The Name Game

 The Name Game

I have a confession. I love names.

I’m an avid collector of them. For example, there are some wonderful historical names my mother has uncovered in the course of her family history research – the winners so far being Valentine Pratt, Strange Peacock and brothers Wildsmith and Griffin Badger (the latter two being indeed a part of my genetic make-up!). As a child (sad as this makes me sound), I used to pause the credits of films on video and list any interesting names I found there. I have a number of name books, both conventional and slightly more unusual – my books of Cornish and Celtic names are an especially good source of fantasy names. And any time I come across a good name in normal life, I have a little notebook on hand to write it down.

Strange to confess, I don’t do this purely to collect names for my writing. I do it because I like names. But, of course, it does come in handy in that regard. I’ve seen a number of discussions hither and thither on the internet about how various writers chose a name for their story characters. Some are determined to assign a name with meaning, others name in tribute or that simply suits – I even saw one fantasy writer claim to smack his hands randomly on the keyboard and then tidy up the results!

And me, with my wide-ranging name resources, do I have some great strategy, some master plan, some clever way or means?

Ummm, no. Not really.

I’m quite an instinctual namer. I’m never really sure where they come from, especially the fantasyesque ones which are, in essence, pulled out of thin air. I just see what suits the person and if it works, I roll with it. In my fanfiction days, I went out of my way to assign a secret meaning to every name I gave, scouring my name books for the relevant options and whittling it down until I found one that worked. But with my other works, which are mostly set in far distant kingdoms, I simply hunted around in my brain until the name appeared. That’s certainly what happened when creating the Narrative names for the Merry Band in The Disposable – I found something off the top of my head which I felt suited the character in question and I rolled with it. Where it came from, I couldn’t tell you. Sometimes from my books, sometimes out of nowhere. I just found them.

I do have one odd quirk that sometimes helps in this respect. I see words and names in colour in my head. Every letter of the alphabet has its own distinct colour and the combinations of these give any names I chose a distinct colour too. So often, I chose a colour I feel best represents that character, start with that letter and work outwards. Whether a name is bright and bold or dull and brown really depends on who they are.

As I’m sure you can imagine though, naming Fodder and his friends in the Realm was a whole new experience for me. These were names that had to mean something – but not necessarily what you’d expect. This was a world where people were named after their intended Narrative function rather than their own personality. So, rolling with the irony, Prince Dullard, raised to play pompous imbeciles, is a genius and Princess Pleasance is foul-tempered. But I also wanted to add hidden meaning – Flirt may not flirt with men but she likes to flirt with danger. And while Shoulders may not always have his head, he does bear the weight of the world.

And, in the Realm, names can change. A Boy of Destiny cannot be called Bumpkin and become a prince – when the Quest is done, he’ll rebrand himself. And indeed, I am very much aware that Shoulders wouldn’t have always been called Shoulders – that nickname would have risen and stuck after the beginning of the great Clank vendetta. But what was he called before? I couldn’t say. Because Shoulders suits him too well to think of anything else.

And that’s the key really. Whether scouring books of names for the right meaning or pulling a collection of random letters out of thin air, the name has to fit the character. It has to say to both writer and audience that this is who this character is. And at the end of that day, that’s what the name game is all about.