What's in a name?

Character names, to me, are one big headache. They cause me sleepless nights.

I spend hours, sometimes days, trying to come up with the right name for a character. I need that name before I can write anything involving that particular character. 

How do I choose those names? I start by working out their year of birth and I then look up popular baby names around that time. (A woman born in 1920, for example, isn’t going to be christened Chardonnay.) I can spend hours looking up the meaning of names. I’m one of those sad people who pauses the TV when film credits are rolling to see if a suitable name catches my attention. 

So, after a while, I have my character’s first name. The work starts all over again then as I try to settle on the surname and, again, it has to be exactly right. I know where my character was born so I look up surnames familiar to that area of the country. I find one I like - and then realise that it sounds ridiculous with the surname. I have software that generates random names, about 5,000 of the things, and none are ‘right’. Eventually, after a great deal of blood, sweat, tears and gnashing of teeth, I have my characters' names. 

That should be that, right? Sadly not. The nightmare continues. In my ‘Jill & Max’ series of crime novels, for example, I had Jill and Jack. Jill Kennedy is a lead character in the series so I obviously couldn’t change her name and I also had a curmudgeonly old man called Jack - and he could be called nothing but Jack. Jack was his name and nothing would make me change it. I spent days writing out a scene they shared so that I didn’t have something like Jack and Jill went up the hill.

The book I’m working on at the moment will soon be off to my editor. I’m doing a final edit before I send it. What do I find? Well, after all the time spent finding the perfect names, I have the most ridiculous names ever. Truly. I’ve been working on the book for months and I’ve only just realised that I have characters with the surnames Hiller, Miller and Mellor. Jeez! What was I thinking? They will be changed, of course, but it means I’ve now got to spend hours - maybe days - coming up with perfect ‘alternative’ names for some characters.

I think I need chocolate. And wine. Lots of wine...

Naming Your Characters--and Other Forms of Torture.

Names are funny things. Growing up as a ‘Toni’ in a conservative English county meant I got a lot of teasing. 

“That’s a boy’s name.”

Kids chanting “Boney Toni” and “Toni Chestnut” and then singing, “Hey, Mickey, you’re so fine” (because it was sung by Toni Basil). Ugh. As a shy little kid who disliked being the centre of attention, my name was a major embarrassment to me. 

I grew into it.

Sometimes people ask me about naming characters. And because of my own experience I always give character names a lot of consideration.

There’s the obvious stuff, don’t call your hero something laughable or ridiculous. Wally Wankerly is not going to inspire a reader’s love even if he’s got muscles the size of Pierre Spies’ (Rugby World Cup 2011 reference for those who don’t know). The hero’s name also has to work with the heroine’s name and, if they ever decided to take the walk down the matrimonial aisle, the names have to fit together.  

The hero in my WIP has been called Andy, Craig and currently Tyrone. Andy didn’t work because the heroine’s name is Axelle, and Andy and Axelle combined was too twee. Craig didn’t sit right. Even Tyrone is not set in cement. The name I really wanted him to have was Tadhg, pronounced ‘Tieg’. But Irish names are notorious for their mispronunciation and I don’t want to have to explain his name every time I say it and nor do I want readers to pause every time I mention Tadhg. See? 

I got away with an Irish name for Sorcha in STORM WARNING (I think—I hope) because it’s pretty straightforward.

BTW talking of name combos—Axelle comes from a little girl in my daughter’s class when we were in France last year. Her twin sister is called Rose. 

Another problem that sneaks up on me is having lots of names starting with the same letter. Writing a trilogy this summer, I was merrily working on a book when suddenly, for the first time, 3 secondary characters come together on the page: Marty, Markov and Mendez. *Bangs head on desk*

I changed Marty to Harry and the rest works.

Naming characters isn’t as easy as people think. Think of the great literary characters: Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Augusta Weidenmaier, Hannibal Lecter, Atticus Finch. The name and the character are intimately locked in your mind. Getting it right is an art form. But it doesn’t mean the name has to be whacky or weird: Elizabeth Bennett, Sam Spade, James Bond, George Smiley. Same response, different type of name.

So--Tyrone Dempsey. Does he sound like a hero to you? What's your favorite character name?