what's in a name? (ooh yeah, cliche title time!)

(Disclaimer: The name I chose to use today is "Mordecai Schneider, which I am fully aware is the most ridiculous name ever to grace a character.)


There are lots of things people consider when looking for names for their characters. Here's a list of stuff to think about, and then me talking about some of my character's names because I like talking about me.

Bullet list 1: Terrible naming advice.
(Or, advice I see all over the place and hate a lot.)

• choose a name based on name meaning
• that's it that's the list

But seriously, this advice is SO ANNOYING to me that I must talk about it for a second.

Nobody cares what a name means, okay? I mean, the author does, sometimes, but generally speaking no reader cares. Meaning is completely useless. If the name means "pure" or "sad" or "wolf" or whatever, that's okay, but really you do not pick a name based on meaning.

Also, name meanings are completely different from name connotations. For example, I have a character named Mordecai. Based on my research on various Baby Name websites, it appears that the meaning of "Mordecai" is either "bitter" or "slave of Marduc". Obviously, these meanings bring up a pretty specific character to mind. But, and this is a huge but, is anybody reading my novel actually going to ever look up those names? Ha, no. Are they going to know those meanings right off the top of their head? I doubt it.

Now, connotations. Based on further internet research (read: Behind the Name dot com) out of 47 people, a mere 61% think of "Mordecai" as a good guy name. High percentages of people agree it is a classic and mature name. 96% of these 47 individuals agree that it is a masculine name. In the comments section, several people say it is their "guilty pleasure" name-- a name they would never be able to name their child, but love to pieces anyway. Many more people say it sounds sort of evil, or creepily fantastical. As one person puts it:

I have no idea why you would use a name with the etymological element for death beginning it.

Amen, random stranger. Also, a third famous connotation: Mordecai was Esther's cousin in the Biblical book of Esther (one of my personal favorites). So there are definitely gonna be some people out there who remember the bespectacled, mustached singing grape from Veggie Tales. Also, it is a very Jewish name.

All this stuff? This is important. "Bitter slave of Marduc" is not important. (at least according to the me.)

(PS my character Mordecai doesn't really match his name, actually, but I literally chose it because it was the first name I thought of when I made him up and I totally didn't plan for him to become a character I actually liked. Sigh. Learn from my mistakes, folks.)

(also, a picture of my Mordecai so I can have a picture in this post:)

(the chick is his sister.)

So what else do I think is important?

• how it fits in with the culture of the character
• how memorable it is
• real-world connections to the name
• what the character's parents or whoever was thinking when they named them
• readability
• how distinguishable it is in comparison with the names of the other characters

I'll also talk about this last point: We all know the Swiss Family Robinson, right? Well, I read the book a while back and I can honestly say that the number one most distracting thing about the book was the two boys named Fritz and Franz. To this day I cannot remember who was who, and reading the book was awful because I had no clue who was doing what. Fritz and Franz? Honestly?

But that book taught me well-- years after reading it, I was writing a random story for my own amusement. I really, really wanted to name a certain character Noah. After writing about this character as Noah for a few pages, I realized that it simply would not work, because the main character's name was Nina. I was heartbroken. I tried my best to ignore the issue, but my brain chimed over and over again: "Fritz and Franz! Nina and Noah!" Noah eventually became Reese.

That said, as a general rule I always try to vary my character names-- not only in first letters, but also in number of syllables and ending sounds.Trust me, it's possible-- let's look at this cast of names I keep talking about:

• Nina
• Mordecai
• Reese
• Juliette
  (and minor characters)
• Tyler
• Jared
• Madeline
• Ruthie
• Beau
• Declan
• Fred the Pekignese

(turns out I actually drew this thing of the main four characters here at some point... I found it while i was looking for a Mordecai picture so. I love it when I find random poor drawings of my characters.)

While a good number of these characters have somewhat outlandish names, look carefully and you will see that, with the exception of Madeline and Mordecai and Juliette and Jared, every name has a different first letter and a different last sound.

Is this totally totally taking things way too far? Oh yes, definitely, but it at least proves that it is possible. And despite the fact that this is a crazy name group,  nobody I know ever mixes up names when talking about this cast.

Sibling names are also kind of important to think about-- just remember when naming siblings that their parents probably named both of them, and while real-life parents do actually give their children ridiculous combinations of names like Shyam and Mary or... oh, I don't know, Max and Kaelan-July, those really don't quite match enough to be believable withing a story. (Also "Kaelan-July" kind of fails the readability test.)

This is all I'm going to say of the matter, I guess, I just sort of wanted to talk names because they are my favorite thing everrrr. (Not really. But seriously, I do love names.)

(Also, my least favorite group of character names that I myself have? Probably my first story ever, featuring a cast named Laurel, Leo, Toby, Logan, Argentina, Felix, and Lou.)