“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
With respect to Shakespeare, quite a lot is in a character name.
Indiana Jones. Holly Golightly. Atticus Finch. Clarice Starling. Say those names aloud and something happens. The names carry the characters the way a key fits a lock. The right name is inseparable from its character. Your readers sense that inseparability even if they cannot explain it.
It is our job as writers to choose names that do that kind of work.
In this article, I will look at what makes a character name resonate and what to consider when choosing one. Lastly, I will give you a Story Weapon to help you find the name your character has been waiting for.
Start with a name, any name. Forming character name ideas will come from the powerful work in specificity related to the world around your character. The great character names that have stuck with you were invented by necessity and authorship. When you exercise your voice correctly the characters will handle the rest.
The first step: Make a choice to get started
Here is something I tell every writer who gets stuck on a name before the story has even found its shape: just pick one and start writing.
Call them anything. Sue, Sally, Sharlene, Crystal. Be as noncommittal as you like in the rough draft, but pick something and begin. Because something quietly remarkable happens the moment you give a character a name, even if it’s only a placeholder. The character comes to life, and they start talking.
They begin to tell you things about themselves that you could not have known before they existed on the page. They will tell you, in their own time, that they are definitely not a Sue but in fact a Jo, a Jobeth, a Maeve.
Hold the name loosely in your rough draft. You will know you’ve found the right one when the character starts feeling like a person.
The power of a name
A name can hold aspects of your character’s history, class, culture, and personality all at once. It can tell your readers something about your character before a single line of dialogue has been spoken.
Consider the feel of a name on its own.
- Mabel conjures a woman from a different era (though it may be due for a comeback soon), something faded and gentle.
- Jane is simple, sweet, and plain in the best and worst sense of the word.
- Jack is solid, uncomplicated, physical.
- Melvin suggests someone more comfortable in his head than in the world.
- Kaladin sounds otherworldly, yet also resembles “paladin.”
None of this is accidental. Make use of associations your readers already connect to different names.
A name can signal a person’s race, their class, their religion, the region they grew up in, the decade they were born, and more. It is a piece of evidence about the world they came from.
Name origins
Names are contextual. The time, place, and culture your story inhabits will determine a great deal about what your characters are called. Thinking carefully about this can deepen both the character and the world around them.
Ask yourself who named your character and under what circumstances. Loving parents in a stable home will give a different name than an overflowing orphanage. If a group of siblings are named, Brandy, Sherry, and Amber, and their dog is named Tequila, then we suddenly know an awful lot about what their parents do at quittin’ time.
Does the culture in your story follow particular naming conventions? Are surnames based on trades or lineage? Are names chosen at birth, or earned later through some rite or achievement? Does your character go by the name they were given, or have they chosen something different, and if so, why?
A character who has changed their name tells you something about their past. Perhaps it stems from an emotional wound, their ambition, their relationship to their family or the community they came from. A chosen name is a small act of self-authorship, and those decisions matter in a story.
The shape of a name
Just like people rarely go by their full names in casual settings, neither should your characters. Names have textures. There is the formal name on the birth certificate, the name a parent uses when they are angry, the nickname that stuck from childhood, the pet name a lover uses, and so on.
Think about what your character prefers to be called and who calls them what. Perhaps they are sporty and easy-going, going by Rod instead of Roderick.
You can also name a character contrary to expectation. Imagine a gentle, bookish man named Wolf. A ruthless, calculating woman named Grace. The friction between a name and the person who carries it can be its own form of characterization.
Great character names in fiction
Here are some iconic fictional names to get your creative juices flowing.
- Pippi Longstocking
- Huckleberry Finn
- Robin Hood
- Willy Wonka
- Ichabod Crane
- Scarlett O’Hara
- Robinson Crusoe
- Merlin
- Artemis Fowl
Your story weapon: Listen for the name
Before you settle on a name for your protagonist, try this.
Write for five minutes from your character’s point of view, beginning with:
“The name I was given is ___ and the name I call myself is ___.”
Let the answer take whatever shape it wants. What comes out of this exercise will help tell you whether the name you have chosen fits the person on the page, or whether the person has been quietly waiting for you to find the right one.
A name that fits does something specific. It stops your character from feeling like a character you invented and starts making them feel like a person you discovered. When that happens, the writing changes. The character stops waiting for you to tell them what to do and starts telling you instead. That is the character name worth keeping.
To further refine your approach to character creation and anchor your story in a fully realized world, join one of my next workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day.
