Thwackum, Squeers and Griffiths
Back in the day, a top author – such as Henry Fielding, who died in 1754 – would enjoy giving some of his characters names like Mr Thwackum (a savage clergyman and schoolmaster) and Squire Allworthy (a man as virtuous as his name suggests.)
Charles Dickens, a century or more later, wasn’t quite as direct, but you can still hear the character suggestion come through pretty clearly in names like Ebenezer Scrooge (a miser), Uriah Heep (an unctuous sycophant), Tiny Tim (the one to generate the tears), Thomas Gradgrind (a fact-obsessed school superintendent), Wackford Squeers (a cruel headmaster), Estella (beautiful, but distant – like a star), and so on.
These days, we generally don’t do that. The problem with those names is that they hang a huge placard round the neck of the character. “Hey, I’m Allworthy. You don’t even have to think about who I am – you don’t have to scrutinise the way I talk and act and make choices – because look at this great big placard. I’m ALL-WORTHY, right? Look how great I am.”
In effect, the name compresses the space in which the character can operate – and a book without characters isn’t going to be worth all that much.
Dickens’s names aren’t quite as blatant as Henry Fielding, but the sheer improbability of a ‘Wackford Squeers’ announce the author’s intention almost as directly. The placard is smaller, but it’s still there.
The modern approach therefore tends to be sadly dull, You might have a Gradgrind-y type character, let’s say, but you’d call him or her something like Mark Pettigrew or Samantha Anderson. Your ideal name is just interesting enough to remember, but just boring enough that it’s not calling attention to itself (Jabberwocky Jones or Bianca Blanco.)
Likewise, you’ll think not just of your star players, but your team sheet as a whole. You might love the name Rhodri for a friend of your protagonist, but if you already have a Rhys, a Rob, a Rhian and a Rhydian, your reader is going to get seriously confused.
This advice so far has all been very sensible, but, but, but …
Isn’t there a halfway house, perhaps? Something that could add flavour without simply depriving the character of space in which to operate?
And the answer, surely, is yes. The trick is to add a bayleaf or two, not the whole damn kitchen cupboard. (I learned this trick from my colleague, Sarah Juckes, by the way, then realised I’d already been doing something similar, but unconsciously.)
The idea is that you choose a character’s name that refers, even in the most oblique way, to some deep-lying essence of the person. So, in Sarah’s Outside, her characters are trapped in a single, horrible room. The name Willow suggested something of the outdoors – the yearning for it, as well perhaps as the slender-but-tough whippiness of a willow stick. It’s a lovely way to encapsulate a feeling – but at the same time, the name is common enough that it doesn’t break the basic Mark Pettigrew / Samantha Anderson naming convention.
What’s more the name does make a difference. You can almost feel the energy the book gets as a result. If you doubt me, just try giving Willow the name Samantha Anderson. You’d never choose to make that switch, would you?
I used to think I don’t play a lot of those games in my Welsh fiction, or at least that I did so only very sparingly. In the first book, I allowed my main character, Fiona “Fi” Griffiths, to meditate on her name:
Fi. That’s ‘if’ backwards.
Griffiths. Nice ordinary name, but two more ‘if’s lurking at the heart of it. My name, literally, is as iffy as you can get. The only solid sound, the only one you can actually hang on to, is that opening G, and it’s not to be trusted.
Elsewhere, I don’t muck around much. My other series characters are really named just to be plausibly Welsh (in most cases) and of the right approximate generation.
But when I explore more closely, I do often end up with names that carry a scent.
In my current (much-delayed) WIP, the doctor in charge of a secure psychiatric hospital is called Etta Gulleford. That is a striking name, of course. It commands attention, just as the woman in question is also striking and commanding. Is the name a bit disconcerting, perhaps? Hard to place? Probably, and if so, that fits with her character too.
The inmate in that hospital that Fiona is most interested in also has a non-standard name, Jared Coad. Again, that’s not quite so unusual it challenges the boundaries of realism. And I mostly chose it because it was plausible and yet memorable. A two-syllable name to remember.
But, thinking more about it, I think there’s more going on there too. Jared is an Old Testament biblical name. The character is a damaged warrior, but with depths of virtue. A dangerous prophet? An ancient Judaic king? Those echoes do work for the character on the page – magnificent, avenging, doomed. The splash of antiquity somehow adds a useful dimension to an otherwise very twenty-first century character.
I’ll quite often change characters names as I write a draft, twisting this way and that way until I have something that feels right. That feeling comes by touch and feel: I’m not at all programmatic about it. And sometimes, to be honest, the names never quite feel right. They nag at me long after publication.
(Which brings me to a further tip, actually. Unless you are really sure of your choice of name, only use names where you can use the Find and Replace tool easily. That means avoiding a name like Jo, because it forms a part of too many ordinary words (jogging, banjo, and the like. If you use a name like Joely, you get the same kind of flavour but the Find and Replace tool will still work for you.)
I’d really love to know how you name your characters and, in particular, how you manage to add a hint of character or depth into a name that still seems like a plausible choice for the character concerned. And no, fantasy authors, you don’t get the day off. I want to know how you pick names too. Voldemort isn’t a name you’d give to a good guy, is it? I guess the “mort” part of that name is bringing hints of death, but I probably wouldn’t lend my wallet to someone whose name began “Volde” either. So, yep, SF and fantasy authors too: I want to know how you come up with names.
Don’t email to tell me. Share your thoughts in the comments below. Let’s have a heated debate …
It took me sometime to find the right names for my characters. I started my novel with a “working place-name” for my MC, but it didn’t really work because I needed to know the character’s name to be able to picture her and write her properly. The lack of name was hindering me. Eventually I found it by chance in a newspaper article (Evening Standard) still have that page! Just the name I wanted: feminine, unusual, memorable, culture-appropriate, full of personality, perfectly balanced in number of syllables and sound.
I had already found the surname of my secondary character while watching TV with notepad and pen at hand. My character is a heavy weight businessman and I wanted the surname to imply distinction and authority. His first name was easy: related to my family ancestry. I went for it as an homage to my clan . Then I googled up name + surname combination to see if there were any potential real life people with that same name and was pleased there aren’t that many and not in Europe anyway.
Two other characters are based on people I once knew, so I changed their names but kept some similarities to originals. Another name also comes from someone I know (though the character is not based on her) and chosen because of it’s originality and beauty.
I’m stll looking for a perfect name for a secondary character: a young woman from Hong Kong who lives in London and works in advertising… Any ideas?
Hi,
I worked in Hong Kong for a few years in the mid 90’s and the local Chinese girls in the office used several names including one English one. It was curious to me that they selected English names that were almost from another time.
Typical examples were Fanny, Edith, Daisy, Rose. In fact flower names were generally popular as well as old names that were no longer in use in England.
Not sure if modern HK girls follow the same path.
Hope it helps.
S
Thanks Stephen. I’m thinking of a more traditional name to give the character an immediate asian identity. I’ve choosen the name Lin Hu for now but not totally happy with it, would like something more original. Thanks anyway.
I have a good friend whose family name is Hau. She is a BBC (british born chinese) from Windsor but her family is from the New Territories near the HK border with mainland china. She speaks fluent cantonese with family but thankfully english with me.
S
I often research things via Google. So if I want to know (say) what boy’s names were common with Welsman of the 1950’s, I’ll just look at rugby teams of the right vintage. LIkewise, for that HK name, I’d go to the South China Morning Post, or some source like that. Flip through things until I found one that worked for me. Personally, I’d choose the English + Chinese option. My woman would be called something like Lily Lau.
I love playing around with names for my characters. My pre-published novel (thanks Lisa Montanaro for the better word), there is a solicitor by the name of Grimstead (he has the look of Nosferatu about him). Some of my Cornish ancestors make an appearance too; seems only fair as they are the inspiration for my novels.
I also make use of the names – or parts thereof- of people I’ve known in the past. One person who caused me some upset in my working life is in my current WIP. I’ve given him the middle names Benedict (as in Arnold) and Uriah (as in Heep) and, just for good measure, he dances like a walrus. Oh, sweet revenge. As Baz says, muwahaha!
Funny! That’s a classic writer revenge …
In my last novel, a time travel adventure, the protagonist’s name sounds quite mundane: Connie Rees. She was originally a boy (Connor Rees) until one of my test readers suggested the whole book worked better if my protagonist was female. She was absolutely right, so Connor Rees became Connie Rees, and I’m sure it doesn’t take anyone too long to work out the time-travelling homage that the name pays. 🙂 One of the more interesting characters in that book is the protagonist’s mother, Imara. That name took a while to alight upon, it needed to be unusual but sound usual and indicate a sense of power. Although I found a number of backgrounds for the name, the Swahili origin, meaning ‘firm’ or ‘resolute’ was perfect. And if anyone is thinking that an Imara would be unlikely to name her daughter Connie, then I’ll just say that comes from her father’s side.
My current WIP – a world slip (so some more concrete SFF for you there, Harry) – has dual protagonists, who are unusually bound together. They are Yana and Sophia. I wanted the end of their names to mirror, so kept an ‘a’ sound on them and then wanted to evoke ideas of their respective lives. Sophia lives in luxury, but her skill is often underestimated. A name that sounds queenly, but really means ‘wisdom’ seems right. It embodies her well. Yana, to be honest was just the name the character presented with. I’ve since found various meanings including ‘God is gracious/He answers’ from Hebrew, and also a native American meaning of ‘Bear’. Again, these actually fit with my Yana perfectly, so it seems in the sense of naming, she has appeared like Venus, fully-formed. Though not in a seashell…
Does anyone else look for name meanings before naming their characters? Cadence, balance between fore and surname, and atypical shortenings all play a part for me, but if the ‘real-world’ meaning is wrong, I tend not to use it even if it sounds right. Is that just me or do others go down the rabbit hole of what a name means when deciding if it is right for their characters?
Put it this way: there are 60+ replies to this post and that’s not to mention all the emails I’ve had. So yes, at a guess, I’d say plenty of people are as careful as you!
Being in that fantasy-writing category, there are two parts to my approach.
In one respect, I need to name a huge cast of characters. IN many cases, I will have names of people who never make it onto the page, who are not even mentioned. But, as with myu WIP, I am building out some two centuries of nobility and title-holders (and a timeline of all the intrigue and backstabbing involved). For that, I can’t simply come up with a small bunch of names. I need more. And, for most of them, who gets which name really doesn’t matter.
So, step one is a tool I have built, into which i poured some two thousand male and two thousand female names from the real world. I then thinned that down, removing effective duplicates (Toni/Tony, etc), leaving me with about 1200 of each.
But my setting includes multiple effective locales, places with their own linguistic characteristics. So, I parse that list, mostly finding groups of names with similar endings), and translate each of the names consistently to fit the styling of each locale.
Yes, for this particular project, that gives me a pool of some 6000 names per gender, with consistency to how they sound. One locale, for example, has a very rough feel, pseudo-Germanic with adder Grrr; no female names end with the letter “a.” Another has a French feel, a higher-pitched sing-song lilt to the names; a lot of female names end in “ille” (pron. “iee”).
The advantage of this approach is that not only are all the names consistent within their locales, to a fair extend making it easy to determine what area a character is from, it also means that all the names are easily pronouncable, in many cases sounding almost the same as their source, even if the spelling is a bit odd.
As to assigning names to specific characters… there, I’m very much on the same page as you, Harry. Whichever one feels right…
That’s a brilliant way of worldbuilding – associating sounds with a place, names and placenames. The flavour you get there is going to work really well. Bet you’re the only person to have built a pool of 6000 names though!
Hi, I have just finished an edit on my first fantasy novel that takes me halfway through the story so far. I do look for name meanings before I decide on them for some of my characters, and just take them out of the air for others. My main evil protagonist is called Charnecron, which comes from ‘charnel’ and the city of ‘Charn’ in ‘The Magician’s Nephew’. I thought it sounded evil enough for him.
My main protagonist has to start out as a fairly normal sounding girl, so she became Jinny, and her helpmeet and dragon is Sprout, as he is veggie. I tend to look at early English/ Celtic words for inspiration, but I do alter and mix and match bits of words until they sound about right.
Sounds good to me! I like Sprout – my kids are into dragons at the moment and he sound like he’d be friendly
My protagonist is called Olivia. I chose it to draw a parallel with the olive tree: wide shallow roots, strong tree, clever (it produces only the number of fruits it knows it can develop successfully), related to peace. These aspects are all relevant to my character. I also like a name which can be used in different ways by different people, ie. teachers use ‘Olivia’, and family and friends use Livia or Livie (unless they’re angry in which case they resort back to Olivia).
All my names are also chosen so they can work in English and Spanish because my WIP is set in Spain (but in English), with very Spanish names reserved for minor characters so they don’t alienate the English reader too much but give the flavour of Spain.
My protag’s best friend is Mia (‘mine’ in Spanish) and another central character is called Destinee – a name borrowed from a boy in my daughter’s school with relevance for his role in the story and as a contrast to the Spanish names (he’s Moroccan). I have a few other borrowed names just because they sound right for that character.
I confess that once I have a name for a character, I rarely change it because it helps build them. I find character names far easier than the dreaded TITLE of the damn book!
I change my characters’ names all the time! It would be easier if I didnt.
My novel is dystopian science fiction set in a future Chile but with a strong element of Inca history and characters interwoven, so many of my characters speak Quechua, the main Indian language of the High Andes. Fortunately Google supplies lists of names in Quechua and also their meanings so I was able to choose a goodly selection for my caste including Amaru the Snake, Asiri the Smile, and so on. Not counting those of the famous Inca kings, like Topa and Viracocha. No doubt some true Quechua speaker will tell me it’s all rubbish but we must just do the best we can!
Yes. Getting in irate email from a Quechua speaker —- not high on the list of things we need to worry about, I’d say
I’m writing a historical fantasy series loosely based on 14th century France, so I started with a list of medieval French names and chose names that seem to fit the character; Ghislain Bartram, for example, for a particularly ghastly individual. French words for trades were also useful; an armourer became Arnaud ‘Armurier.
Lovely. Works well
My WIP is a novel is about a mixed race couple trying to get together against the odds, set in UK and Uganda. The characters’ names need to be Indian and African, as well as European, so readers here in the UK wouldn’t associate notions from these names, like Pravin, Sood, Rupa, and Devi, Rajeev and so on, though they do of course have meanings usually. Devi means dawn for instance, and that character, being the next generation new daughter-in-law, brings a whole new perspective with her from India. But now you’ve made me think.I need go go and revisit the names….The main character, Amy, suggests amiableness perhaps. Now did I choose that or did my subconscious choose it for her?
The unconscious does a lot. I didn’t realise until later that Jared worked well as a name for my character. I chose it just because it seemed to fit. Figuring out why it fit took longer.
My central character ‘s first name is Asha; originally she was going to be Asha Harris (for no particular reason), but I changed her surname to Knight. That felt right for a book dealing with the return of King Arthur. I’d chosen Asha because I liked the name’s simplicity; but as the story took shape, the name became critical and central to the overarching series plot: Advanced Synthetic Human Alpha… (though that ‘reveal’ is still a way down track – the story arc I’m mapping runs to seven books, and the significance won’t become clear until Book 4…)
I can’t imagine what book unites the return of King Arthur with an Advanced Synthetic Human Alpha. Asha Knight though – instant ring to it.
A three thousand year-old Merlin and advanced genetic engineering… Merlin gets very hot under the collar when people call him a wizard or a magician; he’s very much the scientist…