Deeper character
meanings can easily take away realism
If you’re looking to promote realism in your novels then
naming characters after their personality traits or as a way of pre-meditating
what will happen to them is not the right way to go. If you’re not too bothered
by how realistic you want your novel to come across in this sense then by all
means, name your cooks Sage or your thieves Klepto; it can add a little
niceness that doesn’t need to be realistic. From a realism point of view
however, names don’t tend to predict what we’re going to do with our lives. A
parent who whomever names a new-born isn’t exactly gifted with foresight and so
it makes little sense for a character’s name to have a strong connection with
their personality or future activities.
There are exceptions to this rather general statement though;
families who are extremely dedicated to a particular cause or belief set are
likely to name their children in honour of that, it’s also likely that that child
will adopt those same beliefs. Think of Lucius Malfoy naming his son after a
kind of serpent; it actually makes sense since the family is so dedicated to
the symbolism of the snake. This could also serve as a form of irony if the
character is strongly against what their heritage implies, it doesn’t always
have to be an insightful name but rather a contrasting description of the
character. In another instance it could also hold that somebody has twisted
themselves around a pre-existing name and adopted it as part of their identity;
Jack Sparrow has a tattoo of a Sparrow on his chest, but his name is otherwise
ordinary. If he was called Sinbad Skeleton then it would be an unrealistic
prediction of events to come, even if it is an awesome name. Forming your
identity around your name sounds like an odd way to go about things but several
studies have noted the odd occurrence of people doing just that when it comes
to their careers. Even if realism is your thing, maybe you could name your cook
Julia Sage after all.
Some characters may have adopted names that were not their
original, birth name and this is fine too, often it can work especially well
with characters from unusual pasts or with unusual roles to play. Marilyn
Manson named himself after two of the most iconic people of a particular era,
though iconic for entirely different reasons, and therefore his name has deeper
meaning but is firmly placed in a realistic situation. Chosen or adopted
pseudonyms, legal name changes, nicknames and so on are all fair game when
you’re writing as all of it is realistic. If you want to nickname somebody then
it’s going to require a decent explanation of how it is they’ve come to abandon
their old name and so it must fit neatly into the plotline. There’s a slight
risk of overkill with this too; naming a schoolgirl ‘Otter’ for her love of the
water and then having her meet a load of otters later on would be a really
weird thing to do.
The final category I’ll put into ‘it doesn’t really break
realism’ argument is some kind of Godly, supernatural or alien character
whereby their name has been translated into something understandable by the
human race or, depending on what kind of character it is, regular and ordinary
people. Naming a vampire Sanguis may be slightly unoriginal but may be
explained by the fact that the vampire is several hundred years old and his
original name is far too complicated to start trying to pronounce.
Alternatively, maybe he wants a break from his old identity so he’s focused on
a blood-related one because his sense of humour revolves around the irony of,
“I am that which I drink.”
As long as you can explain the origin of somebody’s name
within the universe you have created then there is nothing wrong with it. What
I would argue you didn’t do is name characters, from birth, names which
pre-empt what will happen to them unless there is some form of divine
intervention involved. Going back to JK Rowling; one of the characters is
called Remus Lupin, he was bit by a werewolf as a child and as such became one himself.
Lupin is Latin for wolf and Remus is the name of one of the twins from a
famous, Roman story about the origins of Rome. In the story the twins were sent
out to be killed by the King only to be raised by a female wolf instead. It
does mean that Remus’ name literally has no basis in the universe that he
exists within. That’s not to say it’s not interesting; it is, it’s just not
realistic. Before wondering about the effect it has on realism you first need
to determine whether you care that it’ll break the book away from that
possibility of ‘it could be real’ that many fantasy or sci-fi books base
themselves around.
It may influence the
character too much
When I was studying psychology I became very interested in a
phenomenon that occurred during one of the studies called the Rosenhan experiment. In short, the study involved sending several people who had no
mental health problems but who had been given identical, fake, diagnosis notes
to 12 psychiatric hospitals to see whether the doctors and nurses would
recognize they were actually perfectly sane. Did they? Did they hell. On exit
all of these pseudopatients had been diagnosed with some kind of problem, seven
of which were schizophrenia. Why? Well, because they had been labelled from the
start as mentally ill and the doctors and nurses treated them as such. They
perceived all behaviours as unusual and as evidence of their symptoms when,
really, they were just wandering around being rather regular. Ironically, the
actual patients expressed suspicion that these pseudopatients weren’t actually
ill, many of them believing he pseudopatients were undercover journalists. The
problem that the Rosenhan experiment demonstrated was that when you label
something you tend to twist everything around it to fit into that original
diagnosis. We do it all the time and this study is a frightening example of how
even trained medical professionals are prone to these diagnosis-bias beliefs.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, they did a follow up study.
By labelling our characters with origin name stories we run
the risk of influencing the character to such a degree that they are simply
play acting into this box we’ve drawn for them. A name that is personality
driven is particularly vulnerable to this diagnosis-bias. If you name your
character after something that means ‘to lead’ or ‘a strong leader’ then this
personality label could easily stick with him throughout the novel, even in
situations where he shouldn’t be strong or shouldn’t be leading. It’s a very restrictive
label that can easily backfire and you should be aware of whether you’re boxing
your character into a specific, ideal persona that you thought would fit him. We
need to be careful at all times not to make two-dimensional characters because
not only is it boring for the readers but it’s boring to write about and,
frankly, a sign of a bad writer. Though there isn’t anything inherently wrong
with making a nod at a character’s finer qualities by eluding to it in some
abstract manner it can often dominate a character’s nature by making the name
meaning extremely restrictive or overly positive/negative. A villain doesn’t
need a name that alludes to death, evilness or blood but it can be acceptable
to go for something a little less obvious and a little less restrictive. A
personality should first and foremost be natural and appropriate for the
character it is matched to. Certain aspects of that personality need to be
explained and not simply slotted in alongside a stereotype that may occur if
you’ve already put a name to who they are as a person. Diagnosing a character
as evil isn’t a natural progression of their personality but is aligning them
with an ideological representation of something they have not acquired through
experience.
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| Legit way of choosing a name; pick whichever is generated as the largest. |
So the point I’m trying to make is that giving your
characters names based on what you’d like them to be or do is a sure fire way
to box them in, unless you make yourself very aware of still allowing them to
flourish and extend beyond that label. The Rosenhan experiment demonstrates
that once we have a fixed idea of somebody’s nature it can be very hard to
break away from that and any behaviour, any action or situation will lead us
right back to that original diagnosis. This can have dangerous consequences
within your novel as before you’ve even started you’ve restricted yourself. A
good writer will be able to break away from doing this, provided he or she is
aware what could come of their fairly innocent name choosing.
