The Business of Naming Characters

I received this in an email this morning and thought all of my readers could appreciate it.

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." - Thomas Mann

And so we find ourselves discussing names, something that most people seem to take for granted. But characters with really awesome, iconic names, like Indiana Jones and James Bond, names that have themselves become a hallmark of good stories and a brand name of sorts, did not just spring into being overnight. Their authors and creators thought about them for a long, long time.

As the recent celebrity baby boom can attest, choosing the right name for your child (or character,) can be made into a big deal. And well it should be -- a name is a very, very important part of a person's identity, and something so sacred that in some cultures it is customary to give a child two names, a public one and a private name that only members of the family know or use.

One of the first hallmarks of a Mary Sue is a name -- normally when I see a story summary involving a girl named Serena Adelina Starchaser I run screaming in the opposite direction. It's too much, and who decided that Serena and Selena and Crystal and Mykenzye were all great names for a protagonist, anyway? And if you're naming your child Zaphod Beeblebrox, what kind of parent are you going to be when that child is old enough to hate you?

So, when you get around to naming a character, there are a few things to consider.

First, the gender of your character. I know this sounds kind of obvious, but I have a problem reading about a boy named Sue and a girl named Fred. Especially if you're writing a historical type story, the gender of the name is very important. Girls were not named Christina and called Chris in 1900 -- they were named Christina and stayed Christina.

That leads me to my next point -- time period appropriateness. I'm in the middle of writing a story that takes place during the Second Crusade, in approximately 1185. I cannot name my character Crystal. It will not work. However, most of the under fifteen crowd seem to think that Crystal is the coolest name on the planet and will insist on naming their Crusader's daughter Crystal. My character's name is Audemande, because back in the 12th century, names like Agnes, Audemande and Hildegarde were hot sellers.

Think about what the primary literary influences of the period were. In my case, it's the Bible and the occasional Roman-Latin leftover like Sybilla. Hannah, Agnes, Anna, and Miriam are all appropriate choices. Crystal will only work if your character is a scion of anyone after 1990. End of story. If a major historical figure has that name, chances are it will work for you. Do you see a bunch of queens named Crystal running around? I don't either.

(By the way, if your name is Crystal, don't think that I have it out for all people with that name. It just bothers me when Fanfiction authors seem to think it's the be-all and end-all on cool names. There are so many more.)

After considering that, look at geographic location. Let's return to my Audemande example. Audemande is from Poitou, a region in southwestern France. Originally, the character was named Godeleve, but Godeleve is an English name, and not appropriate for someone who speaks Occitan French. Crusaders generally came from France, Italy, Germany, and a very few from Spain (which was under the control of the moors for some time during this period) and England.

If you're writing a sci-fi or fantasy character, all bets are off. The rules that I've given here do not apply, but there are others that do. Think about cultural associations with your names -- in Dune or Star Wars, most of the characters have kind of wild names like Mace Windu and Liet Kynes or only moderately wild names like Luke Skywalker and Paul Atredies, also called Muad'Dib. Don't go around naming your Star Wars characters Tessica Clouddancer or something because 'It sounds like Skywalker!' All Clouddancer sounds like is camp, kitsch, and My Little Pony. And honestly, if you've got pink plastic ponies in your Star Wars story, you need help. And Tessica? It sounds like Tapioca to me.

When I talk about cultural associations, I mean researching the foundation the author of your fandom (or yourself, if it's an original character) meant for the characters. In Lord of the Rings, the Saxons were a base for the Rohirrim. So, I've got Saxon names for my Rohirric characters. In Dune, the Arabs and Muslims play a big role in the culture of Arrakis and the Fremen, which is why the characters go around shouting Arabic exclamations and going on jihad.

On the subject of using your own name, for any story, realistic or fantasy, my advice is this -- DON'T. When people criticize your character, it'll feel too much like they're criticizing you. I've used diminutives of my name and even stayed in the same letter province (my name, both online and in real life, begins with an M) but I've never used my real name in a story.

The meaning of a character's name generally means little to a reader of fanfiction. Unless someone in your story makes a joke about how your character Colomba (which means 'dove' in Latin, for the record) always wears white and looks like a dove, then don't bother with heavy handed name symbolism. Your character's name is not something they gave themselves (unless in very exclusive cases) and therefore is only a very pale reflection of the essence of that character.

Let's do a quick drive-by of characters that I've written and why I named them what I did. This is a chronological list, more or less, so you can see how the pattern changes.

Gabrielin -- LOTR. An elf of Mirkwood. This is one of my earliest characters, which is why her name doesn't fit with the generally accepted naming scheme of LOTR characters. I thought it was a pretty name when I discovered it, and decided to use it. She also appears in a Harry Potter story I wrote as Gabrielin Malfoy. In that case, Gabrielin is perfectly appropriate for the Magical world; a little strange and oddly mystic sounding, she fits right in with the Minerva McGonagalls and Hermione Grangers of the wizarding community.

Rhoswen -- LOTR. A woman of Gondor. Here is a name I chose because of its meaning, White Rose, and whose meaning does come up in the story; She is a very beautiful woman and is called the White Rose of Gondor because of that. Boromir (her love interest) also makes many references throughout the story to tending flower gardens and pruning rose bushes because of her name. Since this is a fairly obvious comparison, I didn't draw too much flak over it. In fact, Rhoswen's one of my best loved characters.

Phaetis -- Homer. A daughter of Apollo who goes to Troy to fight with the Greeks. Phaetis is a character many of my readers don't know about because I'm one of the only people on the planet who enjoys reading Homeric epic poetry. She's a Greek, she gets a Greek name.


Gabrielle Campion -- National Treasure. Gabrielle is a woman of the 21st century, so she gets an appropriately 21st century name. Her family's French, so her name is also, appropriately, French.

Astrid Sigurd's Daughter -- A Norsewoman and heroine in the epic style. Astrid is an original character I wrote for an independent study project in high school. Her story was a 43 page epic poem written in the style of Beowulf, so like Beowulf, she needed to have a suitably Scandinavian sounding name. Some of the other characters in this story didn't fair so well on the accurate naming front. The prince she rescues is named Aracin, which is Welsh. I probably should have named him Hunlaf or Gunnar.

Margaret Ramsden-- Narnia. A college student with Peter. Margaret was born in the 1920s in England, so her name had to be one of those old English standby names that come up tirelessly from 1200 to 2000. Anne, Margaret, Jane, Elizabeth. All safe bets when you're naming an English character. My name is also a diminutive of Margaret, which added to the allure of writing an almost self-insertive character. My readers, of course, didn't know that.

Meredith Lords -- POTC. A pirate captain in the Caribbean. Meredith is a name I love immensely, so I had to use it for my spunky, spitfire POTC OC. Another name chosen for the period-appropriateness of it.

Mercy Otis Warren Gates -- National Treasure. Ben and Abigail's daughter. Anyone with any American history background at all will be able to point out the proclivity to American colonial historical figures as names for the Gates family. Benjamin Franklin Gates, Patrick Henry Gates, you get the picture. Mercy Otis Warren was a female playwright during the American revolution, and her brother, James Otis, was a prominent figure as well.

Rhiannwyn -- Narnia. The daughter of the Queen under the Mountain. In a name taken from Welsh Myth, Rhiannwyn is based on a character I rp'd with for many years, Rheas. Since the name of the mother of the founders of Rome wasn't quite Narnia-fied yet, I chose something that sounded similar and had a few more mystic associations for this Daughter of the Sun.

Procne -- 300. A Spartan woman. Another character a lot of people don't know about (because unlike her sister Phaetis, she's never been published) Procne is a name taken from Greek myth. I don't remember which one, because that part wasn't important.

George Darcy -- Pride and Prejudice. Darcy and Elizabeth's son. The Regency is also known as the Georgian Period, because during that time two Georges, the 3rd and 4th, were ruling. There's also speculation that Fitzwilliam's parents were named George and Anna (hence Darcy's sister, Georgiana) so the practice of borrowing praenomen would also apply here. The only male OC on this list, he's very near and dear to my heart.

Evelyn Langford -- Dead Poets Society. Evelyn's family comes from a lot of money, so it's right and proper that her name's a little pretentious. She goes by Evie (partially because it's easier to type and partially because I love Rachel Wiesz's character Evie O'Connell in the 'Mummy' films) most of the time.

Aleybis -- Narnia. Ramandu's daughter, a Star. Naming a pre-existing character is hard work, mainly because there had to be a reason the author didn't name them in the first place, and you're afraid of what everyone will think of what you do decide to call them. This is a name I came up with off the top of my head and decided sounded pretty. Being a Star, it had to sound foreign enough to be Narnia-fied, but easy enough to pronounce. This name sounds vaguely Dutch to me, but I've googled it and the number of responses (15) to my query have assured me it's not a common name.

Beth Danderidge -- Age of Innocence. A debutante of 1900s New York. Beth was a character that popped into my head without a name, and as such, got one of those good standbys to use when finding a historical name is a little hard. The turn of the century is difficult because it's too late to be true Victorian, and not really Edwardian yet either. As for her last name, well -- she's inheriting a rather large sum of money. She's entitled to a frivolous last name like Vanderbilt or Danderidge.

Portia Demetrios -- Batman Begins, Dark Knight -- My Batman OC, Portia's another character who needed to show a little nationality in her name. If you didn't get it, her family's Greek. Portia's also a name I admire for the women who've borne it before, namely Shakespeare's two heroines, Brutus's wife Portia in Julius Caesar and Benvolio's love interest Portia in The Merchant of Venice. A name that inspires powerful images, Portia's position as the head of a multinational company backs up her name.

There are lots of tools to help you name a character. The dozens of baby naming sites and random generators you'll find on the web are good to start with, but also sites like Saint Gabriel and The US Census Bureau will help you with period appropriate lists. (For common names in a certain decade, I use this site -- http://www.weddingvendors.com/baby-names/)

After you've gotten your first name down, the last name is just as important. Some characters will not have last names, because believe it or not, they're a fairly recent innovation. Before about 1300, most characters would have been called by their father or mother's name (Astrid Sigurdsdottir) or identified by the province they were from or the land their family held (Audemande of Vinceaux, Godfrey of Ibelin) Early last names are also diminutives of personal attributes or occupations. People with the last name Baker...came from a family of bakers.

It's important to pay attention to last-naming cultural traditions, too. It's still common in some Scandanavian countries to continue that Sigurdsdottir/Sigurdson naming. If your character is, let's say, Welsh, you'll have to find a good Welsh last name, like Powlett-Jones, to suit. You can't say your private eye is Spanish and then give him a name like Dave Jensen. Spike Velasco sounds so much more cool.

If you find a name site you like using, bookmark it. I have an entire folder of bookmarks labeled "Writing Refs" for things like last names, first names, language translators, and folk song lyrics. Just make sure that these sites are legit for the purposes you're using them for. Period appropriate names are sometimes hard to find, or worse yet, mislabeled.

So that's naming your characters. Now you're properly armed to enter the wide world of fanfiction with a character who at least has the good sense to have a spiffy (and un-ridiculous) name. And if you see any Crystals walking around, tell them I said hello.

Post-Blog Quiz-- Name three of the books/tv shows/songs I obliquely reference in this blog post. Dune and Star Wars don't count. I'll comment back and tell you if you're right. (Serious Pop Culture Points if you can name find all of them.)

Outsourcing- the New Colonialism

Yesterday I went to see the movie "Outsourced" (See the official site) at the Gene Siskal Film Center in Chicago. If any of you reading this blog get a chance to go see it or see that it's playing in your area, GO. It is a funny, intelligent, well-thought out piece of filmmaking, an independent that looks and sounds like a mainstream romantic comedy with a liberal helping of a few college professors of economics thrown in.

The movie centers around Todd Hamilton, a thirtysomething working as a supervisor in the Wish Fulfillment (fancy term for order-taking) section for Western National Novelty Company, an Oriental Trading post type shindig that sells hokey kitsch (a word that makes an appearance in the film to much hilarity) to Americans across the country. Then Todd's told his job is being outsourced -- and that he has to go train the new call center people to get their MPI (minutes per incident, or amount of time taken talking to the customers) down to six minutes. It's a thankless job, one that involves getting to the small town where the call center is located, surviving some of the local cuisine, and trying to figure out the nuances of Indian culture. He makes friends, falls in love, and gradually learns to like India, a transformation that's shown rather brilliantly in the film by a baptism of sorts in a river and the ensuing changes in the way Todd dresses.

But what makes the film really resonate is the way Todd at the beginning of the movie has a hard time dealing with Indian culture. He wants his employees to sell their kitsch and move on. But there are cross cultural barriers that need to be fumbled over first, and Todd, at the beginning of the movie, doesn't understand that. He's another colonialist, part of the new colonialism -- the outsourcing movement. But the Indian people who are working with him understand that, and they tell him straight out that he needs to understand India if he wants to get this to work, a very post-colonial idea. One of the characters (the future love interest) stands in in a staff meeting after Todd has just told them they need to learn to speak English and tells him, flat out, "English is the first language of the government here in India. We got it from the British and so did you."

Todd does some other colonizing, too -- he sets up an incentive program to push the MPI down by using some of the products that the employees are selling, like a Packers cheesehead (which he has a hard time explaining the use of at a staff meeting) and a hot dog cooker. His boss calls him angrily after he's placed the order and asks him why he should ship these products half way around the world. Todd replies "Because I want to introduce them to a market of about a billion people." The boss then replies, cool as a cucumber, "I can have them there by Friday." Just like the British, Todd and Western National are conquering to open up new markets.

Bottom line, Outsourced was a great movie with a message for people who wanted to find it and a good story and some first-rate comedy for those who just want to sit and eat their popcorn. It's on my list of DVDs to purchase now.

Keys to Writing Good Historical Fiction

Okay, we've covered how to write a good review. Now we have to get down to the writing task, and I'm going to talk about something that I know a little bit about: Writing good Historical Fiction.

Now obviously the best people who write about historical things are the people who were there. No one, repeat, NO ONE, will write the Regency like Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackaray did, because -- big surprise here -- they lived it. C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brien will draw close seconds, but no one can compare to the originals.

But we love writing historical fiction. I love reading it. I'm not just talking about novels, I'm talking about fanfiction, too. Jane Austen fanfics get published all the time. And there are some things to consider when we consider those fanfics and our humble little offerings.

There are two things standing between the Jane Austen section at ff.net and the publishing house at Scholastic.

One is volume of content.

The other is research. Yes, research, ladies and gentlemen, that lovely word that sends college students scurrying to their corners and high school teenagers screaming to their teachers about how hard the class is. Nothing ruins a historical peice faster than to find that someone has not done their research-

I hate to rain on an otherwise very promising and enjoyable passage, but paper bags weren't invented (or in wide use, sources seem to differ) until the early 1850s. Their pastries would have simply been wrapped in paper and then placed in a basket one of the woman probably had brought. Ah, the good old days before the epic paper or plastic bag decision. Anyway, small note, doubt anyone else besides me noticed, still a very cute passage.

Yes, that is an actual review by me, and yes, I did actually go and look up when paper bags were invented because it bugged me. And I'm not the only one. So here are a few things to consider when writing in a historical context.

• MONEY- It will make a big difference to your story whether people are carrying around Bank of England notes or gold bezants. Find out what people were using for money -- a 'gold coin' isn't going to impress your readers as much as florins, guiders, and guineas are. Especially if you can find how they convert to today's money.
  
• MODES OF TRAVEL- Nothing breaks up a good history more than "The hero left town, and using his horse, traveled across all of England to arrive with his battalion the next night on the opposite coast."A horse does not travel that fast. Find out how people are going from point A to point B, and how long it's going to take to get there. Edith Wharton makes a big to-do about the Brown Coupe people take home from the Opera, and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath wouldn't be the same without the beat-up car they drive around in. Transportation is everything.
• CLOTHES. A skirt is de rigeur attire for women from William of Normandy to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but skirts have changed a lot in that time frame. Find out what your people are wearing, down to their shoes and underwear! (This just in -- people did not always have Hanes.) This is the fun part, because you, the author, get to look at lots of pictures! You can watch movies, too, but any period film before, say...the advent of Technicolor film is bound to be a little iffy on period accuracy. The more recent (and big budgeted) the film, the more accurate the costumes will PROBABLY be. There are no guarantees. Your best bet is still books. This is also a really good way to immerse yourself in the culture -- how women and men are dressing will tell you a lot about acceptable behavior. For instance, you can't run in a floor length skirt. Believe me on this one -- I've tried.
  
• MUSIC- Find out what the favorite tunes were. The mood alters significantly if you're playing Flo-Rida as opposed to Frederic Chopin. If you can find it, listen to it while your writing. I'm in the middle of a story about the Crusades and I've been listening to Gregorian Chant, Provencal chansons, and the Kingdom of Heaven Soundtrack until my headphones were tired. Music is evocative -- use it and muse it.
• PASTIMES -- People did not always have monopoly for rainy days. When you were bored, you could not always pull up a game of solitaire on your computer. Chess is a good standby, but there are other games. Cards have been popular since the 1400s, but Poker and Go Fish were not always the games of choice. Find out what people did when they weren't talking to each other and moving the plot along. Who knows -- they could do this activity AND move the plot.
  
• RANK AND POSITION WITHIN SOCIETY. Believe it or not, doctors were not always as respected as they are today. In the 1700s, for instance, many 'doctors' (or physicians, as they were then called, were quacks and the real medical know-how came from men called barber surgeons. Find out who's who, and why.
• FORMS OF SPEECH AND DEPORTMENT. Somehow I can't see Mr. Darcy greeting Charles Bingley in a ballroom with a hearty "Yo, Whaddup, dawg?" and pounding it like some young men would do today. It's just not done, to use the Wharton phrase. People today do not talk the way people did hundreds of years ago -- you need to remember this and implement it. If you use a phrase with your friends, chances are you DON'T want to use it with your characters. If you have trouble with this, go to the original source. Maybe you don't know how people talked during the Civil War, but I'm certain Mr. Mark Twain does.
• POLITICAL STRUCTURES. It makes a big difference in a story if there's a monarchy or a democracy or a communist Soviet in place. Find out who was ruling who (and how they were doing at it) before you begin writing.
  
• CURRENT EVENTS. Nothing warms my heart more than to see small and often stupid references to things that would have been going on in the world at the time. If you're character is in a bar during the 1910s, how's the war going? (Props if you asked yourself which one.) Have we whooped the Kaiser yet? How are the Bolshies doing? Have those darned Irish stopped making a fuss about independence already? (Those were the three conflicts I can think of from 1910-1920, anyway.) If it's set in the 1830s, are your characters discussing how wrong they think it is that a woman (Victoria) is in line for the throne and will probably get it? Things like this really set the scene for the rest of what's happening, and they set the tone of your characters actions.

Finally, and very importantly, that Elephant in the Room,

• GENDER ROLES. We live in a very different world from the heroines of Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton, even Sylvia Plath, and unfortunately, women have not always been able to run around in combat zones (they're still not really, actually) and run businesses and represent people in Congress. Additionally, men were once upon a time very concerned with how they dressed and being 'fashionable' and caring about exactly how you looked was not always considered 'gay' as it sometimes seems to be labeled nowadays. Find out how people were expected to behave. Were women allowed to read at this point in history? Were men allowed to date a girl without asking her dad first?
  

Hopefully this list has given you some ideas to think about, perhaps not for a first copy of a story, but maybe for a revision or editing of a previously published work. This is what separates the published authors from the unpublished ones. It's called Research, and it is hard work.

Response to Big Books read

A person whose opinion I value highly has just pointed out to me the flaws of my reading of 46 books on the big books read list, and I think I should perhaps point out some things that will skew that data.

Of the 46 books on the list, only 28 of them I chose to read by myself. (yes, ONLY 28. I'm very strange like that) Some of them are children's books. Some of them were books I only read to acquaint myself with the movie, which was starring one of my favorite actors. (Anna Karenina, which I dislike thoroughly along with most of Tolstoy's work, springs to mind)

And certainly I thought there were a lot of books that I've really enjoyed and considered great literature that weren't on there, and some books that I didn't think were great literature were on there anyway. Edith Wharton was sadly not there- I love The Age of Innocence, and the fact that it won a Pulitzer could matter less to me. I think it's great, evocative writing.

On the issue of black authorship, I will be the first to admit that I am highly deficient in that subject, mainly because I have not been exposed to much of it. The only book I read by a black author in school was Beloved, by Toni Morrison, which, while a great work of writing, I didn't enjoy reading at all. I do not think I would ever be prompted to read one of her books again on my own because, simply put, the first one did not move me.

One author I'd be delighted to read more of is Ernest J. Gaines, whose Lesson Before Dying was a stirring and beautiful peice that, if memory serves, caused me to tear up a little. He is not on the list, but his book was brilliant. So also was his 'A Gathering of Old Men' which was a great piece and just a cool exercise in trying to piece together a narrative from the viewpoints of many different people. I read both of those books because a teacher recommended them to me after we read part of A Gathering of Old Men in a Creative writing class and I mentioned wanting to read the rest of it because the subject and style interested me.

Last Semester with Sister Mara we read an article about a white scholar doing academic work with Toni Morrison's work and her novel Sula kept coming up. Several interesting quotes were raised and I might, if my summer permits, read that. I've been on a memoir-non fiction streak so far; I read the last two of Frank McCourt's memoirs, Reading Lolita in Tehran (which was amazing) and am now trying (and failing) to get through Queen Bees and Wannabes, the book that inspired Mean Girls. The Bookseller of Kabul is another book that is on my list, along with anything else I'll pick up at the book rescue where I'm volunteering.

People often say "Don't judge a book by it's cover." Perhaps I should try "Don't judge a book by the picture on it's dust jacket."