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More Than Just a Name 
by Emory Hackman and Linda Adams

Boring intro? Dull characters? Can't grab interest to pull the reader into your story? Look at your character names.

The character names are the first contact between the reader as your customer and your story. And, if the character names become boring to you, how can the reader come to feel for or with your character?

Writers naming characters agonize as much as parents naming their children. A name can influence how others react to a child, just like a name can affect how a reader reacts to a character. If they can't care about your characters and your story, then your story will be closed, put on the shelf, and never finished. 

What's in a name anyway? With the name alone, you can create an instant image of a character. You can use the name to influence how the reader perceives your character.

For instance many readers have trouble with Hispanic male names because of the cultural baggage attached to Pedro, Pablo, Juan, and Jose. Do you have doubts that they carry baggage? Try emphasizing the ending enunciation of Jose, and you get the joke about the Spanish fireman and his two sons of Jose, pronounced as Hose-A, and the other son is, of course, Hose-B.

Instead, look for an ethnic name to make your character and your story distinctive. Don't just pick the standard foreign names you hear on TV--Jean-Pierre for a Frenchman, Alexei for a Russian, or Juanita for a Spanish woman. These names have become so common that their use squanders the opportunity to communicate richness and depth.

Use different sounding names for your characters. When readers confuse one character for another, Pedro with Pablo for example, the effort and time to remember who is who detracts from keeping up with your story. Or worse, try tracking heroes and villains through a story with four important characters named Galton, Garrison, Gunter, and Grady?

Avoid the use of names that could denote either gender. 

Agatha Christie once confused us all with a man's last name of "Grace." In some scenes, the character was referred to by his first name, and in others by his last name. The reader could think that it was two different characters, one male and one female. Words must be economized in modern fiction. We just don't have the space anymore to philosophize and proselytize, to justify and explain. Examples of such names to use sparingly, and only when truly necessary, are Chris, Tony, Pat, Vinnie, Lee, and a boy named Sue. And how many young adult readers know the difference between Frances and Francis? Marion and Marian? Frankie and Johnnie were lovers, but written that way, which one was the girl?

Sounds. What's in a sound? The harder sounding letters denote strength, such as: B, (hard) C, D, (hard) G, J, K, P, Q, T, V, Z. An example from western genre of a name I have never met on the street is the name Cody. The softer sounding letters denote malleability, such as: (soft) C, (soft) G, H, L, M, N, and the vowels A, E, I, O, U, and Y. An example from the romance genre of a name I have never met is a man called Emmitt. And while the sounds from the name Cody create clarity, the sequence of the sounds in the name Emmitt create confusion by starting so soft and ending too hard.

Pick names that feel and sound like the setting and the characterization. The following names for an American Civil War character all feel German, or Pennsylvania Dutch German--Becht, Buttolph, and Auerswald. But which one feels equally as good without the reader tripping over the enunciation? Best bet for a quick feel is Becht.

Becht is also one syllable, which makes room for a two syllable first name. No, there is no universal three syllable rule for a character's combined first and last name. But it helps to keep some names short when there is no good reason to unnecessarily complicate the narrative flow. Don't go all monosyllabic either.  Jack, John, Tony, and Wade can all run together.

Pay at least as much attention to minor characters' names as those of major characters. After editing down the non-essential, the name may become the only way of suggesting the minor character's personality.

The characters' names are a signal to the reader and may touch her deeply. The desired effect is to guide the reader into who to root for, who to care about, and who to be wary of, without being obvious or tedious.  Each genre has its own sound preferences. Some preferences are conventions within the genre, and provide an author to reader communication technique.

Genre Specific Naming

Each genre has its own feel. A few genres have developed names into an art form (fantasy, romance, and some mystery). The stronger the conventions, the easier it is to economically add depth to characters by using the norms and standards. In some cases, these are highly artificial, but their use has been market vindicated by time and repetitive success.

For Fantasy and Science Fiction stories, the setting may require unusual names for the characters, and places. But carrying the unusual to the unpronounceable is a mistake. Unpronounceable names trip up the reader and keeps them from getting into your story. How can your readers, your audience, your market, get to know your characters if they can't pronounce--and won't be able to remember--their names? 
Authors using difficult names put up a blockade against the reader, making it harder for the reader to receive your message. And your message is important to you, or you wouldn't be writing. To make your message, no matter how complicated or intricate, as easy to receive as you can, avoid difficult names. And there are better resources for names.

Names for Fantasy and Science Fiction objects can be made up from syllables from the words for the objects' function. SpaceBase and PlasPanel for instance. But object and character names can also come from recent scientific discoveries which in the story have become part of the commonplace. Future space stations will be named for today's scientists, or politicians. Places occupied by escaped prisoners (war or criminal) may have irrelevant or hopeful names. Places created by venture capitalists will have names appealing to the sponsors.

Don't believe me? The Virginia Colony was named by London venture capitalists for the Virgin Queen, when landing a colony was on the other side of an unlikely and dangerous voyage. Denver, Colorado, was named to get the help, which it did, of the support of an early Governor of Kansas, named Denver.

For Fantasy, try a baby name book. Look for the names that are unusual.

You can change the name slightly by omitting or adding an unexpected letter or syllable. For instance, Eric can become Erc, or Eryck. Writers have been known to pick letters out of a hat or run a random generator to create unusual names. All this does is create names like Psruiox which no one is going to remember.

Romance is the most sensitive genre to achieving one effect--to stir emotional responses in the reader.  Character names in romance novels are very carefully chosen. The sounds of these names need to feel good to the reader. Thinking may affect feelings, but feelings predominate in Romance writing. Male names frequently connote virility. Listen to the power of the sound when you say the names David or Grant. You don't get the same effect with Homer or Lenny.

What about mysteries? The American definition of the English mystery formula uses a civilized, "locked room" format with courteous names. The Americans like their hardened private eye detectives a little more barbaric, with character names to match. The detectives tend to have unusual names that make them stand out as loners.  New trends in mysteries try to find names that feel contemporary. The biblical names that strongly predominated before the 20th century are less common today with the increasing use of names that had not been invented before World War II, such as Lynly and Wendy. Characters' names in mysteries aren't as highly sensitive to the sounds as in Romance and Fantasy. 

Character names can affect the writer more than the reader. The wrong name can throw you off by associations you may not even be aware of. There are very successful authors who report having labored away on manuscripts that didn't work, only to find that the exercise of renaming a main character cleared the air.

So the next time your story doesn't seem right, look again at your characters' names. You might find that changing a character's name gives your story just what it needs.

Copyright © 2001 Emory Hackman & Linda Adams. All Rights Reserved.

Emory Hackman is an estate planning attorney who is published in the Virginia State Bar Journal, the Arlington Journal, and the Fairfax Journal. 

Linda Adams is an internationally published writer with over 30 writing credits, including The Toastmaster (March 2001), Vampire Dan's Story Emporium, and The Plaza.  They are currently co-authoring a woman's Civil War Thriller set in Luray, Virginia.

For more information about Linda and Emory, visit http://www.hackman-adams.com