What's In A Name? Part 1

 

For those who write fiction, choosing the name for your protagonist and cast of characters is important, but can be a challenge.  Selecting names for my children was relatively straightforward in comparison.

How do you choose the names you’ve used, I wonder? Do they come to you in a flash of caffeine-inspired morning inspiration, or in the dreamy place between sleep and wakefulness so loved by Peter Pan?

Charles Dickens was a master at name choosing.  I defy anyone to come up with better ones that Uriah Heep or Ebenezer Scrooge.  Somehow, they seem onomatopoeic, or perhaps the nature of the character is now so interwoven with the name that it suggests an individual to us as soon as we hear it.

You maybe aiming at comic value.   I was ridiculously pleased with myself when I came up with the name of Mr McCavity for the Scottish dentist in Charlie Peach’s Pumpkins titular story. He had me giggling foolishly for quite some time.

(Please forgive the shameless self-promotion, but the examples require it here.)

I also needed a name for an inventor in the final story of that collection: The Surprising Power of Cake.  She was to be a descendant of the inventor of the humble paperclip. 

Google is often our friend on these occasions; thus I discovered that although a Norwegian had come up with this useful little gizmo, his claim was challenged by Samuel B Fay in the USA, who had patented a similar idea in 1867. I opted for taking a Norwegian girls name and combining it with Mr Fay and expanding it to take into account the possibility of maiden names along the way.  Thus, Nora Whittington-Fay was born and the story was woven around her attempts to regain the family fortune while helping her godson through a nasty case of school bullying.

An entire story in The Magnificent Moustache and other stories, cunningly entitled, 

What’s in a Name? is dedicated to a chap with an inconveniently long name.  Trawling my memory of outlandish names which always make children laugh, I created Algernon Montgomery Lysander Ignatius Quentin Horatio Harold Ambrose Fitzwilliam Grantley-Ponsonby.  This unfortunate individual struggled to find his place in life since it took him so long to write his name on his school exam paper or job application that he inevitably failed to shine beyond that.  (Fear not, dear readers, he found his niche eventually, but do read it to find out!.) To avoid messing this up, I had to copy and paste it every time it cropped up in the tale.  Laborious but crucial.

I’ll continue this topic next month to avoid seriously exceeding my word limit here, but I’d be fascinated to know how you have chosen names for your own fictional characters.

Jenny Sanders has spent the last twelve years living between the UK and South Africa. She writes faith-inspired non-fiction: Spiritual Feasting (2020) asks how we can ‘feast’ when life serves unpalatable menus; Polished Arrows (2024), explores the allegory of God shaping us to be fired effectively into our culture and contexts.                 

She also has two published collections of humorous short stories for Key Stage 2 children and is available for author visits in primary schools, taking creative writing sessions.  She loves walking in nature, preferably by a river, and has a visceral loathing for offal, pineapple and incorrect use of car indicators on roundabouts.