Today’s post is by author Ginny Kubitz Moyer.
Over the course of my life, I have chosen names for two real human beings and approximately 200 fictional ones. The processes are surprisingly similar. Both involve a blend of logic and intuition, and both feel like deeply consequential decisions.
Of course, it’s fair to say the stakes are higher when naming a baby. You’re choosing a moniker that will (in most cases) follow another person throughout their lifetime, forming others’ impressions at school, in the job market, even online. The responsibility feels weighty, and it is.
But choosing a name for a protagonist is also an important task. Apart from any portrait that might be on the book cover, a name is likely your readers’ first encounter with the fictional person who will, one hopes, captivate them for hundreds of pages. How does a writer land on the right one for their main character—and for all the other characters, too?
Below are a few factors to consider. They just might help you select the perfect names for your fictional creations … and, should the occasion arise, for actual flesh-and-blood ones, too.
1. Consider the time period.
If I tell you I went to high school with a few Tiffanys and Chads, can you guess my approximate age? Needless to say, neither name found its way into my novel A Golden Life, which takes place in 1938. Instead, my characters are called Frances, Lawrence, Gene, Celia, Joe, Arthur, and Nancy. Very few of those names are in my high school yearbook (Class of ’91), but they certainly would have been in my grandmother’s.
As a historical fiction writer, I’ve found that my research process organically fills my subconscious with names from whichever era I’m writing about. When drafting, I draw names from that well as needed. If I get stuck, the Social Security Administration’s lists of the most popular baby names by year are an invaluable resource (as well as being great fun to explore).
2. How does it sound?
Charles Dickens excelled at choosing names that fall memorably on the ear while subtly illuminating the characters’ personalities. In David Copperfield, the “ah” sound in “Mr. Micawber” hints at the character’s perennial openness and optimism, while the name “Edward Murdstone” evokes something cold and sinister. Taking a page from Dickens’s book, in A Golden Life, I called one character Celia Ventimiglia. The name’s musical lilt reveals something about the woman herself, a character who (unlike my protagonist) is in harmony with her family. In my first novel, The Seeing Garden, one of my main characters is named William Brandt. I chose the surname for its emphatic, strong finish, which fits a decisive man of business. (The fact that it contains the world “brand” was another plus for a character who cares deeply about his public image.)
3. What’s the meaning?
My sons are named Matthew and Luke. While the meaning of those names wasn’t the primary reason my husband and I selected them, “gift from God” and “light” both capture something of how we felt about their births. Likewise, in writing fiction, a name’s meaning is rarely my primary consideration, but it can subtly highlight some aspect of the character. For the protagonist in an upcoming project, I landed on a name that means “peace” because the novel is set during a time of war. In A Golden Life, the name “Belinda” means “serpent,” which echoes a motif used in connection with the character. Even if I don’t specifically point out the meaning in the story, I find that its presence subtly enhances my writing.
4. What are the associations?
I taught high school for twenty-six years and discovered there’s a little-known occupational hazard to the profession: when I was pregnant, my colleagues warned that every name I was considering for my child would bring up an association, good or bad, with a former student. “Some baby names will be completely off the table,” they said, and they were right. (If you are a former student named Matthew or Luke, rest assured that my memories of you are nothing but positive.)
Of course, names that have certain associations for me may hold different associations for others; a writer can’t possibly anticipate or work around that. But it’s fair to say that if you name your protagonist Elvis, Jesus, Holden, or Hermione, there will be a specific image that flashes into your reader’s eye before they can begin to picture your character. That can either be a deal-breaker for the name or, in some cases, a plus, something you use strategically. (A protagonist named Elvis who can’t carry a tune, for example, might bring exactly the ironic touch that you want.)
5. What is your preference?
There are a handful of female names I have encountered in books over the years and have absolutely loved. Even if I’d had ten daughters, though, these names are unlikely to have been used. My husband and I granted each other veto power in the baby-naming process, and I doubt he’d have embraced some of my favorites, many of which have a decidedly old-fashioned ring.
But when you’re a novelist, you have free rein to use any name you like. This is how I ended up with Lavinia and Vivian in The Seeing Garden and Kitty in A Golden Life. There’s something satisfying about being able to put these names in the pages of a book, possibly winning new fans for them in the process. (Will my efforts help Kitty and Lavinia rank up on the Social Security list? Stranger things have happened.)
One final thought: There’s usually a more flexible timeline to naming fictional people than there is to naming real ones. With no bureaucratic deadlines or family members pressuring you for a decision, you can take ample time getting to know your characters and choosing accordingly. I’m a discovery writer who figures out the story as I write, so my drafts often have characters named “she” or “he” until I’m a good way into the story… at which point I consider the factors above, plug the winning name into the manuscript, and see how it goes from there.
And how has it gone, all this naming? Well, both of my sons, now teenagers, tell me they love their names. And no readers have told me that Catherine, my protagonist in The Seeing Garden, is really more of a Sierra, Mimi, or Blanche.
I’m going to call that a win.
Ginny Kubitz Moyer is a California native with a love of local history and the author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, The Seeing Garden, brings to life the vanished world of the San Francisco Bay Area’s great estates. Her novel A Golden Life, which moves from Hollywood to the Napa Valley in 1938, will be published in September 2024. An avid weekend gardener, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and one rescue dog. Learn more at ginnymoyer.org.
I have to fight the urge to name a novel’s heroine Paige Turner.
That’s a good one. Thank you for the laugh!
You’re most welcome!
There is one other reality to consider. Not wanting to deal with just the right name of a character, I have sometimes given the emerging person a temporary name. Once I did that, I found it difficult to change the name. If you meet a John or a Mary, it’s difficult to then call them Zeke or Eliza.
This is a great point … when we get used to seeing a name in our own manuscript, even if we intend it to be a placeholder, sometimes it can be hard to imagine the character as anything else. I’ve had this happen, too, and so I’ve found that using “she” and “he” tends to work for me. (It can get confusing if the manuscript has multiple characters without final names, though!).
Near-enough temporary names are a good idea. Once you’ve tweaked them into your final names, it’s a delight to do a Find and Replace for the entire story or novel. Don’t choose simple names like Bill or Val though, because the program will discover those letter combos in all sorts of wrong places.
That’s a good tip. I once heard that letter combination TK doesn’t show up in any English words, so it’s easy to find and replace later. I tend to use it for temporary terms/research points, but could easily use it for a name.
For me, names arrive along with new characters. I rarely anticipate the new arrival. The story begins and then it moves in directions I didn’t anticipate. This is one of the pleasures of writing. I appreciated the post. Thank you.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! Yes, sometimes a character just appears and you know the name instantly. That doesn’t happen often for me, but sometimes it does, and it’s always a surprise … a most welcome one.
In my second novel, The Sturgeon’s Dance, I initially had named the boyfriend (a secondary character) “Matt,” but as the story progressed, I found that my female protagonist was using Matt as a doormat. He needed more face-time and he needed more credit in the story than I (or the female protagonist) was giving him, so I changed his name to Greg and wrote him more boldly into the story. That worked just fine.
That’s a great anecdote about the power of names not just for the reader, but for the author! Thanks for sharing.
Ginny, thanks. Great post. I write mostly non-fiction essays but have started in on short stories. Naming the characters can be a challenge. Some good ideas here.
Thanks, Tim! I’m glad it was helpful.
Great article!
Something else to consider is the initial. A Billy, Brian, and Bob can get confusing unless they are triplets.
This is a great point. A copyeditor once helpfully pointed out to me that having an Etta and an Ethel in the same novel could be confusing … so Etta, being the walk-on character, got a new name. (And now, when I read novels and the author has multiple characters whose name begin with the same letter, I wish they’d had my copyeditor so I could keep them all straight!).
There are some very pragmatic considerations. I always keep a running list of names to ensure they aren’t too similar–like the time I realized that 3 or 4 characters had names that ended in “-a”.
And feel free to indulge in personal jokes. Like a character that was patterned after a narcissist who did me great harm, Richard. I never used the diminutive “Dick,” that’s what I meant every time I typed it.
Anagrams can be fun. I named one character “Tamra” based on the tragic Biblical character Tamar. It helped shaped how I wrote her story.
The anagram idea is great! That can be a fun detail for the eagle-eyed reader to spot. I also like to include names of people I know/have known. I snuck a few family names into my upcoming novel … no main characters, just minor walk-on ones, but it’ll be fun for family members to recognize them.