use genealogical websites that trace European bloodlines back through the centuries, which provide a good source for historically accurate names.
You also have to be aware of the political and sociological nuances of names. In the early Middle Ages, commoners were usually Saxon, while most of the nobility was of Norman French heritage. You might give a commoner a Norman French name (a way to pursue upper mobility), but a lord or even a knight probably wouldn’t have a Saxon name. If you’re writing in the modern era, you should realize that names go out of fashion pretty quickly, so a name that is considered cool now may seem dated and uncool in a few years. Although if you’re writing popular fiction for a younger audience, you may not be worried about that.
Typically, I like to choose a name for one or both of my main characters that is a somewhat unusual. But that can be challenge as in many European cultures they used the same names over and over for centuries. But the more unique names can sound strange to modern ears: Fulk, Eudo and Hamo might be too different use for your hero. It’s always a balance of trying to find a name that stands out, but that is not so strange-sounding as to put readers off.
For whatever reason, names evoke an emotional response. Maybe a name reminds us of someone we liked. Or, someone we didn’t like. Or, it sounds like a word that has positive or negative connotations to us for some reason. There are books that list not only what certain names mean, but also what personality traits people surveyed ascribe to a person having that name. Names are ultimately very personal. There are names I dislike that other people find very appealing, and vice versa. Going in, you have to know there’s no way you’re going to please all your readers.
There are also practical factors in picking a name. You don’t want to choose names for your main characters that sound too much alike, or, that begin with the same letter. That just leads to reader confusion. And if you use names that are too hard to pronounce, it can frustrate those readers who like to sound out names in their head. That can be a challenge when setting a book in a place like medieval Wales, Scotland or Ireland, where a lot of the historically common names are literal tongue-twisters for English speakers.
The more characters you have in your book, the more names you have to come up with, which means the more names you must keep track of as you write. I’ve learned to write down my character names as I introduce them or I’ll forget what I called them when they show up later in a story. And readers remember characters best if you give a short physical description of them when you introduce them and their name. In a story with a complicated plot, this can mean coming up with several dozen names and descriptions, and then keeping track of them all.
Then there are the names of the non-human characters. In eras where horses were the main form of transportation, people often referred to their favorite mount by name. And if you feature dogs or cats as companion animals for your characters, you have to call them something as well. I try to make certain that even the names of horses, dogs and cats in my books are appropriate to the time period. People now often name their pets based on physical characteristics or behavior, but that was less common in the past. Back then, people tended to give animals more formal, sophisticated names. At the same time, they seldom used “people” names for animals. To meet this challenge, I’ve had to do research on names used for horses and dogs in past eras.
Clearly, you can spend a lot of time coming up with names for everyone and everything in your books. It’s an activity that is fun to pursue but also a real time suck. Names are crucial to making your characters seem like real people, and carefully chosen names give your story authenticity. But you can’t let the naming process overwhelm you. Otherwise you’ll never get your book written.
I wonder if other authors have tips for selecting characters names, or problems they’ve encountered in the process. Any thoughts?
I’m wondering if other authors have tips for selecting characters names, or problems they’ve encountered in the process. Any thoughts?
These are GREAT tips! Thank you!