Tag: names

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Memorable Names for Fictional Characters

Most of the time, I find it easy to think of what the characters in my stories should be called. Their names often appear at the same time as the storyline.

I wrote one such piece in 2014 titled Adrian Eats the World, which appeared at the same time as the title. Until I found the file while writing this, I thought that was still its name. In 2015, it seems I had a change of mind and amended his name to Mikey. I can’t remember what made me change this, so it’s now been restored.

More recently, I’ve included a Rosalind McQueen because the cadence simply worked well. During the story, she changes this to Scott McQueen, which has a different cadence but is equally as pleasing.

The most difficult character to name was a sci-fi story set during the 1960s in a world where a group of intelligence agents were worried about an impending visit from aliens. This character was supposed to be the young man who had been drafted into the unit as a favour by his father.

I looked to take the James Bond approach, with an ordinary first name and a distinctive last name. It took weeks to settle upon Malcolm St Clement. Even then, I wasn’t certain because the only other person I could find with that last name was the actress Pam St Clement from EastEnders, and even that’s a modification of her real name: Pamela Clements. However, it sounded good, and I kept using it.

On other occasions, a name is the least of my concerns.

In one of my series, the first-person narrator remained unnamed until the 24th part. I didn’t even realise I was omitting the name at first; it simply wasn’t central to the storyline. Besides, the 2004 film Layer Cake pulled off this trick nicely.

Even once I became aware of the omissions, there were workarounds I could employ to avoid saying it. It helped that the series was an ensemble effort comprising seven other named main characters. Eventually, I decided to reveal the narrator’s name as a minor twist in what was intended to be the finale. I’ve since added a surprise 25th story.

The other layer to this discussion is the use of nicknames. I find these hard to pull off convincingly. Unexplained nicknames can be jarring, yet when they are explained, the backstory can feel contrived or a little too perfect.

In this instance, it might be wise to take a cue from real life. For instance, there’s a website for pilots and fans of the F-16 fighter jet that has a whole section devoted to the imaginative callsigns in the forces. A few are clever, but most are a little ramshackle and that makes them sound a little more convincing.

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The Problem with Tiffany

About 15 years ago, I read the epic Herman Melville book Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. There’s one part I remember clearly, and it’s a quote from chapter 124:

The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven [...]

As the volume was published in 1851, it seems strange we’re seeing using the word electricity because it sounds too modern.

A few chapters earlier, however, the author explained how the ship was equipped with a lightning rod which was connected to a chain touching the sea bed. Again, that sounds too up-to-date, but it was a century after Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment, so the movement of lightning was well understood by that time.

The author Nicola Cornick is attributed with naming this phenomenon The Tiffany Problem. The use of the name Tiffany as a first name dates back to medieval times, yet it feels like a 20th-century derivation. However, the term can be applied to any similar anachronism, not just names.

Conversely, the name of this observation isn’t actually that old, only dating back to 2018.

Another book where I spotted this was Dracula, where Bram Stoker mentions that Jonathan Harker has a Kodak camera. The Eastman Kodak Company was set up five years before the novel was published in 1897, but a 21st-century author might be cautious of including such a detail.

Staying in this universe, it’s possible to extrapolate in other ways. For example, some of the action is set in Whitby and this had long been connected to Leeds by rail, where Marks & Spencer was founded in 1884. As such, it’s canonically possible that Dracula could have enjoyed a cup of M&S tea.

Of course, as the problem originally highlighted becomes more widely known, that becomes the key to solving it. Now when readers encounter a girl called Tiffany living in the 1400s, they’ll recognise it’s historically consistent, and I think we’ll see authors starting to feel more relaxed about using it.