A Dozen Zyglips for the Lady!

A ROSE WOULD STILL SMELL..

In one of his play’s Shakespeare tells us that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.  But what if it was originally named a zygkrip?  Does that sound like something you’d stick under your nose?  Can you imagine calling the florist and telling them to send a dozen long-stemmed zygkrips to your wife for her birthday?  Maybe names do matter.

How do you pick names for your characters when you are writing?  Do you have a list of unused names by your desk and you just pick one?  Do you agonize over getting just the right sound out of a name for the bad guy who does terrible things to the good guy?  Where do your names come from?

I’m sure we all have different methods for naming characters.   I have one I’ve been using for years and it seems to work very nicely for me.  I use the same names to begin with in everything I write.  Huh?  Say what?  I know writers who come up with a character and then spend hours or sometimes days trying to come up with the perfect name.  To me, that’s a waste of time that could be used elsewhere.  My method eliminates that completely.

My first male character in anything I write is always called “Mike.”  My first bad guy is “Harry.”  The first woman is “Linda.”  These are names of friends and family and I know I’ll change them but I have to get to know the characters better before I re-name them.  If I give my killer the name “Charles” when he is first introduced, I may find out that he was called Charlie when he was little and Chuck in the bank where he stole the money and by the time the police catch him, I’ve decided I wanted him to be Lester all along.  It’s a name that fits his persona.

For me, characters tend to take on a life of their own and sometimes suggest their names.  My Johnny Morocco P.I. series is set in a pool room in Atlanta, GA in the early 1950’s.  Everyone in the place has a nickname because most of them are running from something, even if it’s life. Anonymity is important to them, so I have Babe, Slick, Preacher, Crip, Hockey Doc and others as needed.  Each nickname fits the character better than calling them George, Harold, Robert or Dwight.

Think about the characters you like from past books and movies. Would you have wanted your mother or father to read you a story about “Fred the Apple Guy,” or “Johnny Appleseed?”  Would you rather be defended in court by ‘’Thurman Bingley Seligman III” or “Atticus Finch?”

For the first time, I recently participated in a charity auction at my Rotary Club where I let them auction the naming of two characters in an upcoming release.  The book had already been written and was in editing when the auction happened and I had to go back and change the name of two characters.  Fortunately, the winners were both women and changing the names was not a problem.  And even better, the names fit the characters very nicely. 

I plan to offer that again, but next time it will be prior to finishing the book, so I can make certain all the parties involved get their money’s worth.  It worked out great this time, but I don’t want a future character to give me a problem when I have to change both his or her name and sex because of a high bidder.