What’s in a Name?

There is power in a name. It instantly conjures up a visual for the reader based on a myriad of unconscious information gleaned over a lifetime of meeting people. As writers, we use it to confer depth, strength, age and intelligence. We use it to make connections for our reader to uncover and assign meaning in ways that a half page narrative can’t. Many of us use names to show, not tell, the details of our character’s culture and their history. They can be a mirror or a mask.

I am ethnically Bengali and so have a dak-nam which literally translates into ‘the name they call you’. Luckily for me, my dak-nam is a derivative of my good name or bhalo-nam, which is used on all official documents. This is not true for my sister and most of my cousins. Which can get confusing when you are trying to explain how you are all related to someone new. For anyone with South Asian friends and family, you will know this happens a lot.

Is my dak-nam my mirror or my mask?

I feel like my character’s name outlines them in marker-pen in my reader’s mind. The follow-up descriptions add colour and texture to something recogisable in their imaginations. The story itself also forms around the character.

Which is why changing the name of your MCs halfway through your story is a massive headache – one which I am currently suffering.

Sadly, I am not one of those writers who has a character fully formed in their head before I begin. They develop and morph into being as the story progresses and in some cases as a result of the unfolding drama. I am questioning the original significance I placed on my FMC’s name, given that I am a third of the way through (give or take some violent editing) and have not really explained why I thought it was important in the first place. 

It was one of those mad moments of self-reflection.

Dangerous, I know.

As with all my writing conundrums, I did a bit of research -different books, different genres and a lot of procrastinating – I began to consider how I felt about the names of some beloved characters from my favourite books.

If Frodo had been Geoff, would LOTR still be as compelling? If Mathilda had been Gladys would she have been so impishly engaging? If Case’s name was Ludvic, what would you have thought as he jacked into the matrix? If Tyler Durden had been Jon Smith, would we have talked about Fight Club?

Without a time-machine, we will never really know the answer to but for me, some themes emerged, as if the collective conspiracy of authors had somehow tapped into a universal pattern without really meaning to.

Here is what I found (the usual disclaimer regarding my lists apply).

1. The elderly have old names. Colonels are called Reg, ancient English teachers are called Norma. These names place them at a point in history with the restriction that period suggests. This is true across cultures although the specific names will be different. 
2. Very young characters have trendy, unusual name. The more unusual the better to avoid any implicit ageing(see point 1).
3. Heroes (male) tend to have short, single syllable names. Easy to call in an emergency situation.
4. Heroes (female) have longer names that are shortened to a single syllable (see above) but suggest hidden depths for that character.
5. Name complexity infers a certain sense of superiority.
6. The sound of the name is important. ‘Fuschia’ from Gormenghast feels luscious. ‘Frodo’ feels playful.
7. Any name you have to explain (e.g. Taschendra;’she who can use the wind to call the wolves’) isn’t worth explaining unless there is relevance (or humour) to explaining it. 
8. Complicated alien names are almost as annoying as unnecessarily complex plots involving time-travel.
9. The characters without names (He who must not be named, The Twins, the Beast) occupy just as much space in your reader’s imagination as those that do. 

So are names important.  Yes, but perhaps not in the way I had initially imagined. Culturally, my FMC is a nomad and so the significance of her name is actually in the insignificance of it.

Am I overthinking it? Probably but then if I didn’t, could I even call myself a writer?

*all names have been changed to protect the innocent.