By Any Other Name

Naming characters can be as difficult as naming children. I’ve only named two children and I think I did a pretty good job. I had some editorial input from my husband and of course a last name to work with.

I’ve named maybe a hundred characters and it gets harder all the time. Abby, Allie, Adam [I like A-names], Jake, Max, Gideon, Chance, Jordan, Lucas, Bren, Renna…they all needed last names too. Well, Renna doesn’t have a last name, but the others do. The same rules apply to naming characters as naming children. You want something noble, a little unique but not so far out there that people will make fun of them. With children, you don’t want initials that spell bad words, names that rhyme with body parts or names that no one can pronounce properly, even with lessons.

With characters, you want names that readers won’t stumble over or worse, laugh at. A serious romance hero should not be named Lance or Rod. [Oh God, not Rod! LOL, sorry.] You want names that can hold up in a love scene or a fight scene. Names with substance, names that flow.

Another problem I have, and maybe other writers don’t so much, is the fear of naming a character after someone I know and having everyone think the book is now about that person. If I call my heroine Steven – will my neighbor think I’m writing about her husband? Maybe it’s silly, but stuff like that bothers me. So, I’m always searching for good names that stand the snork test [do I go *snork* when I see them in print?] and that don’t already belong to someone I know well enough that they might wonder if I modeled a character after them.

Then again, maybe I worry too much about what other people think.