How to Name Your Characters (Without Getting Put on a Watchlist)

Why phone books mattered, why baby name sites are sketchy, and why your stripper might be named Ruth

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Phone books are dead

And that has dealt a blow to fiction writers.

If you’re going to write a full-length novel, you’re probably going to need a lot of names. It’s harder than you might think to come up with them all.

Flipping through phone books was a time-honored method of finding names, one many famous authors have acknowledged using.

What makes a good name?

Shakespeare’s Juliette famously asked, “What’s in a name?” If you’re a novelist, the answer is: a lot.

You can’t always go with completely random names, because you need to consider the character’s age and ethnic background. You can, if you wish, have an overt or hidden meaning in the name.

Charles Dickens loved to name his characters in a way that suggested their personalities. (Remember the school teacher Gradgrind?)

One or two are great, but resist the urge to give every character an aptronym.

Many times, a name jumps out at me automatically, and when it does, I usually stick with it. I tend to trust whatever part of my subconscious does this for me. But sometimes I have to take my hands off the keyboard and think a bit.

The baby name site method

Sometimes I turn to lists of popular baby names. That’s the phone book method of today.

If your character is a teenage girl, you probably don’t want to name her Millicent, unless you particularly want her to have a dated name. If she was born in 2010, maybe choose Madison or Emma. Those are among the most popular girls’ names that year, according to Babycenter.com.

If she was born in 1966, you could go with my name, Michelle, which was No. 4 that year. (In 1966, my mom really thought she was choosing a unique name! So did countless other moms.)

Need an elderly guy? Let’s say he was born in 1935. Names for boys do not change as much as girls’ names. For that year, according to Babycenter.com, the top 10 boys’ names, in order, were Robert, James, John, William, Richard, Charles, Donald, George, Thomas and Joseph.

For that same year, the top 10 girls’ names were Mary, Shirley, Barbara, Betty, Patricia, Dorothy, Joan, Margaret, Nancy and Helen. None of those names are particularly popular right now, but if your character is older, any of those names will work great.

I don’t usually like to pick the top name for a year. I usually prefer to scroll down the list a little bit because not every kid is named one of the top four or five names. Is your character from a rich or poor family? Educated or not? What region? If your character is from the south, consider a double name. Maybe “Mary Kate” or “Sue Ellen.” Was the character’s mom pretentious and social-conscious? If she has class aspirations, she will name her child accordingly.

Think about religion, too. (You can name a Christian character Rachel but you probably will not want to name a Jewish character Mary unless there’s a quirky explanation.)

In The Trailer Park Rules, Angel’s name popped into my head and I went with it. She’s far from an angel, of course. At some point in the novel I needed to give her a last name, and I chose Webb with the idea of “what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!”

I thought that line came from Shakespeare, but it’s actually from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion.

It’s not so much that Angel tells lies to others (although she does) as that she lies to herself. She has woven an entire false narrative that puts her in a good light. For example, in her version of events, she isn’t too lazy to work; she just wants to be a devoted, full-time mother to Maya. But it’s obvious to everyone but her that she barely parents her child at all.

Last names matter, too

Last names aren’t subject to fashion, but you do want to consider your character’s family background. Pick a mix of common and uncommon names. Jonesy’s last name is, of course, Jones. We know Angel’s last name is Webb. I chose Jackson as the last name for Jimmy and Janiece because that’s a common Black name and I wanted all the names in their family to begin with the same letter.

In any random group of people, somebody is going to have an oddball last name, so I specifically googled for unusual last names and that’s how Kaitlin became a Torsney. I’ve never met anyone with that last name, but then again, not everyone around me is a Smith or Jones.

In The Trailer Park Rules, my character Jonesy is attempting to write a novel-within-a-novel called The Happy Place. Jonesy needed a French name for one of his characters. I trolled around French sites until I came up with the name Aurelie Laurent. I asked my European husband how to pronounce it, and I could sooner imitate the call of a thrush.

Everyone loves an Easter egg

The fictional writer Killian Pike in the book-within-a-book is an obvious homage to Kurt Vonnegut’s recurring fictional sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout. I had a great deal of fun with that one. I like to imagine a Vonnegut fan reading and appreciating that.

When to choose a jarring name

Kaitlin’s older stripper friend, whose stage name is Sapphire, reveals her real name is Ruth. Ruth? No Ruth I’ve ever known has looked the least bit stripper-like, which is kind of the point.

No mom names her baby girl with the idea that “This name will work great if she ever wants to be a stripper!” We can assume Ruth’s mom was hoping for better for her. By giving her that name, I never have to tell that story at all. You already tell yourself a version of “This is not how this woman’s life was meant to be” all by yourself.

You’re going to alarm Google

Writers tend to have very questionable search histories. Keep hitting baby name sites and Google is going to make certain assumptions and serve ads accordingly.

At one point, I researched addiction treatment for a character, and suddenly Google decided I was a drug-addicted pregnant woman paying the bills by stripping.

Nope. Just a writer.

Upcoming topics on The Indie Author

• How software can help you choose keywords, categories and more.

• Of Plotting and Pantsing: Which kind of writer are you?

• Here’s how to find the right title for your book.

• Should I write under my real name or a pen name?

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois who has published 21 books, most of them self-published. Subscribe to The Indie Author! My other Substack, Untrickled, is about income inequality. You can also subscribe to me on Medium. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. My most recent nonfiction book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. Tips accepted at Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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