Here’s one weird thing about the way I write. I can’t get started writing my story until the characters have names. I might have fully outlined the plot, gotten the story clear in my mind, even come up with fleshed out personalities and histories for my characters, but without their names I can’t write the story. In planning one of my stories, plot comes first. As I’m outlining the plot, I’ll use character markers like Characters A, B, C, etc., or ‘Bad Guy’ or ‘Wise Old Woman,’ something like that. But I’ve found when it comes to generating the prose, these markers won’t suffice.
Maybe that’s not weird. Look at real life, and those things to which we give names. We give our own babies names at birth or very shortly after. We name our pets—the large ones–soon after obtaining them. In a strange way, the name gives them their uniqueness, their personality. Think of small pets like tiny tropical fish that often are not named. Can they be said to have as much individuality as named pets? Some people name their cars, and I contend that in some mystical manner they are imbuing their vehicles with a persona that doesn’t exist in unnamed cars. Ships receive names after construction but before going to sea, and the naming itself is part of an elaborate ceremony. Sailors have long considered it bad luck to sail a ship that lacks a name.
How do I choose names for my characters? One rule is obvious; a name must be appropriate to time period and geographical setting. Very few members of the Mongolian horde were named Trevor, I suspect. The internet serves as a vast resource for coming up with realistic character names. We’ll stay with our Mongol horde example, in case you’re writing about a single squad (called an arban, apparently) of the horde and you want to have plausible names. Just typing ‘mongol names’ into a search engine comes up with plenty of sites with good examples. Some sites pair the names with their meanings. I do try to pick names with appropriate meanings, if the name feels right.
It’s a good idea to have interesting, distinctive names for your main characters and more plain names for background characters. On the other hand, writers often give common surnames to main characters to convey a sense of a humble, common background, or give the character an ‘everyman’ feel. Indiana Jones, for example, or many of the characters in the novels of Robert Heinlein. If you do that, you might want to make sure the first name (or middle name) is unusual.
It’s also wise to avoid having any two characters whose names start with the same first letter, or the same sound. Why risk confusing a reader? Like most rules of writing, you can break this one. Say you want to suggest a deeper similarity between two otherwise opposite characters. Similar names can provide a hint of that, but you’ll have to go the extra mile in each scene to make it clear from context which character is involved so the reader doesn’t mix them up. To take our Mongol horde example, you’ll need to use context to remind your reader that Mungentuya is the arban’s leader, and Munkhjargal is the young upstart who wants to challenge him.
As with other research, time spent choosing names is time not spent writing. So you want to select your characters’ names wisely, but not take all day about it. Remember, the object is to come up with a great story, not a list of perfectly suitable names.
On occasion I have picked a character’s name, started writing, and found later the name doesn’t work. Sometimes changing a name is the right thing to do—and technically easy, using the ‘replace’ feature–but it always feels odd. When you’ve built up an association of a character with a particular name it can be jarring at first to change it. Still, if it must be done, like deleting a wonderfully written scene that just doesn’t help the story, then do it and get on with things.
As always, feel free to comment.
Poseidon’s Scribe
