Have you ever sat down and named the entire cast of
characters for an entire book in one sitting?
It’s exhausting. It’s worse than
when you’re sitting down with a bunch of guys to play D&D and no one can
decide on a friggin name for their character, so you waste three hours. Besides, you have to have some idea of what
kind of appearance, personality, and what role each character will play in the
book. This also means more often than
not, even though you would like to name everyone in one sitting – you can’t do
it. So, even if you’re on a writing
rampage, you have to stop, google baby names and come up with a new character
on the fly. Who can blame Stephenie
Meyer for naming three quarters of her characters after her siblings?
Anyway, naming human beings is a completely different matter
than naming a character. For starters,
when you’re naming a character, you can choose their last name. First name and last name can exist harmoniously
because they were both conjured out of thin air. Not so when you’re naming a person. The last name has already been decided and
you have to work with it.
Secondly, there is no taunting. You can name your character something that
would obviously result in teasing, alligator bites and wet willies without
fear. Those things will only happen to
your character if you want them to happen.
If only we could obtain that much control in real life.
Thirdly, it doesn’t matter if someone else has the name you
picked. There can be 200 guys named
Christian in the literary world and no one gets confused. It’s not like all our imaginary guys go to
the same school and the teacher can’t keep the names straight.
Naming real people is a serious headache. You don’t know what they’re going to look
like when they’re grown up, or what they’ll be like, or anything. The only thing you know is that the little
person contains some of your genetic material and some of its daddy’s. That’s it.
So, you have to agonize about spelling.
Do you want the spelling to be something that everyone is going to
understand easily or do you want to make the spelling unique? Are you going to name it after someone? Is that someone likely to annoy you in the
future? Name it after someone dead. Do you know anyone else who coincidentally
has the same name? Is there likely to be
confusion?
.jpg)
1 comment:
Yup. It is exhausting naming babies and/or characters. I hear you on this for sure. Although, I have to admit, I think I won with my Son's name. Tratteele (tra-teal). I haven't met anyone else with the name and most people can say it properly from the get go. Spelling his name though, seems to be an issue for anyone except me, of course!!! LOL We have shortened it to Trey, for school, and he has been several schools already and has only encountered one other Trey. Trey is just easier to spell and to enunciate. ;)
Post a Comment