What’s In a (Baby) Name?
By Jael McHenry | February 6, 2012 |
My first baby is two months away from needing a name, but I’ve owned baby name books for more than a decade. It’s a writer thing. In the first short stories I wrote, way back in elementary school, I think I mainly named my characters for people I knew. Erica. Ben. Mike. Dawn. (My class at school had a lot of Dawns.)
As I got older, I went to the other extreme, picking names I’d never encountered in real life, or even making them up. Kali. Sarajean. Abner. Gillespie. Finally in college I decided I should name my characters the way people name their kids, and picked up several baby name books, some of which I still use as resources to this day.
However.
Now that I have some experience with both, it has become clear to me that naming your children is actually not at all like naming your characters.
In what way? Well, here are three:
The last name, for starters. When you’re naming characters, you’re free to swap around last names until you find something that has the right sound or meaning. Not so with your own name – you’re usually pretty stuck with the last name, and no matter how much you like the name Bryce, if your last name is Pryce, you may think better of choosing it. There are other constraints, too. With characters, unless you have a co-author, yours is the only opinion that matters. With kids, you’ve got to factor in the other parent’s preferences. You love the sound of Magdalena, but it turns out that was your husband’s ex-girlfriend’s name, and he’s got some pretty unpleasant associations? Well, no Magda for you.
Your characters will never second-guess your choices. Sure, a lot of characters complain about their names. But if you name your black-sheep protagonist Sinclair so you can use Sin as his nickname, he’s not going to rebel and call himself by his middle name, Paul. You control him, even if you sometimes feel he has a life of his own. Your son Sinclair? Well, he really does have a life of his own, and his plans may not mesh with yours. It might be a hoot to give your urban fantasy character an unwieldy name like Clytemnestra or Nemesis, but not so with your daughter – on little Clytemnestra O’Brien’s first day of preschool, it may not feel like such a hoot to either of you.
Most importantly: with your baby, you only get one shot. You can name a character anything in the world, and as long as the book hasn’t been published yet, you can change it any time you want. Anna in the first draft becomes Hannah in the second, then back to Anna, then suddenly Gretchen. In my case, the protagonist of The Kitchen Daughter was Gracie Voltaggio for a long time, only to change to Ginny Selvaggio before publication. But you name your child once, within a fairly specific window, and that decision sticks. Only in very extreme situations does that change a few months or years down the line.
So while choosing baby names is fun, choosing character names is, in the end, way easier. And over the course of your life you might have the opportunity to name hundreds of characters.
Hundreds of babies? Not even if you’re a Duggar.
(Photo via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of jetsandzeppelins)
Jael McHenry is the debut author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, April 12, 2011). Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. You can read more about Jael and her book at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry.
There’s definitely a lot less stress naming a fiction character than naming a real character!
Good luck naming your baby and congrats!
Btw, is there a baby name book you’d recommend for writers?? There are so many out there to choose from.
Laura, I don’t have a particular baby name book that’s the go-to for me, but there are some suggestions in the comments below you might check out! Lately I’ve gravitated more to the SSA’s list of popular baby names for each year, since I’m working on a historical novel and it’s super-handy for that.
Jael,
Thanks and good luck coming up with a name. I ended up using the girl’s name we had picked out (we had a boy) for a character in my novel. It was a Biblical name and the character was the daughter of a minister. Choosing the right names for your characters is crucial.
Thanks for the food for thought. I agree that naming children is more difficult than naming characters, but, as I have two boys that I could not imagine having different names, I wanted to let you know that so long as you choose your baby’s name with love and consideration for his/her feelings in later life it ends up mattering a lot less than you might think. After you’ve called them their name for a few weeks it becomes impossible to imagine that they could ever have been called anything else.
I love your post and completely agree! Choosing a name for my son was more difficult than delivering him! (well, sort of) Naming book characters is infinitely easier with far fewer real-world repercussions. No one is going to tease them in school or give them horrific nicknames :) Thanks for sharing and best of luck with your new little one! I hope everything goes perfectly.
Congratulations on the baby! I love picking names — for characters and babies — so many possibilities! Very exciting! When my husband and I first got married, we had two names we talked about naming our children — but when each was born we ended up choosing other names we loved more. Just recently I used those first names for my MC’s children! I still love the names and it always makes me smile when I type the names.
As far as naming living, breathing creatures, I’ve only ever named pets. And I absolutely do not mean to muddy this fun post by comparing anyone’s baby to a pet–particularly not yours, Jael (you have a very cool name, btw)–it seems to me that no matter the name, with its routine use the name and namee tend to meld. Case in point: our black lab Belle. When we lost our last lab, our niece, then 7 y.o., was pretty broken up. We consoled her by promising her she could come to pick up the next puppy and, *gulp* name her. She watched Beaty and the Beast the night beofre the pick up date, and voilà, we have a Belle. Which I distinctly disliked–until she just became Belle. Can’t imagine any other name now.
As I said, fun post, Cool-Name-Author. Good luck with everything; the really important stuff (good health for you and the baby) and choosing a name.
Thanks, Vaughn! I love my unusual name so I tend to pick unusual names for characters, and will probably be doing the same for the baby-to-be. Just HOW unusual will be the question. :)
Vaughn, We chose our son’s name after Enzo the dog in Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain. It all fell into place. I just tell people we named him after a dog — a very noble dog.
I used some of the unusual names people offered for my son as character names in children’s books. So, I am mothering/revising those children in a different way.
Good luck Jael with your child’s name.
I KNEW it! Stacy, I’ve always wanted to ask you that!
Since the dog in question was named for Enzo Ferrari, your son could always adopt that as a cooler tale in his teen years.
My favorite topi, Jael–as you know! Can’t wait to hear what you pick for the baby AND the next novel.
Thought of you as I was writing it, Nina, of course!
Yes, of course, we ALL thought of you, Nina. And I had to laugh at Jael’s comment that you can change a character’s name, but not your child’s!!!
Congrats, Jael!! I ADORE baby names, both for characters and real children. My technique is to use the baby names that my husband rejects for character names (Aisling and Willow are two from my newest book). My advice with baby names is to wait until you meet the wee one face to face. Which I never would have believed prior to having kids–I always thought, hey, it’s a newborn, how can a name possibly not fit? But my oldest girl was going to be Samantha until the first time I set eyes on her and instantly new she was NOT Samantha but Isabella. Which surprised my poor husband to no end as Isabella was not even on our list! But now (she’s 5 now) everyone agrees she couldn’t have been named anything else.
Oh, and for both baby and character naming, I LOVE The Complete Reverse Dictionary of Baby Names Made Easy by Amanda Elizabeth Barden. It lets you look up names by meaning–really, really cool
I definitely think we’ll narrow it down to a few choices and then wait to meet the wee one before making a final decision. I like that idea a lot.
This sounds familiar. My sister was supposed to be “Tabitha” or “Samantha.” (I think my father had a thing for Elizabeth Montgomery’s Bewitched.) But when my mother took a look at her after she was born, she said, “This is Heather.” We’d never heard her so much as whisper that name before, but that was that. (And I think my mother secretly hated “Tabitha” and “Samantha”!)
Can’t wait to hear what you decide on, Jael.
I’m from a family of four kids, and one sister was a much-welcomed “oopsie” when I was fourteen. My parents went to great lengths to involve us. They went to the delivery room with a first and middle name for a baby of either sex — all that consideration, all that effort, discarded with one peek at a wrinkled face. Can you imagine? ;)
Can’t wait to hear what you call your wee one, Jael.
You wouldn’t name your daughter Nemesis? Really? I’ll check with you six months from now. You might be feeling differently.
I recently bought a baby name book (my first is due in six weeks!), and kept it after settling on a name because it’s an incredible resource for characters. It’s called The Complete Book of Baby Names, and the cool thing is that it has a section that groups names by traits – class clowns, doctors, soap opera names, Irish names, mechanics, drama queens, virtuous names and on and on. I definitely plan to hold onto it.
Congrats, Tiffany, and good luck on both fronts! Thanks for the rec.
This will be a good topic for my next writers’ group. Reminds me of a class I took with the late Dwight Swain many years ago. He talked about naming a character to echo a mannerism. The example he used was that of a secondary character in one of his westerns. The man always picked his nose. Dwight named him “Digger.”
Sorry, couldn’t help looking over your short list. Top boy pick: Bobo. Runner up: Jack Daniels. Top girl pick: Glitter. Runner up: Angry Tuna. I mean, you’re competing with rock stars and celebrities!
And, Jael, have you applied for pre-school yet? This is New York, remember. It’s not too soon to begin prepping your kid for the ERB standardized test for toddlers. I believe there are tapes you can get that you can play for your baby in utero?
Not that I would suggest that parenting in Manhattan is like The Hunger Games, or anything. No, no. The angst over landing those Harvard-track nursery slots is way overdone. And, truly, there’s too much emphasis on this busienss of selecting the right name. It’s not like his/her name will become his/her destiny, or anything…
…but, um, have you considered Juliet? Atticus? Katniss? You know, something tragic and noble–?
(Well, then again maybe just Michael or Jennifer. Not found much in novels, but fiction thank goodness isn’t life…which is maybe your point?)
Ha, Don, you’re sure right about the contact sport that is child-rearing in NYC. Maybe Nemesis WOULD be the right name to help our little gladiator stand out in the preschool combat to come! (My husband has actually been telling people that that’s the front-runner whenever they ask about names — tends to bring the conversation to a close rapidly.)
I’m waiting for a baby, too, my son’s first baby, a girl, in three weeks-ish. We know the name already, which they hammered out over a couple of powerful months.
Character names sometimes drive me crazy. I’ve had main characters who changed their names a dozen times. Others, they simply show up with names attached. Current WIP’s main character is Ruby, and I even knew who she was named for: Ruby The Intergalactic Gumshoe. Where did all that come from? No idea, but I love it when they show up like that.
Two weeks before our second child was born, the doctor said, “Guess what? It’s twins.” (This was long before ultrasound was routine–I had an X-ray). We’d barely agreed on a name for one baby, and didn’t know if it was a girl or boy. Suddenly we had to come up with two. Our son was a “J” name, and even though I wasn’t writing, I knew I didn’t want two more “J” names. I recently read a book where the author had named her three sisters with “M” names, and the there was Mama. I went crazy trying to keep them straight.
I normally Google popular names for the year/decade my characters were born, and try to make sure I’m not repeating letters or have names that are too similar.
It’s a challenge. But then, I actually called one of my books “What’s in a Name?” Try dealing with characters taking on new identities!
Hear, hear! Naming characters is fun, fluid, and entirely within your control–but a baby? My Mom was set on naming one of my brothers Joshua…until he popped out and he was NOT a Joshua. So he was Baby No-Name for nearly 3 weeks before my parents decided on Andrew.
Baby No-Name can only stay a No-name for so long before people start thinking you’re an abusive parent with no love for your child.
I think one of the other dangers of naming our characters as opposed to naming our children is hidden meanings. If you name your child Adam people aren’t going to assume you did so because you hope he eventually meets a girl named Eve and face a moral dilemma presented by a servant. But with character names, the choice of Adam can create an entirely different message than the choice of Bill. Just as Daisy will always create a different image of a female character than Helen.
What a fun post! I’m reading this on my phone while walking around a pond and chuckling to myself. I get a lot of funny looks from the passer-bys :-)
I often make up names for my characters but I also make sure they sound close to some popular names, so there is no too-much-of-a-fantasy factor associated with my characters, especially if a novel is firmly set in the reality of our everyday world.
When choosing names for our children, my husband and I each made a list of favorites. With our first born it was easy, but when I was expecting the second baby, we couldn’t agree on the name. We finally decided on Amanda, with my (but not my husband’s) favorite name, Izabella (Polish spelling, since I’m Polish), as her middle name.
Back home, in my family, we have a beautiful tradition of giving the child middle name of one parent or grandparent. My son got his from my dad, but my daughter somehow escaped this custom :-)
Naming a fictional baby: easy as pie.
Naming a real one: Ughh!
Don’t worry. Whatever you name the baby they will grow to hate it and when they hit ten, or so, will make sure you know just how uncool/ridiculous/common/weird that name is.
My poor parents named me after a Bob Dylan song (can you say being hit on by loser guys in dive bars).
My poor daughter was named after a city (she rolls her eyes whenever anyone talks about visiting it).
The good news is you get those freebie ten years before the eye rolling starts and then by the time they hit 30, it’s all good..at least that’s my hope!
I manage the local WIC office and have been amazed, puzzled, impressed, and stunned at the variety of names I’ve seen over the years. I like a creative name, but not a funky spelling. If the name looks like a disease, don’t use it. Years ago, I met a baby named Diarrhea, spelled like the malady but pronounced Dee-Aria. Ugh.
What fun! I don’t have baby name books, but I do use the online variety. Researching the meaning of names is a wonderful way to procrastinate.
I totally get what you mean! I’m renaming two characters in my current novel because they just didn’t match up to the other characters and they’re not special enough to have a reason for being so different.
Then you have me who decided on baby names when I was 14, several years later and I don’t actually want kids, and I’m doubting whoever has them with me is gonna wanna name them all what I wanna name them for one reason or another.
I love names, love naming children and characters. I have lists all over the place – in my purse, in a folder in the laundry room.
One of my favorites, I found in an obituary and I’ve never heard it before or since – welll, I hear it often enough because it’s my heroine’s name in a 3-part series: Loutishie.
We named our first child Grace, but while still in the hospital, a nurse came wheeling her into my room and said to me, “Mrs. Cannon, this baby ain’t no Grace!” She was right. We re-named her Gillian. Well, my daughter despised her name because people called her Gilligan with a hard G. She re-named herself Iris when she was three because she loves flowers.
She’s 22 now, and she’s nothing but an Iris!
Thanks for a fun post. Blessings on you and your little one.
Something else about naming characters (and babies, really): the names usually say more about the namer than the namee. It’s easy to forget that in fiction, because we want to assign meaning to the names we give our characters. In real life, though, Grace is no more or less fitting for a ballerina than Evelyn; Elvis no more better for a musician than John.
Nice fun, light topic. Thanks!
I tend to give my characters names that aren’t too out there, but aren’t shared by close friends or family members. Hazard of writing in first person: everyone already assumes anything you write is autobiographical. Better to keep any nod to auntie/best friend/ex from years ago out of it.
As for my kid (and dogs and cats), I never name anyone I haven’t met.
The nurses at the hospital called my son the little grape until day four, when I settled on Julian Leo. I had a list going in, of course. I wanted something classic, not ridiculously common, and international. By day four, he looked more Julian than Roman, Adrian, Nicholas or Maximillian.
Ooh. I should add there’s a book by this guy Bruce Lansky. He actually rates the names with a star rating system. Silly gimmick but the source of many running jokes in our house.
One other consideration is what do the initials spell? For Example – Priscilla Irene Green – PIG,
We accidentally named our middle child Edward Robert – He spent more time in the ER than our other kids – I”m sure that’s not because of name but made us wonder .
We had the family vote on our first child’s name – gave a list of three possibilities.
Have a blessed day.
Heather
We accidentally named our middle child Edward Robert – He spent more time in the ER than our other kids – I”m sure that’s not because of name but made us wonder .
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Thanks for the laugh, Heather. (And I hope Edward is over the ER hump.)
The other nice thing about naming characters is that you can make their personality fit their name, or let their character reflect that name’s meaning, or shape them to be totally contrary to the meaning of their name if that’s what you want. Name your daughter “Sarah” and there’s no guarantee she’ll act like a little princess, or name your son Seamus and there’s no inherent reason he’ll be mischievous.