Have you read a book lately that had a character with an interesting name? Did you wonder where that name came from?  Did the name just pop into the author’s head?  Or was it an accident – that turned out to be fortuitous?  Or is it a name that will become an icon of the future?

Suppose Margaret Mitchell had named her protagonist Jane.  Would that have started the reader with a different impression than when she chose Scarlett?  Before we even meet Scarlett we have a feeling about her.  Scarlett reminds us of heat, emotion, energy, fire.  We expect a fiery, energetic, volatile woman.

Do we start out with a different impression if the man guy is named Winston or Joe?

J.K. Rowling is one of the most successful writers of our time.  Do you think she spent time on her characters’ names – and not just the major characters?  And did they start us out with an impression?  Draco Malfoy?  Nymphadora Tonks?  Ron Wesley? Servius Snape?  Those names did not just trip off her tongue; she worked to come up with them.   Why, with all those great names, did she name the protagonist a rather plain name – Harry Potter?  Perhaps she wanted to give us the impression that he was an ordinary person, a reluctant hero.

The name is part of the character.  Why do some people change their name in real life?  Because they want a different persona, a different outward expression that better reflects how they feel about themselves, how they want to be viewed.  So you, the writer who is creating this character, need to decide how the character views herself.

In Deadly Additive,  Donn Taylor named a secondary character who always operated on the edge, Brinkman.  An accident?  I don’t think so.  Ian Fleming gave us some insight into the character of his antagonist in The Richest Man in the World when he named him Auric Goldfinger.

Can the name mislead us?  Certainly, if you want it to.  Just don’t let it happen by mistake.  Tiffany can be a person who spends her life helping the homeless, living and eating with them, and then returning to her one-room under the Elevated. Maybe her parents are rich and she was to be a debutant.  But the girl wanted to do something more important.

You can use the name to help make the case for who this person is, or who the parents imagined she might be.  Holly Golightly was a happy, carefree woman.  Sam Spade was a straight forward, no-frills, hard-working person who dug for clues.

Suppose your heroine is named Catherine. If she calls herself Cat, that tells us how she sees herself, and how the reader should view her.

Select the names of your characters carefully.  Do not use the name as simply a way to distinguish one character from another.  Make a conscious effort to select a name that helps build your character.

You work hard to give your book a name that will entice the reader to pick it up and read.  Select your character name to make that character and your book memorable.

I’d love to hear your comments on your favorite names in books.