A rose by any other would smell just as sweet.
Oh really?
The name we are given to last us our entire lives completely shapes our destiny and don’t you forget it.
I mean, who would you rather be?
Jack the saviour of the world (and take a moment to think of just how many heroes there are called Jack, by the way) or Cecil the saviour of…? I’m struggling to think of anything Cecil could actually be the saviour of.
And no, I don’t have a problem with the name Cecil (you can insert your own least-heroic name in here), it just doesn’t evoke the kind of visual image I want to project when I think of someone who will do what it takes to win the day, then let his feelings out later when he is home, crying in the arms of the woman he loves.
Would a Jack actually do that, or would he cry alone?
I digress.
The name we are given is the one we have to live with our entire lives and is in no small part responsible for not only how others see us but how we see ourselves.
Personally I always wanted a name you could do more than one thing with, like Elizabeth or Roberta though I guess it's easier with a name a like Mary - harder to get wrong.
And so much fun being called Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.
So much fun. And the chanting. All that chanting.
It doesn’t make me want to kill people at all.
Definitely not.
Seriously.
Where was I? Oh, right.
So there are reasons why crime writers become crime writers (instead of murderers, but that’s a definitely a subject for another day) and how the names we are called affect how we see ourselves and who we turn out to be.
I know for a fact that I cannot truly know someone unless I know their name and this is doubly important for characters, whom I cannot truthfully write until they tell me theirs.
Or, and this is closer to the actual process of naming my characters, they allow me to guess.
It’s the one thing guaranteed to bring me to a complete standstill in the middle of a sentence, and leave me stuck there until I can identify the new character by name.
They’re no help, of course, but stand and wait for me to identify their name like some twisted version of Guess the Guest.
And for someone who is traditionally ‘bad at names’ it’s a particular problem.
It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, and now I have a store of names put aside for just such an occasion, so I at least have somewhere to start.
Well, it’s a single sheet with a few names jotted down on it, but you get the idea.
Once their name is pinned down it’s there for the duration. There are some I don’t particularly like or resonate with, but that’s usually because there’s some hidden aspect to their character that hasn't yet been revealed to me.
Sometimes they are shy and don’t want to tell me their secrets, sometimes they think it's more fun for me to guess, but the name they nod their heads in agreement with is the one that truly represents who they are.
I haven’t as yet come across a character who actively changes their name to fit who they think they are, I mean, even the undercover agents keep their first name in whatever persona they happen to find themselves working in.
What I mean is someone who is born with one name.
Then they change it and become someone else because they aren’t who they think they should be.
They spend their lives constantly changing it and recreating themselves, until they finally grow to accept the name they were born with, realising it’s who they were meant to be all along.
Deep.
Very deep.
Or quite possibly bull-crap.
Not entirely sure I’ve made up my mind about that one, which is probably why that character has yet to appear.
When they finally do, it will be interesting, of that I have no doubt.
And what will they be called?
After all, what’s in a name?
A very interesting article Mary. This is something myself and friends have debated many times over many bottles of red wine, wondering if our forenames had been different, would we have ended up being the same people/same personalities had all else remained the same.
ReplyDeleteOf course, one cannot prove it but I do think there is mileage in the hypothesis. I once worked in a company where 2 of the members of the board had the surnames Battle and Conquest. I am not making this up. Had their names been Smith and Jones...? Then again, there are many high flyers and heros whose names were/are Smith and Jones...I gues we only remember the memorable,catchy names.
As for character names in books ; it's indeed difficult for us in the UK/Ireland to imagine a hero named Cecil/Walter etc. I think it's borne from a number of factor. All the British comics i.e. Beano, Dandy etc, in their hay-day, depicted differences in social class. The 'softies' had names like Walter, Cecil, Peregrine. Even in movies, working class people had names like Jack, Dave etc.
The name's we think off conjure up images of characters we actively or submininally remember from our exposure to literature, film, radio and television.
I find Irish-sounding names to have more than a fair represention in American crime literature but then again, Irish/Celtic surnames and a good many forenames, do have harsh consenents. Alliteration of forename/surname also gives a sharp edge to a character as long as its not too comedic or comic book. A name like Colin Clancy might work but Danny Draper to me does not.
Then again, you could be the first person to put the cool and street-cred back into the world's first detective/PI whose name is Cecil!