FOCUS ON FICTION: Don't Leave your characters hanging...
This poor character was written by someone who didn't invest any time in researching his name. For shame...
...A name lands in my lap, pre-packaged perfectly, representing a character so well that I have to laugh out loud at my own genius. This happened once... (maybe). In most cases, especially with peripheral persons in a novel or short story, nothing fits. Hours disappear filing through the alphabet, mouthing out syllables, waiting for lightning to strike. I don’t want the name to be utterly generic and forgettable, but I'm careful not to use a name that’s distracting, artificial, or downright stupid. And just because I like a name doesn't mean it's right for the story.
The problem is that dissatisfaction with a character’s name leads to a weak character, and that probably means I don’t know the character, or the story, well enough. Instead of going any further highlighting or bracketing the name, which is lazy and unfair to the trajectory of my narrative, it's time to figure out who this character really is.
A good place to start is with the library's collection of BABY NAME books. If you can't get past the idea of referring to a book intended for parenting (scary stuff!), there are some "name books" that don't talk about popularity, cuteness, or tease-potential. Click on these covers to find your copy:
Looking for region-specific naming resources? Consider checking out our Genealogy collection on the 4th Floor of Central library. These books are full of unusual names with historic significance. For example, I recently found a book titled Spanish Surnames in the Southwestern United States: a dictionary - it doesn't get more specific than that. The process of the search may not only lead to a perfect name, it may uncover narrative potential hiding deep in the story's conscious.
Putting in the work to get a character's name right is an important and rewarding research project. We have to live with our choice to the end. Just imagine literature without some of its great names. What if Doyle decided on, say, 'Sherman Hollister' instead of Sherlock Holmes? Would anyone have read Fight Club if Tyler Durden was named Tyler Donald?