I’ll See your Copperfield and Raise you a Fezziwig

Cue Juliet:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Juliet is saying names don’t matter. If we called this plant a dung bucket instead of a rose, it wouldn’t change anything. It would still look and smell pretty. What we call something is unimportant.

 Juliet was wrong.

Names are important. Names are often the first thing we learn of someone. They can help to convey an initial emotional attachment. Look at some of the names that Dickens chose for his characters: Chuzzlewit, Cratchit, Fagin, Fezziwig, Grimwig, Honeythunder, Pardiggle, Pecksniff, Scrooge, Tulkinghorn. Without knowing anything about these characters, you can get some sort of feeling about them just from their names.  One can overdo this of course, it is not good to get overly descriptive with the names unless you are aiming for farce. But names should be carefully considered. They should add to, or at least not detract from the narrative.

When I am writing a story, when I am in the thick of it, I don’t necessarily want to stop and come up with a name for this new character I just introduced. One trick that I sometimes use is to use a temporary filler name like “Ffff” for a female character or “Mmmm” for a male character. After some time has passed and I have calmed down from a manic writing state, I can give some thought to what would work best for a name, what fits the character, what emotional pull do I want it to have. If I decide that the perfect name for her is Katarina, then I can just use the Find and Replace tool to substitute “Katarina” for “Ffff”.

I also tend to like relatively short, relatively simple names. First because it is easier to write “Mae” than it is to write Magdaleniana. Of course, I could use my substitute trick above and substitute it in without having to write it every time. But I have another reason for liking shorter, simpler names. I have pity on my readers. See, I am a reader first, a writer second. Sometimes I come across a name in a story that I don’t know how to pronounce or it is just so long that my brain gives up trying to pronounce it and I produce a brain mumble. I can do this unconsciously. I can find myself well into the story and realize I don’t know who anybody is. You need to be able to pronounce the name in your head if you are going to make an association with that character. If I find myself brain mumbling, I try to stop and actually sound it out (if the story is worth it). The genre that I usually write in is speculative fiction (fantasy and/or science fiction). I also like to read speculative fiction where this name issue can be a problem. See, if you are on an alien world or a far-flung future, or a magical kingdom, there are no rules for names. You can go crazy and name your character “Kthzhfrllpyxms” if you want. But you are making it hard on your reader, and if you have more than one character named like that, no one is ever going to be able to keep them straight.

I sometimes have the same problem with foreign names. I have read a fair amount of Russian literature and I can find myself tripped up by names that sound unfamiliar to my American ear. And on top of that, in a Russian story, a character could be referred to by his first name, his last name or a combination with his patronym (a patronym tell lineage: Ivanovich = son of Ivan or Ivanovna = daughter of Ivan). In Crime and Punishment, the main character is sometimes referred to as Rodion Raskolnikov or other times as Rodion Romanovich. If I am reading a good novel like Crime and Punishment, it is worth my time to stop and sort out the pronunciations and figure out the patronym rules. Then the story can come alive. And it is not Dostoevsky’s fault that I am not Russian.

But when I am writing, I don’t want to take my readers out of the story by assigning an unpronounceable name. I try to follow the same rule for place names too. Again, in fantasy or science fiction I could call a place anything I want, but if I want my readers to become acquainted with a place, I need to make the name accessible. Keeping a name simple and pronounceable does not mean it has to be bland. “Mordor” is a simple name invented by Tolkien, but it works well as a place of evil.

You should take time and thought when coming up with names, whether it is for a story, a song, or the name of your child. So, sweet Juliet, names are important. What’s in a name? A whole world.

(My science fiction novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Link to Star Liner