By Any Other Name

Recently we talked about naming the setting for our new novel, but we haven’t talked much about naming characters. Up until we mentioned it, you probably didn’t even realize that characters should have names, right?

Obviously you know that your characters need good names, and that the names need to fit the genre you’re writing in. Instead of harping on that, or trying to explain what makes a good character name, we’re going to talk about how we come to an agreement on names for our characters.

In a nutshell, Jen does it. Kent has, shall we say, questionable taste in names. He’s usually happy to just pull a name out of the air and saddle some poor character with it forever. Jen, as we’ve mentioned before, loves backstory in every form, and will happily sit for hours poring over baby name books and websites in search of a name with the right feel for the new character. She gets to name the characters because she cares more.

That’s not to say that Jen has absolute authority over character names. Kent has veto power (usually), and even makes the occasional suggestion. Once she’s done making faces and explaining why his suggestion is wrong, Jen pats Kent on the head, rolls up her sleeves, and gets to work.

There are times when a character is presented to Kent with a complete name attached. More often, Jen will create a list of potential name combinations and together we will discuss pros and cons. For this new work, Sam was on the table as a possibility, but it turns out that pretty much whatever surname you put with that, Kent thinks it sounds like a noir detective. Since none of our characters are noir detectives, that ruled Sam out.

This process is another way to make sure you and your writing partner have the same image of a character. If one of you wants to name the heroine Felicity Fairchild and the other thinks she ought to be called Jinx, there’s a fundamental disconnect that needs to be rectified before you jump into composition. Iron out these bugs before you start and you’ll save yourselves a lot of headaches come editing time.

If neither you nor your partner have the naming bug, you could say that whoever creates the character, or writes their debut scene, gets the honor (or chore) of naming them. What method do you and your writing partner use?