Posted by TayariJones on June 9, 2008 08:54 AM
Filed under
Writing
Ladylee emailed me the other day asking about a post in which I mocked myself for naming the characters in my very first story "Angelique" and "Mignon." What are the rules for naming characters?
Well, everyone knows the basics-- you can't have several characters in a story who have almost the same name. Jon, Jonathan, Jim, and Jack cannot co-exist. The other guidelines are harder to put your finger on. I made fun of the names "Angelique" and "Mignon" because those names really identified me as a teenaged writer, givng characters names I thought were cool or pretty, rather than names the characters would actually have if they were real people.
Rather than give a list of Dos Don'ts, I will just explain how I went about naming the main characters in my first novel, Leaving Atlanta.
LaTasha and DeShaun: I believe that names are a great shorthand for backstory. The name LaTasha immediately pins the character down as a black child of the 1980s. It's a name with a middleclass vibe, too. (And giving her baby sister a coordinating, but not matching name gives us a sense of thier mother.) The capital "L" and capital "T" gives the idea that her mom has some style, but that she wasn't the type to invent her own spelling. Also, a personal link is that since Tasha is so much like me temperamentally, I gave her a name that I wanted when I was a girl.
Rodney Green: Rodney is so invisible, so he needed a simple name. Also, I just like the sound of it, or I should say the sounds of it. I have a cousin named Rodney and different relatives pronounce it differently. (It's all in the first syllable.) That seemed like a nice feature of a name for a person who is subjected to so many different takes on who he is. It also seemed to be a modern name. Although his father is overbearing, he didn't name him Claude Jr. You can tell that the parents wanted him to be part of the next wave, the post-civil-rights America.
Octavia Fuller, aka, "Sweet Pea.": I will grant that this is a somewhat unusual name for a little girl who lives across the streets from the projects. This name was inspired by a little girl in my class named Octavia. I can't remember her last name, but she was very dark complexioned and picked on all the time. I never joined in the teasing, but I never stood up for her either. Maybe this is my olive branch to her, wherever she is. But on the level of story, I like that she has this odd name that's a little bit grand. I think when we meet her mother in the story, you can see Yvonne thinking that is a good name for her girl. The nickname "Sweet Pea" was, again, inspired by a relative. I always envied her that pet name. It just made it seem like everyone loved her so much. Giving that nickname to Octavia was helpful to me in the writing because it helped me remember that there was more to her experience than just the bullying at school. She comes home and she is not "The Black Watusi", but she is "Sweet Pea."
and one extra, from The Untelling
Cynthia: In the character of Cynthia I had to work hard to avoid stereotype. She's a crack addict, nearly homeless. The worst thing in the world I could have done would be to give her a crackhead name like, Bay-Bay, or something like that. For one thing, the name would put her into a box, not just for the reader, but for me as a writer. Just giving her a nice name like Cynthia I made way for the scene in which she tried to fix herself up for her mother's visit. Her mother is the one who gave her that name. Cynthia is someone's daughter, not just a symbol of urban blight.
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