For some reason I just love the name Hermione, and wish I'd been called it.

I like different names, my daughter is called Davina - I named her before anyone knew about Davina Mccall I might add, my daughter is 20. Funnily, when I told my parents what she was going to be called, they said that the name was in the family, but generations back, which I didn't know. Funny how things go around isn't it.

Kat

The name William has been creeping through our family tree like a tenacious vine for generations.

JB

Emma

I've already 'used' Grannie Fairhurst in one of my unpublished (and in this case currently un-polished) novels. As she not only lost her husband immediately after marrying him, but also witnessed her lover, one of her band's tenor sax players, knocked off his bike and killed by a car - in the 1930s when there wasn't much traffic! - there was quite a lot to go on. It also heavily features the haunted house where my family lived (as tenants) from the 1880s until it was demolished in 1970, when I was 12/13. I was the last person to be born there, Grannie was the last one to die there. No wonder that bloody house features in just about everthing I've ever written!

One of the first things I did, when I was made redundant 8 years ago and suddenly had time to write, was to try to 'fictionalise' my family, but due to all the ridiculous but true stuff, like going to church on Sundays in a wooden toolbox strapped to the side of a motorbike, it started to sound like a sitcom. I was also in danger of turning us into one of those Hovis-ad working-class sagas that line the shelves of my local ASDA! It therefore wasn't very successful but it did get me into the habit of writing every day, and all the other stuff came in a flood, even when I then started my degree and had to write to order. Due to the shit year I've just had, the work-flow has gone completely - I'm supposed to be writing a synopsis right now - but it helps to do this and remind myself I do have ideas!

Julie

Like a few others have suggested, I often resort to place names, including street names, for characters' surnames. First names I try to make fit in with the era when the character was born. I deliberately try to avoid names that are too similar to real people's names, just in case they take umbrage and decide to sue.

Like Dee, I find I have to have a name for a character before I can write about him/her. I may start an outline by calling the man Y and the woman X, but I soon get to a point where I feel it's less trouble just to sit and come up with names before I go any further. Doing a search/replace on single letters can get tedious and error-prone, otherwise.


Alex

Very difficult to come up with the right name, all I know is I always know when I have found it. I choose favourite names for my MC, lesser characters have names I am usually luke warm about.
Kat

I like 'different' names when it suits the stories, but sometimes a simple name sounds good. I took one name the other day 'Geiger' from a posh shoe shop because I liked the sound of it. Didn't like the shoes though

One little trick I like to do is name my characters after people I don't particularly care for - or a variant that matches their initials. It's great for instant characterisation.

Ste

I like a lot of Grinder's character names as well

What a nice thing to say!

I find it funny, don’t point your fingers, I just do, that writers go to such great lengths to give characters names that suit them, but if they have kids they name them without knowing if it will suit. I wish I’d thought of that before naming my two little ones. I’m sure they could have lived with being called Alpha and Beta until I could come up with names that matched their personalities.

Leafing through the local phone book is another source of good names. Although if you’re writing fantasy the choices might be a little limited.

Grinder

Leafing through the local phone book is another source of good names. Although if you’re writing fantasy the choices might be a little limited

Yes, but make sure you don't use a real person's whole name. It's specially important if the name is unusual, or if the character fits the real person's circumstances: if, say, you dream up a nasty, incompetent doctor called X, then a real doctor called X could sue for libel: that you'd never heard of her would be a defence, but you really, really don't want to get to that stage. It's worth a quick google to check.

The freelance work I do has a database of about 10,000 names and more coming in all the time. I do jot those and others down in my notebook when I find a good one, but I always make a note of what the whole name is, so as not to use it.

And then there's the areas of life you just know nothing about. A friend of my mother's, writing her first novel, wanted a nice, neutral name that had no particular overtones for a minor character. Her children had to tell her that 'Bryan Robson' didn't quite fit the bill.

Emma

Actually, Emma, I'm not sure if not having heard of the person would be a defence. There was a case in the 1940s, where a writer was successfully sued by a lawyer whose name happened to be identical to that of a character in a story. The character in question was something of a philanderer, and the lawyer objected to the impugning of his reputation. The court did not accept the writer's defence that he had never heard of the lawyer in question, or that the character was not intended to be him. Which sort of kicks into touch all of those disclaimers you see in books and at the ends of films.

A writing course I once did, in which the above case was cited, advised that characters' names ought to be checked to ensure they are not real people's names; or at the very least, not the names of professional people like doctors, lawyers, politicians, and so on. This is particularly important if characters have traits that might be considered disreputable.


Alex

Alex,

But usually there is a statement in the front of books saying that all characters are fictitious and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely conicidental.

Doesn't or shouldn't that cover the author?

Kat

<Added>

Which sort of kicks into touch all of those disclaimers you see in books and at the ends of films.

Yes that is what I was on about - surely if this is in the front of your book, you should be ok?

Kat

Alex you're right. It is a defence, but not an absolute defence: you couldn't rely on it working, if you see what I mean. I know Heyer was involved in a case like that, and I don't suppose she's the only one.

You're right that the advice is to be particularly careful with professional people, though I've always thought that was sheer snobbery - it's just as damaging to an honest office cleaner for her name to be used for a pilfering office cleaner in a novel as it is for a lawyer. But maybe the covert assumption is that the cleaner's friends and bosses won't be reading the book, and the lawyer's friends will.

Emma

<Added>

Kat, I know, but it seems it doesn't. There are lots of disclaimers that people still put up - photographic developers, car washes, shops during sales - that actually have no legal enforceability.

Emma, I suppose part of the reasoning is that professional people are still regarded as having that thing known as "social standing", whereas people whose work doesn't qualify as "professional" don't. After all, a doctor or lawyer is qualified to sign the back of your passport photo to confirm it's you, whereas an office cleaner isn't (at least, not the last time I needed such a signature). This is the kind of difference that is probably behind their different legal status. Having said that, I suspect that the real reason is that, historically, professional people would have been more likely to have the money to sue. In these days of compensation culture, it is probably best to assume that anyone might decide to sue, given an excuse.

Kat, my understanding is that a disclaimer of that type does not give the author/film maker any legal protection at all, at least not in British law. I suppose the thinking behind this is that there are a lot of Sun reader types who will believe any muck that appears to be being thrown, and who won't even read disclaimers like that. Besides which, if a disclaimer did cover the author fully, it might be used to get away with genuine libel/defamation. What I mean is, an author who had a vendetta against someone could then put them into a story quite blatantly and use the disclaimer to prevent legal action.


Alex

<Added>

Professional people also often have to sign up to a code of conduct as part of their membership of any professional bodies (I do as a member of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers, for example). If a character in a story could be seen as being them, and had behaviour which was in breach of such a code of conduct, they might have to take legal action by way of proving that it wasn't them.

Yes, it was the passport thing that occurred to me, too. I notice they've added 'of similar standing in the community' to the list of people you can get to sign.

Emma

Yes, but make sure you don't use a real person's whole name.

Actually, I hadn’t thought of that. Good job you pointed that out, knowing my luck, I’d inadvertently pick the name of the head of the local crime syndicate and be in real trouble.

Cheers

Grinder

Vague phrases like "of similar standing in the community" are one of my pet hates, particularly in official regulations and forms. I regard them as little more than a device used by civil servants to avoid having to think hard enough to come up with objective criteria. It also means they can make up rules retrospectively, and often inconsistently, without giving you, the form-filler-in, any recourse to argue.

Getting back to the question, it also occurs to me that people in different social groups would have different criteria regarding defamation. Let's take the question of a character's truthfulness as a specific example (since, as I understand, calling someone a liar can be considered libelous). Whereas someone like a solicitor or an accountant might have cause to resent association with an untruthful namesake, an actor or builder might not be so offended. Even if one of the latter were to sue under such circumstances, they might be considered to have been less badly defamed than one of the former, simply because truthfulness is less of an issue in their work. In fact, you could argue that being able to tell a convincing lie is a large percentage of what acting is all about.

One of the things that most advice on libel seems to agree on is that it's a minefield and therefore worth taking a lot of trouble to avoid.


Alex