How I Name My Characters

The first thing I do when I begin a new book is to open a folder on my desktop and give it the name of the lead character. I don’t use working titles. With over 20 books, I forget titles, working or otherwise. But I never forget a character’s story when I hear her name.

Giving someone a name is a unique privilege and it’s one that novelists have every time they start to write. Until I’ve named my lead character, and until I’ve mentally sketched out a number of scenes with her, the novel has no substance.

Sometimes the naming comes easily. Sometimes a story flows from a name. Sometimes I have to try out different names to fit the story. But as soon as I have a name, the character becomes a living, breathing person to me and I desperately want her to overcome whatever obstacles I’m going to put in her way.

There’s absolutely no doubt that certain names conjure up particular personalities for different people. Knowing an Caroline or an Isobel already might influence how we imagine them to be. My initial images may be different to those of my readers, but every character’s name has to fit the picture I have in my mind when I’m writing. For me, the sound of a name is also very important.

If it’s going to appear over and over in the novel, it has to be easy on the reader’s eye and ear. I don’t want to distract anyone from the story by having names that are difficult to pronounce, but I do want to make them distinctive enough to define the characters they belong to. I always have a very clear idea why the name I’ve given them works for a certain character, why she’s an Andie and not a Annie, a Sheridan and not a Shirley.

I called my very first heroine Jane because I wanted her to be seen as a very ordinary person with a very ordinary life. For me, Jane is a steady, reliable name and my Jane was a steady, reliable person – even if she dreamed of being someone very different. Alix, in Suddenly Single, is strong and determined and I thought she needed a strong name to go with it. Carlotta gets caught up in the heat of the Seville sun in If You Were me, and I felt her name captured the passionate person she was inside, even if she’d been cool and competent for most of her professional life.

While I like my characters to have names appropriate to the era in which the novel is written, I never choose a name that has a strong link with popular culture. As all of my novels are rooted in Ireland, and because we have some gorgeous names for girls, I often look to our Irish language names for my characters. However I will sometimes adjust the spelling to make it easier for readers who might be unfamiliar with them and their pronunciation, which has occasionally led to irate messages from Irish readers who want to know why I’ve Anglicised a traditional name.

For older characters I like to make sure I’ve given them a name appropriate to the time they were born. Grandmothers really can’t be Tygers or Ashleys or Camerons even if those names work for their granddaughters. I usually look up popular names for the years they were born and then try to pick something that suits them.

The right name can also give a certain zest to a minor character. Summer, in My Mother’s Secret, is a model, and chose it as her professional name. Although it reflects that aspect of her persona it also provides a contrast to the steelier part of her character later in the novel.

Giving the women names can be fun, if fraught, but men’s names are a nightmare. I prefer simple, single-syllable names for my leading men but after twenty-one books I think I’ve used most of them. At the start of every book I trawl the internet looking for ones that sound suitably masculine. As with the female names, I don’t like them to be distracting but I do want them to fit the character’s personality.

I’ve never changed the name of a lead character once I’ve started the book, but I did once have to change a secondary character’s name. The one I’d chosen was unusual, another author had used it in her just published book and I was afraid people would think I’d pinched it! However in my head my character still has her original name. When I went through the proofs in which she’s called Lauren, I really struggled to identify with her in the way I had before.

Naming your characters is one of the fun parts of writing. Bringing them to life is the other. However, regardless of the names you choose, it is the personality of your characters that matters most in your story. Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most enduring characters in fiction. She’s been played by a diverse range of actresses on screen. Yet nobody could possibly imagine her with a different name. She’s made it hers. And that’s what your characters have to do too.

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Sheila O’Flanagan is the award winning international best-selling author of twenty-one novels and three collections of short stories for adults. Her first children’s book, The Crystal Run, was published in 2016. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages.

You can read about the Irish names in her novels on her website here: http://sheilaoflanagan.com/irish-names-and-their-meanings/

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips