Character Confusion

 

My current work in progress has three shipwrecked sailors as secondary characters. They enter the story a little over halfway through and are gone within four chapters.

I researched the types of jobs that sailors do on ocean freighters and decided to make the characters a third mate, an assistant cook, and a deckhand. So far, so good.

Then I had to come up with names. Normally, I go through my name lists (first names popular in that time period and last names gathered from a number of sources) until I come across something that just sounds right. Using that process, I decided on Davis Blakeman for the third mate, Elliot Campbell for the cook, and Pete Quilly for the deckhand.

But when I wrote the chapters, I was getting them confused. And if I’m confused, readers certainly will be. So how do I make each individual sailor stand out from the crowd?

My protagonist may think of them by their roles, so sometimes I refer to them as the third mate, the cook, or the deckhand. But that gets tiring if I do it all the time. And a twelve-year-old living in 1925 would refer to them as Mr. Blakeman, Mr. Campbell, and Mr. Quilly. But keeping those names straight was where the confusion came in.

For a second or two I thought about getting cutesy and calling them Mr. Boss, Mr. Chef, and Mr. Workman, but that was way too corny. So I came up with a more subtle way to remember them and changed two of the names. Elliot Campbell still worked, but the third mate became Matthew Tate and the deckhand became Henry Duke.

Here is how my protagonist remembers them:

Putting her hand in front of her mouth, Jessie stifled a giggle. Did they realize their last names all started with the same letter as their job? Then she grinned. And Tate rhymed with mate. She wouldn’t have any trouble remembering him.

There are other subtleties here, too, which readers might pick up on their own but which don’t hurt anything if they go unnoticed. The cook’s last name is a popular brand of soup, and the deckhand’s first name starts with the same letter as “hand.” But those are just bonuses.

The important thing is that I no longer have to stop and think which sailor I’m talking about when Jessie uses their last names.

And that’s a win for readers, too.

Matching Names to Characters

 

In Act II, Scene I of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says “What’s in a name! that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” While that may be true for a rose, it doesn’t work with fictional characters. Readers who hear a name before becoming familiar with the character often form their own ideas about background and personality, so choosing an appropriate name can be crucial to creating the right image.

I’m currently reading Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird, and she has a secondary character named Dr. McCavity. He’s a physician rather than a dentist, which would have been too flippant for a mostly serious work. The name does fit him, though, because it makes me think of a buffoon. Dr. McCavity is an alcoholic who keeps running into bollards, those permanent posts that line roads to keep drivers from leaving the roadway. If the name had been given to a strait-laced elderly man, I’m not sure I could have treated the character seriously even if the story called for it.

I always put a lot of thought into choosing character names. The graphic represents a dilemma I had several years ago when I originally selected Warren for my protagonist’s last name. Then I discovered that the book’s locale—Vicksburg, Mississippi—was in Warren County. I didn’t want any of my readers associating my protagonist with a wealthy or important family, so I change her last name to Gibson.

Then there is one of the protagonists of my murder mystery. Victoria McDonald is the victim’s daughter. Her mother was a successful attorney, but she had a tough road reaching that place in her career and her personal life was quiet and unpretentious. So I wanted them to have an ordinary family name that is easy to remember but isn’t showy. McDonald just felt right.

My protagonist’s first name is even more telling. The victim named her daughter Victoria because she wanted her to have a victorious life. But Vic has insecurities and doubts and she doesn’t feel victorious. Since she knows Victoria doesn’t suit her personality, she insists that people call her Vic.

So where do I find my characters’ names? When I’m writing my middle-grade historical novels, I get the first names from lists showing the most common names given to babies born in the same decade as my protagonist. Then I go through the top twenty or thirty to see which one best fits my protagonist. This can be a dangerous approach because readers have various experiences with those names, and someone who remembers a Karen as her best friend will have a very different response than someone who was bullied by a Karen. But unless I want to use names that are cliché (such as using McCavity for a dentist or Candy for a super-sweet girl), it’s a risk I have to take.

Choosing last names is a different process. Yes, I do want family names that create the right image for readers, but it is more complicated than that. If I have an ethnic background in mind for my character, I look for a family name that works with it. And I don’t always use something as common as McDonald. On trips in the U.S., I watch the exit signs while Roland is driving and keep a notebook handy to write down the names of likely-sounding towns. Or I may take a last name from a novel, such as using Gardiner from Pride and Prejudice for one protagonist’s maternal grandmother.

It isn’t easy to pick the right name.

But it is important.