Character Name Issues

AnneMarble · Oct 11, 2006

I was going to call this thread "Anne, you idiot!" But then I realized no one would realize it was about character names.

Recently, I started writing a sensual vampire romance involving a heroine, a vampire, and a werewolf in a fantasy setting. I ended up calling the heroine Anika because I had seen the name in one of those lists of Swedish names before, and it seemed like a decent fantasy name.

Only today did I realize that the name was too bloody (heh) close to Anita Blake, the heroine of Laurell K. Hamilton's vampire hunter novels. And her Anita has relations with a vampire, a werewolf (and so forth).
:Headbang:

So I'm back to the drawing board. I'll have to rename Anika. But until I decide on something else, I'm still naming the vampire and werewolf Jean-Claude and Richard... heh, kidding.

They're Storme and Obsidian. (Yes, I suppose I am name-challenged, why do you ask? :tongue

)

Has this ever happened to you? You think you have a wonderful name, then it turns out to be really really close to a name of a famous character in a similar story (The Adventures of Cuke Lyewalker)... Or maybe too close to a celebrity's name. Or stupid or silly or hard to pronounce, not to mention totally inappropriate for the character?

What do you do if the name has already "stuck" to that character in your mind? (gulp!)

PattiTheWicked · Oct 11, 2006

This happened to me once before, and indeed, the character was already imprinted in my brain as one thing, and i had to change it to another.

You could drop the A and make her Nika.

Nakhlasmoke · Oct 11, 2006

Could you change it slightly?

Eg: Anika to Anik?

i had the same prob with a character I named Misery (and then after a looooong time, remembered that that was the heroine of the writer's stories in Misery). Now Misery is called Gedeon, which is probably better in the long run, but in my head he's still Misery.

Carrie in PA · Oct 11, 2006

I would pronounce Anita (Uh-NEE-tuh) completly differently than I would Anika (ANN-ih-kuh), so I would read them differently and probably not give it a thought.

Maybe give her a nickname?

AnneMarble · Oct 11, 2006

Carrie in PA said:
Maybe give her a nickname?

You mean like Buffy?

Hmm, if I follow the typo style of naming the character, I might call her Aniak...

LeeFlower · Oct 11, 2006

I once named a teacher Anita Hill, and then my betas told me there was some kind of scandal just before my time about an Anita Hill. Oops. I also tried to use the "Hero Protagonist" gag in a short story before I read Snow Crash. Oops.

I've got a YA story with an MC named Joss. Man, was I ever proud of myself when I came up with that. It was original, but not too out there, and hey, no one else had gotten to it yet! And then I went down stairs to watch me some Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As soon as the credits began: "Aw, Damnit!"

In that case, though, the name's stayed around. It just works too well to scrap. And I don't care if people think it's an homage, because I'm pretty fond of Joss Whedon's work.

Carrie in PA · Oct 11, 2006

AnneMarble said:
You mean like Buffy?

DamaNegra · Oct 11, 2006

Heheh, I'm also name-challenged. All my characters in my novels have the same 5 or 6 names.

AnneMarble · Oct 11, 2006

DamaNegra said:
Heheh, I'm also name-challenged. All my characters in my novels have the same 5 or 6 names.

I've recycled names from draft to draft. I had a character named Gorok in a fantasy story I wrote in my first years of junior high. I guess I always liked the name, so I decided to use it when I wrote something more... interesting ... in later years.

Sometimes I'll use one of these familiar names when I'm working on an outline. For example, "Anika" was a minor character in a fantasy novel I wrote several years ago (a child in a village). And some names stick to me like glue. I had a mysterious yet complicated villain named Shade in a story I outlined years ago. "Shade" also appeared briefly in one outline of an SF novel (as a villain again). Then I used that name for a heroic masked swordfighter in a recent outline. Then I decided to revamp an outline I'd written several years ago, about a hero who had to wear a mask for psychological reasosn. And guess what his name was? And no, it wasn't Erik!
:ROFL:

Becky Writes · Oct 11, 2006

I have this story on the back burner and the male MC is a basketball player. I am not a NBA fan at all, but my guy was college-aged. The perfect name came to me -- Tony Parker-- it sounded so right to me.

Well, it seems that Tony Parker is a pretty famous NBA player. So if I decide to ever finish it, he'll have to be renamed.

Becky Writes · Oct 11, 2006

Oh, about Anika. I agree with Carrie; it wouldn't have bothered me a bit because they don't sound the same at all (in my pronunciations).

Maybe you could change the spelling to Annika (if you're going for ANN-uh-kuh). If her name is Uh-NEE-kuh, then it may be too close to Uh-NEE-tuh.

JerseyGirl1962 · Oct 11, 2006

AnneMarble said:
Has this ever happened to you? You think you have a wonderful name, then it turns out to be really really close to a name of a famous character in a similar story (The Adventures of Cuke Lyewalker)... Or maybe too close to a celebrity's name. Or stupid or silly or hard to pronounce, not to mention totally inappropriate for the character?

What do you do if the name has already "stuck" to that character in your mind? (gulp!)

Yes - this happened to me with a WIP I just recently put aside (I hit a rut in the story and couldn't think of anything to move the story forward). Anyway, I had a character named Lulu (can't remember the last name at the moment), and I had her as a wise-cracking, kick-them-in-the-butt black woman.

Sometime after I finished the first draft, I was in a bookstore, and, just for the heck of it, picked up a Janet Evanovich novel (one of the Stephanie Plum ones). When I saw the name "Lula" attached to my similar-sounding character, I nearly fell out of my chair! And I'd never read a Stephanie Plum story before!

I changed her name real quick. :tongue

Of course, right now, the story's dead in the water until I can figure out where to take it to, if it's worth doing that.

~Nancy

TheIT · Oct 11, 2006

Another alternate spelling would be "Anneke".

I've had something similar happen. I changed one character's name once I realized I'd chosen the same name as a convicted child molester.

Simon Woodhouse · Oct 11, 2006

AnneMarble said:
Has this ever happened to you? You think you have a wonderful name, then it turns out to be really really close to a name of a famous character in a similar story (The Adventures of Cuke Lyewalker)... Or maybe too close to a celebrity's name. Or stupid or silly or hard to pronounce, not to mention totally inappropriate for the character?

I've had something similar happen twice. In the first Sci-Fi novel I wrote, there's a character called Sinilix Ducastor, who to start with comes across as rather unpleasant. Anyway, a friend of mine was watching a documentary on TV about prehistoric mammals, and it turns out a Sinilix (or a word very similar) is a type of giant wolf that's now extinct.

In the same novel there was a minor character called Kryal. He's since disappeared during re-writes, but I was driving down to Hastings in the South of England once, and I went past Cryal Lane.

Jaycinth · Oct 11, 2006

I needed a french sounding name for a male character. So I used 'Avril'. My daughter is mortified because Avril Lavigne is one of her favorite artists.
(Change it mom, she'll hate you when the book is published)
I needed a name for a beautiful yet pure evil female character, so I named her 'Angelique'. My Beta is mortified because the name is so 'overused'.
(Change it, J, that name is a cliche.)
I needed a name for an Earth-based security officer. I wanted it to be very 'Earthy' so I named her 'Betty'. My other Beta flipped out.
(Change that name to something else, no one will believe a senior security officer named 'Betty')

I haven't changed anything. The story CALLS for those names. Changing 'Avril' to 'Al' would be like changing 'Orlando Bloom' into 'Groucho Marx'.

Now If I'd named a homicide detective 'Vladimir Dracula' and the theif he's chasing 'John Harker' then I'd have problems......

Shaded Mazoku · Oct 11, 2006

I have a vampire character named Raven. Probably one of the most overused and cliché vampire names ever, but it's been his name ever since I came up with the character, ten years ago, and I just can't seem to change it. Although I suppose that with a full name like Raven Yamimori (which is in no way a real Japanese surname, but that's the point, he took the name himself), he'll stand out a little. And I've mentioned in the story that his name comes from Ravelyn, which is the English version of his original name, Roibhilin.

Even if it sounds completely odd with a Irish vampire with a Japanese surname. There's a plot-bound reason for it. I'm not going to change it, because the name has become an integral part of him, but I'll just have to explain it in the story. He'd see the irony in how clicheéd that name is, anyway.

I wonder just how many vampire characters are named Raven, anyway...

Ad Astra · Oct 11, 2006

By the way, Mazoku, yami means 'dark' if you didn't know already.

Anyways, yes, on more than one occasion have I had to drop a story out of shame because I made the characters' names too close to an actual character's.

Shaded Mazoku · Oct 21, 2006

Yeah, I'm aware of that. *grins* It's why I chose that name, really. The character in question gets a real kick out of being named something that basically is "dark forest raven". He so loves the sheer cliché of it. He's an interesting character like that.

Sam Champie · Oct 22, 2006

My character names are usually very original and come quite easy. I don't do much novel reading so using unique character names developed by other authors isn't a problem.

Character Name Issues

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan

PattiTheWicked

Unleashing Hell.

Nakhlasmoke

yes

Carrie in PA

Write All The Words!

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan

LeeFlower

Lurker Extraordinaire

Carrie in PA

Write All The Words!

DamaNegra

Mexican on the loose!

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan

Becky Writes

Go Tarheels!

Becky Writes

Go Tarheels!

JerseyGirl1962

I heart Malamutes! :-)

TheIT

Infuriatingly Theoretical

Simon Woodhouse

Jaycinth

Your Cuddly Sociopathic

Shaded Mazoku

Ad Astra

Cok Seviyorum!!

Shaded Mazoku

Sam Champie