The Name Game (Or, Why Your Character's Name Is Important)

For writers, naming your characters can be as intimate and involved a process as naming a child -- although you usually don't have to fight a spouse over it. (Usually)

And while I don't want to quash your freedom to pick what your heart desires, it's important to know that naming a character can actually be just as vital to your success as utilizing proper grammar and formatting technique. Really!

The danger to not carefully considering your character names arises mostly from the possibility of confusion on the part of the Reader. I refer to the professional Reader here, the kind that -- if you're lucky enough to get your script into the office of an agent or producer -- is the one who ultimately decides whether to pass that script up the ladder... or toss it in the trash.

"What does my protagonist's name have to do with that?" You may ask.

Good question. And the answer: A lot, actually. Let's tackle them one by one, shall we?

Potential Problem #1: "Who's that again?"

If you have two characters in your script with even remotely similar names, you run the risk of confusing the Reader about who is who.

While Freddie and Friedrich may seem different enough -- especially to you as the Writer -- to the Reader it may not be so clear. And you do not want them transposing

your pizza delivery guy with your astrophysicist.

To be safe, it's probably a good idea to have every character's name start with a different letter of the alphabet, making mixing up identities pretty much impossible.

Potential Problem #2: "This sounds familiar..."

When putting two and two together -- by which I mean first and last names -- it's worth your time to consider Googling your chosen pair. Because while this name may be entirely original to you, somewhere out there in the world it may already belong to someone else.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Of course there's probably at least one person out of the seven billion people on Earth who have that name." And you're absolutely right -- but that's not the problem I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about accidentally naming your character after a prominent senator or maybe a serial killer. I am not kidding, I once almost named my character after a serial killer. And then there was that one time I put together a first and last name that sounded great only to realize it was the same name as a character in "The Crow".

Potential Problem #3: "Is that Klingon?"

Writers of the sci-fi and fantasy genres are often picked on for crafting ridiculous names with lots of unnecessary punctuations.

But they're not the only ones who can get into trouble when it comes to problematic pronunciation.

So you have a character with African or Chinese or Russian or -- God help you -- Gaelic roots and want to show that. Cool! Just make sure it's easy to read.

Because while you may know that the Irish name "Aisling" is pronounced "Ashling" or that the name "Schuyler" is pronounced "Skyler", the Reader may not!

And you don't want them missing out on your great dialogue because they're caught up on the name of who's saying it.

In Conclusion:

Picking out names for you characters can be one of the funnest parts of carving them out as individuals. But names can have a lot of power. So make sure that you --

Pst! Here's a link to a website with great names of all ethnicities (enjoy): http://www.20000-names.com/index.htm