You have a story to tell, an opening scene, a setting, and a protagonist, who is about to start the action… and you need to give him a name. You want the perfect name for this character you’re picturing so clearly in your head. What will you call him?
Romeo? Too dramatic. Mark? Too ordinary. Thor? Too silly.
You’re stuck. How do you choose names for your characters?
It’s not easy. The perfect name needs to fit the character, but without giving away too much. It needs to fit the style of the book, and the time and place it’s set in: you can’t call your eighteenth century heroine Cheryl or your moody Norwegian detective Peggy Sue. And there’s nothing worse than realising you’ve given the scheming villain the same name as your best friend’s husband.
Some writers deliberately choose names that give away a character’s personality or destiny. Dickens was famous for fanciful names like Magwitch or Wackford Squeers, and Muriel Spark dropped playful clues by calling her characters Arnold Leaver, Violet de Winter and Sandy Stranger. The protagonist of Kafka’s ‘The Castle’ is simply – and mysteriously – called K. Most writers, though, grope for realistic names, to make their characters seem like real people – and this can be more difficult than you’d think.
Online lists of popular baby names from years gone by are a great resource. Your middle aged character, born in the sixties, could authentically be Susan or Steven, while Jessica or Joshua are convincing choices for teenagers. Common names are perfect if you want your character to be an Everyman or Everywoman, representative of their time and place. But what if you want the opposite: an unusual name that your readers won’t come across anywhere else? You could perhaps use the name of a place (Pickering, Tenby), tree (Juniper, Buckthorn) or river (Peteril, Dibbin). Or if you want a truly unique name, you could try making one up… Looder? Custy? Warglass?
Be careful if you simply pluck a name out of thin air; you’re plucking a name out of your subconscious, which risks unwittingly picking the name of someone you know. You don’t want to accidentally name your hero after your sister’s ex. Always think carefully why the name has popped into your head: is it the name of a celebrity, a neighbour, or your cousin’s new baby? On the other hand, you might deliberately choose to name a character after a friend or relative, as a tribute to them – just be sure to let them know about it before publication, not after, in case they’re not flattered.
The ideal names, perhaps, are those that link the character to the story in a way that allows for poignancy or reflection but doesn’t break the reality. In ‘The Wolves of Eternity’, Knausgaard’s character Syvert discovers, in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, that the health risk of radiation is measured in sieverts; Keith Waterhouse’s Maggie Moon ruefully renames herself Maggie Muggins. My favourite example of a character’s name enhancing the narrative is the opening paragraph of ‘Mrs Bridge’, by Evan S Connell:
‘Her first name was India – she was never able to get used to it. It seemed to her that her parents must have been thinking of someone else when they named her. Or were they hoping for another sort of daughter?’
Sarah Healey Editor 