What's in a Name?

By Claire Booth

When I do a book event, one of the most frequent questions I get is how I come up with character names. It’s a good question and one I love to answer, because I love collecting names.

One of the best ways is to read the obituaries. Not only do they have a fantastic variety of names, they often give you the background behind it. You can find out that the person was a Croatian immigrant, or of Chinese ancestry, or hailed from a huge family in Indiana. All of these bits of information can more fully develop a character as you write.

Another great way to collect names is to watch the credits of a movie or TV show. Because—just, wow. The credits on something like an animated movie or CG-heavy blockbuster go on for ten minutes and are absolutely diverse. Watch one at home, where you can hit pause and write down whatever names strike your fancy.

If you need more of a mainstream name or you want to peg your time period just right, there’s no better source than the Social Security Baby Names website. You can find the top baby names by year. So if you’re writing a historical piece, you can find the top names from, say, 1890. (Number 10 was Bertha—see how awesome a tool this is?) You can also sort by name popularity, seeing how one name fluctuates over time. (Bertha, you will not be surprised to hear, declines steadily and disappears from the top 1,000 names altogether in 1985.) Be warned—this website is a rabbit hole of extreme dimensions. You could get sucked in for hours.

My last go-to name source is actually meant to be a name source: baby name books. I have one that sits right next to my thesaurus on my desk; it’s that important. I flip through it all the time.

If you write, where do you find names? And if you don’t write, do you read obituaries or notice movie credits?

What's in a Name?

Naming characters can be a nightmare. I've heard it said editors will reject a manuscript simply due to a character sharing the name of a former partner or person they don't like. While I think that's more myth than fact, contrived to illustrate how subjective rejections can be sometimes, getting character names right is very tricky.

Brian once told me he was reading a book with a character named Brianna and reached a sex scene she was in. He couldn't read it.

Chalk that up to having a daughter with the same name, even if the spelling is different. Names can have powerful associations.

Thanks to a recent Publisher's Weekly review of The Spying Moon, I'm reminded that I have a quirk with names. I was reading the review and really surprised by the references to Kendall. All the promo and back copy refers to Moreau. She's a cop and is referenced by surname throughout 99% of the story.

And there's kind of a deal with her name. She doesn't volunteer her first name until she feels comfortable with someone, which is very deep into the book. One of her colleagues - who can be a real jerk - thinks her name is Casey... but even when that was used by someone else it was K.C. because those are her initials.

It reminded me that one of my characters in Suspicious Circumstances had a misleading name.

Why do I do this? This realization prompted a little self-examination.

I think I have a heightened sensitivity because of having the name Sandra. No matter how many times I introduce myself as Sandra people assume I go by Sandy.

And I don't. When people call you something that isn't your name there's typically one of two reasons. It's either meant as an insult or it's meant as a sign of familiarity.

With Moreau, she sticks to her last name and is occasionally called K.C. because she's a very private person. In some respects a shell, because of being an orphan. She doesn't trust easily but giving someone permission to address her in a familiar way with her first name is a sign of that trust.

She doesn't offer up any part of herself lightly.

Having a protagonist with that disposition creates its own challenges because there's even a sense of her withholding from herself at times. She isn't one to dwell on things. That's why her personal issues are soon put in a box and she tries not to think about them.

So when you read PW's review, you may want to substitute Moreau for Kendall.

(And don't equate sincerity with goodness. Some characters are sincerely awful. And there may just be an American in the mix.)

I'm thankful for a good PW review. What's in a name? When it comes to the trades, PW has a good rep they've built and maintained over the years.

At the start of this dour yet lucid police procedural from Ruttan (Suspicious Circumstances), Kendall Moreau, a recent graduate of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police training center, is on her way to her first posting. Since early childhood, everything she has done has been motivated by her desire to find out the truth about her mother’s disappearance, and now she’s set to be stationed in the area of British Columbia where it happened. But Kendall is redirected to the “beautiful but broken” town of Maple River to join a task force investigating drug traffickers. The team’s first meeting is interrupted by the news of the discovery of a body. At the scene, the police find teenager Sammy Petersen, “a good kid from a good home,” shot through the head. The postmortem reveals that he had a lethal dose of drugs in his system. Kendall soon finds that the drug problem is just the tip of the iceberg, and she suspects that at least one of her new colleagues may be involved in the murders, assaults, and robberies that are plaguing Maple River. The subject matter may be grim, but the Canadian sensibility—everyone is so sincere—is refreshing. (Sept.) 

What's in a name?

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Welcome to DSD theme week #2. This week we are discussing characters - the good, the bad and the fabulously interesting - at least we hope!

I think we can all agree that characters are a driving force for us as both writers and readers. So many mysteries and thrillers are continuing series, which means the character must grow, change and still remain compelling from book to book. Readers look forward to the next Jack Reacher or Stephanie Plum book. Love of the character has readers pre-ordering the next book and reading it the week it hits shelves.

As writers, we try to make our characters relatable to the reader. We also want them to be memorable in hopes that our family isn’t the only one that wants to see the next book arrive in stores. We want our characters to be smart and have issues that everyone will understand. But before our characters can grow into the next Myron Bolitar, we have to give them a name.

Yikes! How do name a character that you hope will one day will be remembered by readers everywhere? The name has to be memorable, but not inaccessible. If you make a name too unusual, readers might find the name off-putting. That would be bad. When writing SKATING AROUND THE LAW, I specifically tried to create a name that had a musical lit to it. I wanted the syllables to trip off the tongue. To me, Rebecca Robbins had the cadence I was looking for. I thought Rebecca was a name that people could relate to.

With MURDER FOR CHOIR, my new series coming out on July 3rd from Berkley, I used my favorite method of picking a name. I trolled Facebook. To me, Facebook and social media are great name resources. I don’t tend to use anyone’s first and last names (unless I ask first!), but scrolling the names gives me a source to view names that I might not have thought of while sitting alone at my keyboard. Because MURDER FOR CHOIR is a musical series, I found myself looking at the names of people I have performed with in my past. Also, for this new series, I was more aware of the fact I’d have to live with the name I picked for 3, 6 or hopefully more books. So I worked hard to find a name that I thought fit the heroine and was something I loved enough to write over and over and over again. With that in mind, Paige Marshall was born.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one who uses Facebook as my source for name inspiration. And not all names I come up with are driven by my Facebook experience. But it is the place I go to when I’m stuck and looking for inspiration. Which makes me wonder – how do you come up with your character names? Do you borrow from your family? Do you troll phone or baby books? And more important – who are your favorite recurring characters and why do their names strike a chord with you?

The Exploding Bus

It started with an exploding bus.

No, wait... it started before then. About a year before then. One of the teachers I worked with knew I was writing a book. And she wanted in. Begged and pleaded--okay, asked once. When I got to a situation where I needed a name for a character--one I thought was going to be minor--I plugged it in.

The character ended up being a major one.

Once I signed a book deal for WHEN ONE MAN DIES and a sequel, people started coming out of the woodwork. They wanted to be in the book. It was constant. Everyone wanted a role... and comedically enough, they all wanted to die.

I had about 15 people ask to be murder victims.

And I was going to do it... I was going to put them all in the book.

And kill them off.

The question was how. How do you kill off fifteen people and not turn it into a teenage horror comedy with more snark than heart? And for a minute, I thought I had it.

I was going to blow up a bus. And then print the passenger list. Of course one of the victims would be an important character and the rest innocent people I knew. It was a great idea, I thought. Fun for me and my friends. Believable for the audience too.

Except I couldn't come up with a reason why I should blow up a bus. It didn't fit the book.

So, since then, I've been sneaking in names of my friends as character names. My friends, co-workers, and family love it. They get a kick out of it.

The rest of you have no idea. Each of my books has people I know in it. And it helps with characterization too. I give some of the traits of my friends to the characters in the book. Helps give them believable quirks.

And believe me, my friends are quirky.

So, my question is this, knowing that I do this... knowing that a lot of other authors probably do it as well, will you now find it distracting? Will you try to figure out who's named after a real person and who's completely fictional?

I know I don't.

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CHECK OUT: WITNESS TO DEATH on Kindle or Nook.

Want to talk WITNESS spoilers? Comment here.

Changing the Past

I've been thinking about a character of mine lately.

Quite some time ago, I wrote a story about him. A short story, something I worked pretty hard on, got published, and at the time, was very happy with. I loved his name, what he did for a living, and where he worked. And lately, he's been popping up in my head again.

He has a story to tell. Actually, I think he has a couple to tell, and--if he at least allows me a few weeks to finish the draft I'm working on--I intend to tell those stories. But there's something weird going on.

When I picture him, when I think about him, and what he'd be doing in these stories . . . he's not the same guy. He's younger, he has a different past, and a different mindset.

Now, ultimately, I don't really have a problem changing a character that dramatically. The villain in the novel that I just finished was a hero in another short story of mine. Had a completely different backstory too.

But I find it odd.

I mean, why can't I just make him a completely new character? Why does the name stick with me? I've tried coming up with different names for him, making him a completely new character, but it doesn't work.

He has to be Matt Herrick.

Has this happened to any other writers out there? I know Elmore Leonard plays around with his characters... Jack Foley became a lot more like George Clooney in ROAD DOGS. Not so much in OUT OF SIGHT.

It's been bothering me for weeks now. I think that's a good sign. It means I have a story to tell, and no matter what his age is . . .

He's still gotta be Matt Herrick.

Eh, maybe he can be Matt Herrick, Jr.