What’s in a character name?
A lot, I’ve discovered after some thinking and talking to Kev. I’m speaking specifically of the names of some of my characters in Nevermore. They have strong religious (Biblical) connotations and I’ve come to realise that this might mean trouble for me, mainly because my characters may not act or reason in accordance to those connotations. Their roles might be slightly different and it may cause confusion because sometimes their roles overlap with the religious figure they share a name with and sometimes they don’t, and maybe then the reader’s not quite sure. It will most likely cause a degree of confusion. Is the character meant to be this figure I’m already familiar with and is he then terribly out of character at points, or is he supposed to be this other, unrelated person that just happens to be quite similar to and share a name with a well known Biblical character?
No. I can’t have that.
It’s been annoying me for some time now, so I’ve decided that I’m going to change the names and keep the characters as they are, keep them my own, and let the reader draw parallels if they want to. I think that will be the best solution for both me and my reader as I already have a clear idea of what roles these characters will have in the story, and since I’m not willing to change those roles to adapt to the characters’ current, heavily associative names. It’s better to create something new and then the reader can be allowed to think and draw parallels themselves, should they want to.
That leaves me with one problem. I have to come up with some new names. Names that will have to sound good in my head, suit the characters and on top of that, they have to be original.
I have a few ideas, but none of them sounds quite right yet. Obviously, I want them to be spot on. I’m in the process of looking for inspiration, and of course, any help would be welcome.
I had never thought about that before, but now that you mention it it sounds absolutely right – especially for weirdos like me who just love to interpret and dissect everything! :)
I know, I love to do that too and that’s also a reason I want to change the names. I don’t want to make it too obvious. I shall assume that my reader has half a brain and will figure it out themselves. And if they don’t, that they’ll have a good read regardless of underlying meanings. ^^
But man, it’s so difficult coming up with something that suits! All the ones I come up with that sound good don’t suit any of the characters. Booo!
You are writing a book?
Cool, what’s the setting?
And Ive never thought about biblical connotations of names and characters behaviour in books or movies.
There’s links to the whole thing in my previous post, or you could go here: http://www.webook.com/project/Nevermore-1
I usually draw parallels to other stories when I’m reading, and in many cases, especially in Fantasy, parallels can be drawn to biblical characters or settings – probably because it’s a classic story that can be told in so many ways.
But, as I haven’t changed the names in the version of my story that’s up on webook yet, you’ll see pretty clearly what I mean with regards to character names.