Thought I was a one trick pony, didn’t you? Thought I could only tell jokes and talk about fuckin’ in the butt. WELL SURPRISE, SURPRISE! Because that’s actually all I can do. … what? It’s a pretty good trick.
But in the interests of doing more than one of these things, I figured I’d try to come up with something I’ve put a lot of thought into and then throw all those thoughts out and ramble on for a few paragraphs about an entirely different subject. So what is it this time? WELL! If you’re retarded and don’t read post titles, I can happily report that I’ll be talking a little bit about character naming and why it’s important to put a little bit of thought into them and the various reasons you might want to.
As far as I can tell from reading the thoughts of other writers on how they name characters there are more or less two major ways people go about deciding what to name characters. Some people just name their characters whatever they want or name them after people they know. We’ll call this the Willy Nilly School of Character Naming, because that’s fun. It doesn’t matter what we call it. The second group like to fill their character names with all sort of subtext and secret meeting based on the nature of the character or symbolism or garbage like that (I’ll be covering ways in which symbolism is garbage later on). We’ll call this the Doucher School of Character Naming. This is an extremely popular method in Japan in overbearing bullshit writing (like I do! YEAH!)
So, those are the two schools and looking at them, you can probably sort of discern which one you fall into, more or less. It’s a generalization, obviously, and there are degrees but there’s no writer who falls immediately in the middle. You either care about the character names or you just toss them around. Of course, this is most of the time. We likely all throw a friend’s name in at some point or another. I mean the important ones.
But that’s not the point! The schools don’t matter. That being said, the Douchebags are likely to follow me a bit more easily and I have no real reason to preach this to them. This is for the caution to the wind namers. SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE SUBJECT AT HAND.
Let’s start by asking a question. Why should I think about a character’s name? WELL I’M GLAD YOU ASKED! There are a few.
THE FIRST REASON!
It’s a simple one that a lot of people overlook, I feel like. We all know that there are sounds that are satisfying to make. This has nothing to do with subtext or meaningful symbolism or cuntshit like that. This is just a matter of reader interest. People like people with cool names that are fun to say. So take a minute and think of some of your favorite character names. I’LL NAME A COUPLE OF MINE! Keep in mind, favorite names doesn’t necessarily mean favorite characters, so don’t be an asshole.
- Snake Pliskin
- Luke Cage
- Doc Holliday
- Logan
- Jack Burton
Let’s end it there for sake of brevity. I know it’s mostly guys, but they tend to make my point the most dramatically, I think. These names are all pleasing to say because they’re sort of forceful and fun and sound awesome just rolling of the tongue. If you don’t believe me, try to enjoy saying Abernung Quiddegambdadge every time you want to talk about a character. There are dozens of examples of this in the comic world especially. Stan Lee is a big proponent of this in his own way. His trick for making character names fun to say was alliteration. And it works. Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Sue Storm, Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdoch. And it goes on and on with other characters. It’s not always the case, but it works. A character’s name being fun to say makes that character more enjoyable just by the very nature of a person enjoying making sounds that are enjoyable to make. And if it’s fun to say, it’s probably fun to think. Favorable. IT’S PSYCHOLOGY, MAN! So think about how your character’s name sounds. This doesn’t necessarily have to apply to just the entire name if their last name never comes up. Likewise, it doesn’t excuse shit writing or a bad character, it just adds a tiny amount of enjoyability overall. And this is about creating entertainment. But wait, there’s more!
THE SECOND THING!
And this one is even more important. You NEED to think about what your character name says about the character. Let’s look at the names I listed above. Snake Pliskin. It has a sort of symmetry to it. It evokes the idea of slithering, it gives you an idea that this guy, while probably a badass, is more suited to doing things quietly.
This is in direct contrast to some other names on the list. Luke Cage, Jack Burton. Very forceful, full of strong sounds that force your to make auditory full stops on your way through them. The syllables are hard instead of soft. They give you an idea of a badass who is ready to do something brash or jump on a motherfucker when some motherfuckering needs to go down.
This one might require a bit more thought on your part, but it will pay dividends in a much bigger way than the first thing. It’s probably something you don’t give a lot of thought to, but the sounds we use to make up the names we give our characters create an idea of the character. Luke Cage is probably a badass where Lucas Cagen is maybe more of a thinker.
It could be said that this is an extension, or the same as, of the first one, but I disagree. Bruce Banner is a fun name to say, but in my mind doesn’t conjure up an image of an earnest scientist.
Now this might pose a mental issue for some people where you think “Well, is someone’s mom going to name her kid something that’s going to make that kid a badass just for the sake of it?” And that’s a fair point. But it goes beyond that. The sounds create an idea that you can then mould to your character’s personality. That is to say, there are sounds that aren’t on either end of that spectrum that you can use to create more subtle ideas. Subtle ideas to fit more subtle characters in a world where things aren’t meant to be so blatant. But that often requires more than just thinking about the sound. So let’s go to the last thing…
THE LAST THING!
Okay, I’ll try to keep this one sort of short since I meant this to be small-ish articles and this is over 1000 words by a good bit now. So let me be a pompous cunt and talk about my own naming process.
I like to combine all of those things above. I will never name a character something alienating. There are tons of names that have fallen out of the parlance and are not fun to say or contain letter combination that feel old fashioned. Dolores, Edith, Abraham, Clemment, Ida, Thaddeus. None of these names are in common usage, and while it’s often tempting to name your characters things that seem to you to be unique, just know that there are tons of people thinking that same thing. Further, if it doesn’t fit the character for some story reason that’s charming, it’ll likely just end up being a quirky name. And being quirky for the sake of it is just lazy and stupid and it was cute when you were six, but now it’s just… lame.
So I avoid that. I like to find names that aren’t overly common, but I know that the name will work a lot better if it has an air of familiarity to it. It makes your character name memorable while adding an amount of entertainment value on a subtle level.
With all that said, I also like to make sure I inject a little bit of fun into the names just for my own sake. Like, I make their names super obtuse references to some character trait of theirs or things like that. It’s not meant to be meaningful, just fun for me and anyone else who notices, which isn’t super likely if they didn’t read this post.
Okay, time to wrap it up. I think about all of these things when I name my characters and I try to strike a nice balance between the first two while putting in something fun for myself, AT LEAST with my main characters. With sub character, I focus on the first two, more on the second one than anything. A name can be less fun sounding if it paints a better picture. But I’m in the Douchebag School of Naming. At least a little, anyway. I think that lends itself to better writing, but that’s more my opinion and isn’t necessary as character names are fairly needless in general. They’re incidental. It’s just some bit of fun for me and I feel it probably adds a bit of quiet attachment for readers.
I guess as a last thing, I should say I probably spend as much time thinking up a name for a character as I do developing the entire personality and look and all that. Maybe slightly less. That’s not to say I spend a small amount of time on either. Rather the opposite. I want my characters names to speak to people in much the same way I want their actions to. I want my creations to be complete from start to finish, so I think about their past and their parents and their personalities and everything. For me, it makes writing a lot more fun and it adds a confidence that I know the character I’m writing. You have to love them, damnit. Even if you hate them.