Character Names

[higley]

Names are a tricky thing. You want them to be memorable, relatable, possibly catchy. I keep thinking of Faulkner's Joe Christmas, one of my favorites for some reason. Then there are ones that make you cringe a little, because they're fantastical in a sense that they are too idealistic. Like, I guess, that Bella Swann kid from the Twilight books. I haven't read more than a chapter of the first (it was enough), but the name grates me--like it was chosen just because it sounded cool and there was no real significance to it. Not everybody in real life has an awesome name, but they make it memorable because of their own brilliance of character. RP McMurphy, Holden Caulfield.

What are your favorite/least favorite names you've encountered in a work of fiction? Doesn't matter if it's a classic or not. Why do you like or dislike it? Do you tend to like names that are ordinary, or more 'out there'?

Some beefs I get with names in current novels is that they're very trendy or they're ridiculous spellings of common names, often with unnecessarily repeated consonants like three Ys in a row. My friend complains that her middle name, Jade, is constantly abused in fiction and she has a point. At the same time, I love it when an unusual name is placed well. Humbert Humbert. Anybody from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Many of Faulkner's names. Several of the Harry Potter names. And Sherlock Holmes, of course. :)

[joao_oliveira]

Dickens, Mark Twain... hell, how could they think of such "catchy" names?

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

hehe yes, Uriah Heep is a great name.

[Honest]

I hate Shakespeare's characters' names. I like easy and common names..
Good subject.

[stlukesguild]

Yep. That's what makes for good art. Something simple. No big names. No big words. Don't wanna think too much.:rolleyes:

[JacobF]

Philip K. Dick always gives interesting and strange names to his characters. Shadrach Jones, Frank Frink and Horselover Fat come to mind. Not sure if they're my favourite, but they're probably the most memorable of names I have encountered. And unlike Honest I think I like Shakespeare's names the best. You can remember them and attach them to their characters easily, and they simply sound awesome. Polonius, Shylock, Claudius, Othello, so many great names. There's no names I've encountered that are necessarily bad, though when I started reading War and Peace the names got so confusing because the characters were always referred to by their entire first and last names (plus, they were long-winded).

[Mariamosis]

hehe yes, Uriah Heep is a great name.

Ah yes... Uriah Heep, Wilkins Micawber, Ham Peggotty, Tommy Traddles ..... all great names!

[PoeticPassions]

Humbert Humbert is great,I agree. I also like Shakespeare's names... but my other favorite character names are:

Steppenwolf (Harry Haler), by Hesse
Prince Myshkin, from The Idiot
Gavroche from Les Miserables
Yossarian

I'll think of more later, I am sure :)

[BienvenuJDC]

Humbert Humbert is great,I agree. I also like Shakespeare's names... but my other favorite character names are:

Steppenwolf (Harry Haler), by Hesse
Prince Myshkin, from The Idiot
Gavroche from Les Miserables
Yossarian

I'll think of more later, I am sure :)

I would agree about Yossarian... Catch 22...right?

[PoeticPassions]

I would agree about Yossarian... Catch 22...right?

Yep; such a great book.

[sixsmith]

Bellow has great names. Augie March, Moses Herzog etc

I also love Cormac McCarthy's names which seem to capture the essence of his characters so well. The Judge, Suttree, even John Grady Cole.

I'm not a big fan of Pynchonian names. They're hardly ever funny and so just come across as a lazy and failed attempt to be funny. (See even the name is whacky, it fits into this zany and boisterous world i have created).

[librarius_qui]

Bilbo Baggins

Thorin Oakenshield
Balin
Dwalin
Bifur
Bofur
Bombur
Fili
Kili
Nain
Dain
... & I still miss 3 of them~

Too late to take the book from the shelf. Tomorrow it'll be.

Ori and Dori ...

1 to go.

& Gloin---

[JBI]

Yep. That's what makes for good art. Something simple. No big names. No big words. Don't wanna think too much.:rolleyes:

Yes, but if the names are all similar and simple, you end up stuck in Macondo.

[Wilde woman]

Yes, but if the names are all similar and simple, you end up stuck in Macondo.

Haha, true that!


I would agree about Yossarian... Catch 22...right?

Catch-22 has such great names. Milo Minderbinder, Lieutenant Schiesskopf, Captain Aardvark (Aarfy), Hungry Joe, Major Major Major Major, General Peckem, Chief White Halfoat, Nately's whore, the Soldier who sees everything twice, and (my personal favorite) the maid with the lime-colored panties! :D

I also like Hawthorne's names: Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Dr. Heidegger, Aylmer, etc.

[ThousandthIsle]

Oooh, very tricky indeed. I've always been in awe of how some authors have added such depths to names I previously regarded as boring, obvious, or even aversive (Jane/Jane Eyre, Anna/Anna Karenina, Dick/Tender is the Night, to name a few).

[libernaut]

there is a really cool character name generator as wellas resource for names and foreign names and also cat dog bird and reptile names on this website

www.languageisavirus.com

it also is a valuable rescource for other things involving creative writing, good luck

[Pecksie]

There's no names I've encountered that are necessarily bad, though when I started reading War and Peace the names got so confusing because the characters were always referred to by their entire first and last names (plus, they were long-winded).

You probably mean their first names and patronymics. That's the Russian form of referring to someone without being too solemn or excessively familiar.

[cacian]

not a fan of Algernon. I can't work the pronunciation.
''Algernon is a given name which derives from the Norman-French soubriquet Aux Gernons, meaning "with moustaches". ''

[PeterL]

not a fan of Algernon. I can't work the pronunciation.
''Algernon is a given name which derives from the Norman-French soubriquet Aux Gernons, meaning "with moustaches". ''

But it worked in "Flowers for Algernon".

[MANICHAEAN]

I love eccentric names. Evelyn Waugh came up with some great ones, which for the moment escape me.
Others I would like to use in future writing are:
1. Lovelace Hillary.
2. Fiona Ffrench.
3. Peaches Malone.
4. Gaylord Thornbush.

[kev67]

I am reading a book in which the main character is called Lionel Asbo. It was Lionel Pepperdine, but he changed it to Asbo. Asbo stands for Anti-Social Behaviour Order.

The narrator of Lolita is called Humbert Humbert. It's a strange thing to do to give a child the same first name as surname.

I quite like some of Larry McMurphy's characters' names from the Lonesome Dove series. My favourite is Captain (Woodrow) Call, but even some of the minor characters' names are memorable, such as Jasper Fant. There is a terrifying Red Indian in one of the books called Buffalo Hump.

J.R.R. Tolkein was good at names. Bilbo Baggins is a good name, as were Gandalf, Smaug, Gollum and Thorin Oakenshield.

There were a lot of satirical names in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. My favourite was Sir Graball d'Enclosedland.

John Le Carre went to some effort to give his characters uncommon names in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The only problem is that I struggle to remember any of them except George Smiley. After dredging my memory for five minutes, the only other I can remember is Percy Analine.

I suppose Atticus Finch is a good name. Boo Radley is good too.

Rudyard Kipling's characters in the Jungle Book are good: Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Shere Khan.

[cacian]

But it worked in "Flowers for Algernon".

hi Peterl how do you mean it worked in this title?

[Sweetgirl]

I love unusual names as they strike me more than just your ordinary names. Some of my favorites include: Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Calpurnia, Heck Tate...

[Lykren]

It's fun when a name somehow matches or contrasts with the character's personality. Kitty is a good name for the character; it makes me think of the lines in the Alex Chilton song: "And when I set my eyes on you/You look like a kitty/And when you're in the moon/Oh, you look so pretty. That's Kitty.

It's not his full name, but Lord Jim is a fitting appellation. The grandeur of 'Lord' combined with the commonness of of 'Jim' fits with the struggles and tragic (yet also noble) failures of the protagonist.

Lady Murasaki is good, of course: it springs from the following poem from the novel: "How glad I would be to pick and soon to make mine that little wild plant sprung up from the very root shared by the murasaki." Murasaki means purple, and in the poem it actually refers to Genji's earlier lover, who is Lady Murasaki's aunt (though Lady Murasaki later becomes Genji's lover as well). So he is struggling, it seems to me, with the problems we encounter when our love is divided, and we are in a period of painful transition between emotional states.

Sebastian Flyte is rather good, as it captures the character's lightness of spirit and lightness of mind.

Qingwen's name (she is a character from Dream of the Red Chamber) means 'sunny multicolored clouds' according to Wikipedia. That's rather beautiful, though it may not be accurate.

Those are my contributions.

[ennison]

A patronymic is very formal and informative.

[Nick Capozzoli]

It's fun when a name somehow matches or contrasts with the character's personality...

Yes. I disagree with an earlier poster who said that Shakespeare did not use catchy character names. My favorite is Cordelia. Most
etymologies claim that the name means "lion's heart." I think that in this case Shakespeare meant it to mean "apparent (i.e. "open")
heart," which fits very well with her character in King Lear.

As such, it derives from Latin and Greek:

"Cor"= heart + "δήλωση"=apparent.

[kelby_lake]

Names are a tricky thing. You want them to be memorable, relatable, possibly catchy. I keep thinking of Faulkner's Joe Christmas, one of my favorites for some reason. Then there are ones that make you cringe a little, because they're fantastical in a sense that they are too idealistic. Like, I guess, that Bella Swann kid from the Twilight books. I haven't read more than a chapter of the first (it was enough), but the name grates me--like it was chosen just because it sounded cool and there was no real significance to it.

It is blindingly 'significant'. Bella is the archetypal ugly duckling turned into a beautiful swan.

[kelby_lake]

I hate Shakespeare's characters' names. I like easy and common names..
Good subject.

Right...

Character names... Jane Eyre, Maxim de Winter, Lolita, Damon Wildeve, Eustacia Vye...Hardy had some great character names in particular.

[108 fountains]

I'll sometimes use Google to search the etymology or meaning of a name when I write stories. I have one story called "The Dark Room" where two of the main characters' names are Lucy and Melanie (with the meaning of light and dark, respectively), and their roles in the story correspond to the meaning of their names.

[108 fountains]

Dick Swiveller, Sophie Wackles, Daniel Quilp, Job Trotter, Uriah Heep, Wackford Squeers, Captain Cuttle, Solomon Gills, Oliver Twist, Fagin, Wilkins Micawber, Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Thomas Gradgrind, Mr. Mc'Choakumchild - Dickens was a master at creating memorable names.

[PeterL]

hi Peterl how do you mean it worked in this title?

It seemed to fit the character. It is an unusual and sort of clumsy name. Before I read that, the name Algernon conjured the idea of an old-fashioned and sort of clumsy and weak person (don't ask me why; that was just an impression). After I read Flowers for Algernon I had the image of the main character as my model for Algernon. It worked as a title, because it was never a common name, and the main character was not ordinary.