On Names

Rumour has it that few things in life are the same kind of stressful as choosing a name for a child. Having only ever had to name one hamster, some stuffed toys, an owl in Ecuador, and my myriad of fictional creations, I don't know how true this is. However, I do know that choosing the correct names for things in fiction is my least favourite part of the process.

In every culture, there are extremely common names and these names fluctuate through the generations. Sometimes names disappear almost entirely, other times they change their form to adapt to a new landscape, and at still other times they never vanish or change significantly.

My name, Alexander, is one that has stuck around for centuries. Since the Crown of Macedonia passed from Philip II to his son, my name has endured. Forms change, of course, I believe in India I am Sikandar which is still discernable as Alexander and to the best of my knowledge was brought to them with that King.

But as interesting as the history and mythology of names is, I want to talk about how difficult I personally find it to put them in my writing. Choosing a name for a fictional character who only matters to me until they are read about by you is taxing. Especially given my proclivity for gardener style writing.

For anyone who doesn't know, a gardener is the opposite of an architect, and both are re-skins of the more common plotter (architect) and pantser (gardener). I prefer the terms I use because I feel they fit better thematically; I throw story seeds onto a page and see how they grow, others carefully draw out their plans before laying the first paragraphs.

So, why is this important to me? And how does it affect me as a gardener? Names are hard. Stop the presses! I know, everyone finds them difficult. Have you ever seen a published fantasy author get asked how they come up with their names? Have you seen the pain in their eyes? Maybe I'm just projecting but that's what I see.

Giving my characters names is ludicrously difficult and presents a significant stumbling block in my creative journeys. Sometimes they can dereail a project so completely, that I literally cannot write another word until I name the damned person. And since I'm often as surprised as anyone else when a new character comes along, this happens completely at random.

Not every story is built the same, however. Sometimes it is downright easy to pluck a name out of the ether and give it to my newest creation. In my story They Shall Not Grow Old, for instance, I could just pick random English and French names for my doomed heroes. (Incidentally, this story has a strong content advisory for death.)

I needed a name for one of the nurses in a field hospital, Margret sounded like it was from the right time and in she went. A nameless infantryman charging across no-man's land obviously did not need to be named, but you can call him Patrick if you'd like. A fighter pilot was named John Rawlings, for no reason other than it popped into my head and since John is basically timeless, in he went. The merchant sailor Brackenreid doesn't have a first name and doesn't need one, his surname was taken from the show Murdoch Mysteries. Stephan Legault, the grave digger, was named for a friend of mine (but shush don't tell her) and his surname was one I simply found cool.

The names in that story were easy to find. The Canadian Corps in the First World War was a real thing, fighting a real war, in a real place. All I had to do was pluck names from my own culture and country and I was off to the races.

As for my more fantastical stories, science fiction and fantasy in particular, the names are more complicated. If I just gave everyone English names like Ted, that would sound wrong. If I chose another culture at random and plucked their names, that sometimes feels like appropriation. Especially since many of my worlds aren't directly inspired by those other cultures, meaning that the names would be out of their context.

For The Dominion, I needed names, rather a lot of them, especially as I continue to work on the as yet unfinished series. Not only did I need to name people, but I also had to names locations, groups, myths, technology, a country, and events from history.

Personally, I like to go the literal route for some names. The Dominion is the country, and it means what it says, that the government has dominion within its borders. Central Tower is just that, the tower at the centre of The Dominion. The Order of Stewards are the people who steward the Dominion. But the characters were more complicated.

Being that this story is post-apocalyptic, I had the happy ability to just use any name that caught my interest. A cosmopolitan culture built on the ashes of the old world? Why wouldn't Cassandra be married to Amelia and work with Yuji? I could just pluck names that I either liked or else had significance to their role in the story and I'd be golden.

Cassandra is the tragic figure from Greek myth doomed to know the future and never be believed about her prophesies. Yuji means relaxed and caring which fits him very well, though that was a happy coincidence since I picked the name because I liked it. But that leads onto my next point about names.

If the writer throws away other naming significance, then they are free to do what they want. This means that the writer is free to choose from any name under the sun, so long as they are consistently inconsistent. For me, this means that I pluck names completely at random off of Pinterest based on what they mean.

These meanings can be character and plot specific, like Cassandra. Or they can be thematically resonant. If a name means good council, then you can give it to a person who is lying or manipulative. I recently did this very thing in Immerwald where I named the point of view character Ethelred - an old English name that means good council.

Now, how did I know that? I took a course through the Great Courses on Audible about the history of medieval England where they talked about Ethelred the Unready. He was a King from before the Norman Conquest on whom his contemporaries bestowed the title Unrad (I don't know if that's how it's spelled but that's how it sounds) meaning bad council. A clever little joke at the King's expense.

Is the universe of Immerwald at all inspired by Medieval England? No. At least not consciously. I just thought it was funny.

So, choosing a name for one's characters is daunting. Not only does the writer themself have to think it's cool and fits with their story, but they have to be careful about from where they draw said names. If I were writing a story set in Babylon, for instance, I would not call anyone 'James' or 'Ji-Ho.' Neither name has any place in Babylon.

Misappropriation of culture is a touchy subject. Many people do it accidentally, others do it intentionally, and some few simply don't care. But names have significance to people and to some cultures, names are deeply personal things. We, as creators, have the ability to do harm, do good, and do nothing, but we can never be certain of our impact until after the work is consumed. So we have to be careful.

But that's just my scattershot approach to naming. I pick them based on what I want the character to be and do; and do my best to describe the characters as though they would fit in the culture of origin. For example, I wouldn't name a black man Raiden (Japanese thunder god) anymore than I would name a blonde woman Anansi (West African storyteller and trickster deity).

Other (much more famous) writers have their own methods. Grandpa Tolkien (no relation) plucked several of his names straight out of the Prose Etta or else invented them in the various languages he also invented. But even in that bedrock of modern fantasy we can find certain words that track very well to the real world. The village of Bree from the Fellowship of the Ring stands at the foot of a large hill - and Bree is an Old English word that means hill. (Fun fact: there is a community in England called Breedon, and don is related to a Germanic {the language family, not to be confused with Deutsch} word that also means hill. So it's technically named Hillhill.)

Sandon Branderson (I like playing with authors' names), author of the Cosmere, is very internally consistent with his names. Within the pages of the Stormlight Archive, he names characters based on in-world concepts of art, philosophy, and religion. This manifests in names primarily as palindromes, where a name that is one is considered more holy or divine.

There are as many different ways to name things in your fiction as there are writers. We, each of us, have our own methods and reasons. I named the town in a story I've been working on for ages 'Weldon's Forge' because I thought that a guy named Weldon owning a forge and a town growing up around it made sense.

I named the characters in my short story Apparition for thematic reasons. Anis is a Moroccan name that means 'a friend of loneliness,' and Diedre is an Irish name that means 'sorrowful or brokenhearted.' If you've read that story, then the names make sense. (Content advisory: discussion of suicide.)

Likewise the named characters, though there are only two, in my short story Wanderlust were given English names. I did this because I modeled them off of the English gentry during the Age of Enlightenment.

When considering character names, it is important to think outside the box. Life would be boring if everyone was named Hubert or Michael or Sandra, and that variety of names allows us to be more intentional in our explorations of themes. Having variety in our naming choices also succeeds in placing characters in different surroundings. If a new culture introduced to the story has names that do not match at all with what had been previously explored, that is a clue to the reader. Less a clue than an enormous sign that says "these people are different and that's important!"

However, the fun that is to be had with names and their critical role in storytelling does not stop me from hating them. It's why I spend so long on Pinterest looking for new ones. I must have a few hundred sitting on one of my boards, just waiting to be given life on the page.

More times than I'm comfortable counting, I've broken my writing session to scroll on the internet looking for names. It's a damned pain when I can't find one that fits and I have to resort to the caveman game of Google to find a decent fit.

Thank you so much for your attention, sorry for rambling. Please let me know how you choose your names in the comments! I'm fascinated to know how other creators think about their process :)

And if you read any more of my stories, look into the meanings of the names I've chosen. Sometimes they're significant ;)