Names for my figurative children
I’m having difficulty sticking to character names.
In the beginning, I was certain that I would use the name Aiden, as that is the name I had planned to name my son (should I ever have one). I blindly made this choice years ago, because at the time I just felt that the name “worked.” It was a name I could imagine myself saying lovingly and yelling in anger. But as I get older and the idea of having children seems to move further and further down my list of priorities, I reasoned that the character in my book, being my figurative “child”, could have the name instead.
However, I have been doing some mild research on different names, and I came to find out that Aiden has recently become very popular… and, naturally, that has now made it completely unappealing to me. I’m just not a fan of picking anything that is too mainstream – there was to be some uniqueness to it. Meaning, if the world were clamoring for the color white, and the extremists were picking black to stand out, I would prefer to settle for something gray.
So, if Aiden is too mainstream, then what name should I use? This was only one of the surprisingly frustrating obstacles I had to conquer before I could even begin to write, because my characters had to have their names. They simply had to. I couldn’t write about nameless people.
I initially found myself using the name Noah, and even though I was always a little indifferent about that choice, I eventually got used to it… which wasn’t what I was looking for. I don’t want to be used to my lead character’s name, as I would imagine that the reader would have to do the same thing. After much debate, I’ve since decided to try out the name Ethan, and so far this choice has made the story flow a lot better. Unlike Noah, I can actually take Ethan and his struggles seriously.
So, I’ve got the guy’s name… but what about the girl? I started off with Emily, but like Noah, it was a name I really couldn’t take seriously – especially for the role that she was supposed to play. “Emily” just wasn’t a powerful enough name. I tried out a few other names, mostly ones that began with E or A, and this had lead me to falling in love with the name “Emma.” It wasn’t until a few days after I had chosen this name did it strike me that I had unknowingly named my main character after a girl whose website I used to love. Usually name associations like that would push me toward another choice, because after that point it becomes impossible for me to not be reminded of that other person I knew who had that name. However, in this case, it actually made me like my main character more. I liked naming her after that girl whose website and creativity I used to envy.
And this is who I’m writing about – Ethan and Emma. The names sound good together, which has become some sort of odd requirement for me. I’ve come up with a lot of other names that I’ve liked, but when they didn’t sound good together I felt like I was forced to pick something different. Maybe it’s just my opinion, but you can’t write a story about a couple whose names sound like oil and water in your mouth. They have to roll off the tongue – a book is nothing but words, so the names have to read as though they belong together. The reader will imagine the rest.
But, sadly, all is not perfect, because both names being with an E. E! Counting Ethan and Emma, that would give me a total of four characters in the book whose names begin with an E. One of them I can’t change, the other one I could – but that would still leave me with three E’s, all of which are “main” characters.
Of my options, I’ve been trying to find a better girl’s name – mostly because that was the name that I struggled with the most. I figure that if I had difficulty picking it, I could probably work a little harder and do better with it if I tried. Right now, the whole name issue is bothering me enough that I’ve started to stall writing chapter three (and option to write blog entries, obviously). Important things are supposed to happen in chapter three, and the shit hits the fan in the fourth – yet here I am, delaying all of that so that I can nitpick over a name.