What’s In A Name?

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Perhaps so, but if roses were called Corpse Flowers, Stinking Christopher, or Spurge they wouldn’t be quite so popular, would they?

Names matter

Despite our best intentions, we do judge people (and things) by their names. (Why do you think companies spend so much time and money testing product names?) A host of scientific studies conclude that names make an impact on everything from the likelihood of juvenile delinquency, to college acceptance, to business success.

For a writer, this is great news! It means we can tell the reader paragraphs of information about a character just by choosing the right name. For example:

Alice McGillicuddy is obviously a very different person than Serena Jones or Emmaline Littleton-Fitzgerald.  Which is most likely to be the main character of a comedy? Go to a top-name prep school? Be the most no-nonsense?  If all three were private investigators, you would expect the tone of the books to be quite different, wouldn’t you?

Use them wisely.

How to pick evocative character names

Consider the key traits you would like a name to convey, things like age, strength of character, temperament, sense of humor, ethnicity, and social class. Select five to ten that are most important. Now scroll through the phone book or an internet name site and jot down first and last names that seem to fit that description.

Don’t over-think this, go with your first impressions.

After you have collected several, try different combinations of first and last names until you find the one you like best—the one that most strongly hints at the character’s important qualities.

I was working through this exercise recently, trying to select names for  my newest work-in-progress. After narrowing it down to three names for each character, I gave the list of character qualities with the three name choices to several writing friends.

There was almost unanimous agreement on the best name for each one. This despite the fact that the names in question were all unfamiliar Greek or Roman names like Lurco, Avitus, Livia and Xanthe.

Fascinating, no?

One more suggestion

As a final check, run the name through a search engine to check:

• how common it is (this could be good or bad, depending)
• if it’s been used too often in recent books
• if readers may associate the name with a totally inappropriate person, such as the main character from a TV show or movie you weren’t aware of.

Happy naming!

And FYI, if you’re looking for authentic Roman names, my favorite resource is Nova Roma’s name page.