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.

The Name Game

People ask how I come up with names for my characters. I don’t always use the same method, so it’s easiest to explain by using examples.

When I started writing Desert Jewels, my protagonist’s name was Martha. I chose it because it matched the picture I had in my head. However, she refers to her mother—the other main character—as Mama. My online critique partner said that the two “M” names had her confusing the characters. Since Mama is of Swedish descent, I decided to keep that and change my protagonist’s name. I tried Ellen, then Jane, and neither felt right. I ended up with Emi, which is a Japanese name that is easy for English-speakers to pronounce. My protagonist is half Japanese, and her ethnic background is the basis for the story, so it worked perfectly.

Now I’ve started my next book, which I have tentatively titled Creating Esther. The main character is a Native American girl from the Chippewa tribe. She goes to an Indian boarding school in 1895, where they try to “civilize” her by giving her a traditionally white name. So for this protagonist I need two first names—a Chippewa name and a “white” name.

One way that superintendents and teachers chose white names was to compile a list of names from the Bible and assign the next one. Running through some Biblical names in my head, I settled on “Esther” because it just sounded right. Also, by the end of the book she will have made some decisions that put her on the path to saving her people, as the original Esther did. Of course, my Esther will do it less dramatically and as one of many forces that work together, but I like the concept.

Coming up with a Chippewa name is more challenging. I went on one of those baby naming websites and looked for Chippewa girls’ names. I like Keezheekoni because it supposedly means “burning fire,” and my protagonist has a fiery temperament. However, using the sources I found, it appears to be hard to pronounce.

There’s another problem. While most of the baby name sources list it as a Chippewa name, a couple list it as Cheyenne. And I can’t find any of its roots in A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. (Ojibwe and Chippewa are two names for the same tribe. More about that in next week’s post.) Of course, there are many different dialects, and my protagonist is more likely to come from Michigan than from Minnesota. Also, Chippewa was originally a spoken language with no written equivalent, and the people who tried to write it down used various spellings. For example, in Red World and White: Memories of a Chippewa Boyhood, author John Rogers says that his new baby brother was named Ahmeek, meaning beaver. The Concise Dictionary cited above spells beaver a-m-i-k. And the pronunciation guides give those spellings different pronunciations.

So am I going to name my protagonist Keezheekoni? I’ll start there, but it might change.

Because finding the right name isn’t easy.