What’s in a fictional name?

Are the names of fictional characters really important?  Many authors struggle over selecting names for their characters.  Some take several chapters to resolve their dilemma.  Fortunately, with the wonder of the modern word processor all it takes is a quick ‘find/replace all’ operation to globally change a character’s name.

Does the name define the character or does the character imbue the name with meaning?  As with most issues on creativity there is no right answer, or perhaps more correctly there’s a different right answer for each author.  Informally, I’d say three out of four authors I know (which is a substantially higher number than those who’ll admit knowing me), struggle with devising names for their characters.

Since I’m the only author (in either of those aforementioned groups) whose methodology I understand; I thought I’d go through my creative process – sounds almost oxymoronic doesn’t it – for naming characters in Misaligned: The Celtic Connection my YA fantasy.  At the risk of boring those few of you who’ve already read it, the story’s protagonist is a thirteen year old girl living in a small upstate NY town.  Her misalignment with our universe connects her to the Welsh origins of Arthurian legend.  How’s that for an 80K word story in two sentences?

Anyway, this led me to needing names for half a dozen primary characters and a supporting cast of a little over three dozen more.  I’ve always been fond of alliteration, so I wanted to use it in the lead character’s name.  I started her out as Penny Piper.  Her last name being a very loose translation of my own, but for some reason it didn’t sound right and I switched her to Penny Preston.

To satisfy my own vanity, I changed the name of her town to Piper Falls and named her parents (Harry & Kate) after me (again a very loose translation of my first name) and a familiar version of my wife’s name.  As an aside, I’ve always wanted to call my wife Cate instead of Cathy, but she’s never been overly taken by the idea. I can’t remember what I started with for her best friend’s name, but fairly early on I changed it to Duncan O’Brien.  I freely raided names from my elementary and high school mates for the other children in the story, although I never used a complete name from any of them.  I mixed first and last names to match sounds or feelings I was looking for and to avoid any unnecessary incidents should any of them actually read my book and make their own connection.

With roots in the Welsh version of Arthur, I plucked names from the legends for many of the other characters.  I also picked several Welsh and English names from lists of common first and surnames I found searching the internet.  I even borrowed one from Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick as a Brick.’  In addition to people, I needed names for the half-dozen or so mythical creatures I created.  I used names from Celtic myth, but with a healthy dose of writer’s license.

Is it worth it?

All in all, I spent a lot of time working out the names for the characters and creatures.  Does it change the way readers feel about my story?  I don’t know, and in the end I’m not sure it really matters.  I’m not saying that readers don’t matter, quite the opposite.  However, when I’m writing I’m not really writing for my readers.  I’m write for me.  If I don’t like it, well, I’m fairly certain my readers won’t either.  Of course, I’m just hoping that the converse of that is true.

Thanks for reading.

Armen