What is in a Name?

By Rosemary Johnson

So that new royal baby is to be christened Archie Harrison Mountbatten.  My grandfather was Archibald, but he was usually known as Dad (even by my grandmother), or Grandad (by me).

When writing fiction, naming characters is very important.  Dickens brought to us wonderfully descriptive names, such as Smallweed and Pecksniff, and in the Bible names often had meaning, and were changed with the person’s circumstances.  For instance, in the Old Testament, God told Hosea to call his son Lo-ammi, which translated as ‘not of my people’, and Jesus gave Simon the name Peter, because he would be the rock on which he would build his church.

When we meet somebody in real life, we commit them to memory - and identify them later - through visuals (faces and the way they move) and what we hear, such as voices.  But, however well the author describes the character, what the reader sees in front of them, over and over again, is the name spelled out on the page.  Readers may mispronounce that name in their minds or, worse still, just take in the first letter.  How many times do we forget the name of the main character and think of him or her as ‘Oh… er…er… er… the one beginning with B’?

When we start creating a story, naming characters is one of the first things writers do.  Amongst other things, we consider the era in which the character was living, the region and social class.  In Victorian times, only girls in the servant class were likely to be given flower names, such as Violet or Rose.  Catholic parents may use saints’ names, such as Theresa or Francis, whereas, in the seventeenth century, the Puritans had their own Godly monikers such as Providence or Praise God.  In Islamic families, one brother must be called Mohammed.  By giving a character by name, we are already learning something about him or her and about the parents who chose it.

Foreign characters produce particular challenges.  However authentic the name you find for your non-English character, it must be one that English speakers can ‘translate’ in the head, such as the Turkish name Yasmin, or one that cuts across languages such as Anna.  I have struggled with this problem, writing a novel by involving a lot of Polish characters.

It is also important not to have too many characters’ names beginning with the same letter.  I say this having made exactly this mistake in my Polish novel, where too many names start the letter M (including the main character Marya).  I will need to make some changes, but this will hurt because I shall always think of the characters by their original names.  Message to self: next time you write a novel, Rosemary, choose names more carefully.

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, Cafe Lit, The Copperfield Review and 101 Words.  She has also contributed to Together magazine.  She has currently some competitions and is crossing her fingers.  In real life, she is a part-time IT tutor, living in Suffolk with her husband and cat.  Her cat supports her writing by sitting on her keyboard and deleting large portions of text.