Naming Names

When writing a story, you not only have to come up with characters, but you have to name them, otherwise it might be a little difficult to figure out who is who. I'm obviously stating the obvious (or is that I'm literally stating the obvious?). Okay, enough silliness. The point is, how do you give your characters their names? There is no right or wrong way, but here is how I handle the naming issue. 

When I was writing my 3 novels about my family (short plug, you can find them here > https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00U0KSQCO), I didn’t want to use their real names, especially for those people still living. Now I did use the real names of those family members from the 1800s, as I didn’t think they would mind. But starting with those family members born in the late 1800s and beyond, I did decide to rename their first names.

I started out by making a list of female and male names. I wrote down anything I could think of, even names I didn’t particularly like. That turned out to work out well because I used the names I didn’t like for those people in the stories I didn’t like. If you read the books, especially A Life Unplanned, you probably will be able to figure out which names I don’t like. I also researched popular names from the early 1900s and added those to my list, if they weren’t already included, and did that for the various decades. If I heard a name on TV or even in reading other books, I jotted those down as well.

As I would use a name, I crossed it off the list to make sure I wouldn't use it again. There were times when I changed a name, simply because, as I would get further into the story, I would sometimes find another name fit the character better. If you do that, you just have to remember to go back and change it throughout the story. I did actually read a book once where the author accidentally called a character by another character’s name. I had to re-read the paragraph a couple of times to realize what had happened, but it didn’t take away from the story at all. It’s nice to know that even the best of authors make mistakes.

The series that I'm currently writing is not about my family. It’s a completely made up story that I do hope to turn into 4 or 5 books. I have to determine both first and last names, especially since I hope to make this set of stories take place over many, many years. Unfortunately, my husband and I have lost a handful of friends who died long before their time, most due to illness and one through a traffic accident. As a tribute to them, I'm using their last names. Thankfully it’s not a long list, but that helped with figuring out a few characters. Otherwise, I'm going through the same process of making long lists of last names and going from there.

To get back a little on my first set of novels, I wrote an older post about the fact I mostly didn’t use the real names of my family, even though the stories are based on real events. If you should write a book or series of books about your family but wanting to change the names, it would be a good idea to include a table of contents of your characters, perhaps not in the published books, as then there would be no point in making up names. But for your future family members who might read about your family, keep several copies for yourself to make sure they will get passed down and insert the TOC in each of the books so that future generations will know each character from their real life. If you look over some of my older posts, you will find I created a picture history of my family, the post titled A Family Project, and I included my TOC there as well. I made a copy for myself and my brother and sister. It’s a great way to bring the characters in your memoir to life by including their pictures as much as you can. That project took me over a year to complete, but I'm so glad I did it. You can also read excerpts from all my books, and those are all labeled on the right side of my blog. If you haven't read my books, you can take a peek at what the stories are all about.  That just might get you started on finding out about your own family history. It’s truly a life-changing experience.

I hope my “naming names” was of some help if you plan to create some new characters of your own or maybe take a look at the ones you already know. Keep reading, keep writing, and enjoy the journey.