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| What's in a name? Photo by aldin |
Did you ever wonder
how a writer comes up with character names? I think everyone has a
favorite name—the name they should
have given their child. If only their
last name wasn't Schmidlapp, Giovanni would have been such a nice
choice. Sometimes writers use these favorite names for their
characters. They might build the entire character around the name, in
fact.
I tend to build my
characters and then decide what name fits. Not always, but I have
that tendency. I think of whether that character would have a
nickname, and how that would sound. Would it be one syllable or two?
And if I've already built another character, how would they go
together as a couple, or as villain and heroine? I virtually never
have two names beginning with the same alphabet letter. I find that
confusing to read, and I have read more than once that I'm not alone
with that. Having Catherine and Camelia can make a person have to go
back and reread to figure out who is doing what. Not a good dynamic
between author and reader.
When
I come up with last names, I think of ethnicities. Do I want my
heroine to be an Italian-American? Would she be of Scots heritage?
And how does that contrast or compliment my hero's ethnicity? I'm
also really careful about the names of villains. I don't want them
all to be of one heritage, or I start to look like I'm picking on one
group or culture. When I wrote Eddie,
My Love, I wanted to come up with a
tech guy and I was aware that there are a lot of East Indian
technical gurus in the US, so I gave my villain (a very clever tech
guy) an Indian name. I wouldn't make all my villains Indian, of
course, but for the purposes of realism in this story, it worked out
very well. In my Journey
Family series, because the action takes place in the western and
southern parts of Texas, I included some Hispanic names. I tried to
stay true to the regions by including them. That kind of inclusion
helps round out a story, makes it more realistic.
Names are important
and can really start off the relationship between reader and writer
well or badly.
So what's your
reaction to character names? Are you more likely to pick up a book
with one of your favorite names among the leading characters?
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