What’s In a Name? by Ashley Holloway

What’s In a Name? by Ashley Holloway

I recently ran into a bit of a quandary as a writer: I have run out of names to use for my characters. All the stories I held in my head for so long, before I was brave enough to put them to paper, have all been used up. And with them, the names I had carefully assigned to each of these characters. This led me to ask a writer friend of mine how she chooses names for her characters. Her response was remarkably simple; she recycled the same names.

Now, I am somewhat reluctant to engage in this palimpsest process, partly out of an irrational superstition that this will somehow negatively impact my recent publication streak (yay me!), and partly because this somehow feels a little treasonous to my previous characters. So, what to do? How does one name a character?

In Alberta the most popular names of 2022 were Olivia and Noah. Does writing follow this same trend? Will we see an increase in characters named Olivia and Noah in publications this year? Or does one use the actual people in our lives, such as family and friends as inspiration for character names? Much of my writing leans on the macabre at times, so this would likely lead to some awkward conversations and side-eyeing, hence the inherent danger in this practice.

A simple Google search yields thousands of articles containing advice for writers on this practice, some helpful, many not. “Make them memorable” was one such less-then-helpful suggestion. Nothing like stating the obvious here. “Keep them reader friendly, distinct, and easy to pronounce” are other such offerings. Some suggested flipping through a phone book for inspiration (does anyone actually have a phone book anymore?!). Names that are similarly shaped, such as Karen (which, let’s face it, thanks to social media, could be somewhat ill-advised these days) and Darren should also be avoided, or names that you can associate with notable figures could also be problematic. I don’t think there is ever a case where I would use the name Adolf for a character, but perhaps that’s just me.

On one hand, being too creative with a character name can be distracting to the reader. Especially when it comes to creative spelling; my inner logophile cringes when I see characters with creative-but-grammatically-incorrect names. Likewise, names that are too similar to one another can confuse the reader. As much as I love a good Bernard Cornwell epic saga, there are only so many AEthel-prefixed characters I can keep track of.

On that note, and one to which I simultaneously salute Bernard Cornwell for, it is very important for writers to consider the context of the story when choosing character names; era, geographical location, conventional trends, and genre all help build the story, so the character names should also follow suit. In conducting research for this article, I stumbled across the US Social Security Administration, which actually has a database that lets you search for popular baby names by decade, state, US territories, and changes in popularity. So cool, right?! (You’re welcome).

There are also random name generators that writers can use when really stuck. Or bored. Name generators let you choose from a list of different categories, including gender, first/last names, a specific country, and even has options such as ‘whimsical’ or ‘Arthurian. For fun, I selected ambiguous, Estonian, biblical, fairy, rapper which yielded “Michaiah Abijah”, which basically just flies in the face of everything I just wrote. But it does have a nice ring to it.

Perhaps I will just stick with ‘Ashley’ from now on…

Ashley Holloway teaches healthcare leadership at Bow Valley College in Calgary, AB. She is a nurse with a Master of Public Health, a graduate diploma in Global Leadership, with further studies in intercultural communication and international development. Ashley’s work has appeared in the Short Story Dispenser, The Nashwaak Review, The Globe and Mail, Magna Publications, The Prairie Journal, CARE Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Canadian Dimensions, and Lead Read Today; forthcoming publications include WELL READ Magazine (March 2023). Ashley has co-authored three books (Create & Curate: 500 Ideas for Artists & Writers, 2023; Living Art; and How (Not) to Lead, 2023), reads manuscripts, writes book reviews, and is an editor for Unleash Press. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.