Getting a handle on naming characters
The right name can bring a fictional person into focus, but finding the right one is an curiously tricky business
The writer of fiction is, of course, faced with many obstacles to overcome, myriad problems to solve. But one recurring problem that's rarely considered until one attempts to write a novel is that of characters' names.
Working on two separate fiction projects recently, I've struggled with this. Peripheral figures have been easier, but the leads have been called "John" and, even worse, "Unnamed" for months. In fact "Unnamed" became so familiar to me, and the character so adrift in the world he inhabits, that that was the moniker I settled on (or rather he remained nameless as opposed to literally begin called, say, Unnamed Johnson, which would just be silly). Because characters don't arrive fully formed in your head, they develop over time and after much thought; therefore it stands to reason that the name they may start life with will more than likely change as their personality develops on the page.
Names are important. There is a big difference between a Bruce and a Guido, a Penelope and a Latoyah. A name can set the tone. Some handles are so ridiculous that they are instantly unforgettable, such as Humbert Humbert, the slippery protagonist of Lolita, or Ignatius J Reilly from A Confederacy Of Dunces. Nineteen Eighty-Four's Winston Smith combines a flash of individuality with a surname that suits his everyman status, while Bret Easton Ellis's works are full of characters whose one-syllable names are as slick and shallow as their lives Clay, Rip, Spin and so forth. Then there are those as iconic as the book titles themselves: Atticus Finch, Kilgore Trout, Holden Caulfield.
But where does inspiration come from? Jenn Ashworth's debut novel A Kind Of Intimacy featured a darkly comical narrator call! ed Annie . "She's the only character who I've ever really sat down and named," says Ashworth. "She was a little nod to Stephen King's Annie in Misery, one of my favourite novels, and also to one my favourite female leads, Orphan Annie. I don't think I'd do that again though I write about ordinary people and I want my characters to have ordinary, functional names. No one's name, unless they choose it themselves, says much literally or symbolically about them. I think about the character's parents about the kind of names they would have thought were appropriate." The names in Ashworth's new novel Cold Light, published in May, were, she says, chosen at random: "Then the characters grew into them. They are two teenage girls, Chloe and Lola, and I like the assonance, the way they sound like a pair. My kids' names were chosen in a similar thoughtless and haphazard way..."
Acclaimed young US author Tao Lin adopts a similar criteria. "I chose names that would not cause the reader to feel like there was hidden meaning in them, or that the characters were symbolic or the story was an allegory," he says. Nevertheless, Lin not only titled his recent novel Richard Yates but also named its leads after real people. "The characters are based on myself and an ex-girlfriend," explains Lin. "But to avoid 'making up' names like Mike and Mary and also to avoid using my own name, which people tend to do with autobiographical novels, I chose 'Haley Joel Osment' and 'Dakota Fanning' which, as names of real people in real life for characters in a novel, seeme! d funny to me."
Fortunately there are other resources available: baby-name websites, old flames, phone books and my particular favourite graveyards. The problem with graveyards, of course, particularly if you live in an old part of Yorkshire as I do, is that you might suddenly find your work of fiction inhabited by people with old-time Methodist names like Titus Duckworth and Jabez Jowitt. But I suppose at least they would be memorable.
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