What’s In A Name?

A few weeks ago, before I became immersed in lots and lots of work, somebody asked me about names.

At first I was puzzled, there was no clue as to the context of their query and then it became clear that the question concerned ‘making up names’. Names used in stories.

Where do authors get names from for their characters? Some writers look at the telephone directory; they search through or they open at random and stick a pin in the listings.

Sometimes they will scan the credits at the end of films and shows on TV but that can get you unstuck!

For example: there is a show currently on TV starring Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu called ‘Elementary’. It is yet another spin-off of the great Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ tales but set in New York. This is because everything happens in America and Americans are unable to associate with anything from anywhere else. The point here is that there is a name that appears early in the credits, it is a ‘Jill Footlick’. I do hope that she will forgive me for not knowing what her function on the show is although ‘Google’ now informs me that she is the Unit Production Manager and so her function is still a mystery to me.

That is, it seems, her real name. Yet if I, or any other author, were to make so bold as to use that name in a story then the story should, very likely, lose credibility.

The trick is that the names of our characters have to be realistic. Even aliens need to have names that smack of reality. Calling somebody ‘Sptzlk’ might look good on the back of a soccer player’s jersey but it bodes ill in the text of a novel.

(NB: There is a fellow who plays for Liverpool FC called Skrtl. No, really. I know of no other player who lacks vowels so emphatically!)

Apart from telephone directories, where else can we go? We search among our friends and, sometimes, family. We refer to words from other languages and cultures.

It is sometimes a twist on things we hear. A comedian called Russell Peters was making fun of Tamil names because they are inclined to be very, very long. Something he said clicked a word in my head that, after massaging, became ‘Desrabreshanyanay’. How did it happen? Who knows.  But the character in one of my novels is now called ‘Jer Desrabreshanyanay’; I have to say that it rolls off the (my?) tongue quite nicely!

Where did the likes of Harka’aani and Murekko’aani come from? Who can say? They are names that just popped into the head. The same with Ritta’aadu and Bimmana’aadu. Eventually we discover, from the second book and from the ‘prequel’ that Ritta’aadu was, originally ‘Rhittach’ until Harka’aani renamed her.

Who knows what aliens really call themselves? Fictitious aliens have to be called something that humans can connect with. That is why we have Luke Skywalker and Han Solo—not to mention Yoda!

Having a name that is, at least, almost realistic is an imperative. Using names that sound comedic in an otherwise serious situation is not going to sound convincing.

And yet we see names all the time where we definitely say, “What is that? Did somebody really call their baby THAT?”

Reality and fiction are far apart. Fiction just has to sound more real.