In 1966, I imagine lots and lots of mothers had heard the Beatles' "Michelle" on the 1965 "Rubber Soul" album as well as the 1966 hits for the Overlanders (UK), David & Jonathan.(US) :)
My mom was a country music fan, although she also loved Elvis. I suppose she must certainly have heard that song on the radio, though. I wish I'd thought to ask her.
I like to use Ancestry and newspapers dot com as resources. — I’m working on a semi-autobiographical novel (“fiction”). Major blocker: Remembering the “new” names for people I know inside and out. So I’m rebooting, using their real names, and find-replace once I’m finished.
I've often wondered about this. I been reading Harlen Coben lately. The names are all odd, nothing normal/mean of the name curve but always on the far reaches of the statistic curve.
I found a workaround for the loss of white pages phone books, but it’s already obsolete.
A news site had a database of a huge number of federal employees, searchable by last name, first name, organization, and work location. Someone must have figured that since the interface would not provide more than 10 records at a time, there was no danger of the data being used for evil. Silly wabbits! I wrote software to send multiple queries, saved the page results, and imported the cleaned data into our own database. Write another program to search for federal locations across the country, and *voila!* The company I worked for then (that sold insurance to government workers) had a database for mailing ads to federal workers in specific areas.
I kept a subset of the database with first and last names. Now if I need a character name I can get one with a first name that matches the last name (mostly — some of the women’s names show that intercultural marriages are alive and well in the federal employee system, or were 15 years ago).
However, I *love* the baby name search, Michelle! Awesome resource!💚
“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.” 💚💚💚
“One or two are great, but resist the urge to give every character an aptronym.”
Unless you’re Mark Starlin. Mark’s humor stories have outrageous character names; it’s part of his style. Probably annoys some people, but they probably aren’t into Mark’s humor anyway, so screw ‘em. @markstarlin
Great place to look for names: The end credits in movies. There's no end to the original names you will find there.
In 1966, I imagine lots and lots of mothers had heard the Beatles' "Michelle" on the 1965 "Rubber Soul" album as well as the 1966 hits for the Overlanders (UK), David & Jonathan.(US) :)
My mom was a country music fan, although she also loved Elvis. I suppose she must certainly have heard that song on the radio, though. I wish I'd thought to ask her.
So many questions we'd all like to ask those we've lost when it's too late!
I like to use Ancestry and newspapers dot com as resources. — I’m working on a semi-autobiographical novel (“fiction”). Major blocker: Remembering the “new” names for people I know inside and out. So I’m rebooting, using their real names, and find-replace once I’m finished.
Love this post, by the way!
Thank you!
I love that so many people have such good methods.
If you aren’t careful, you end up with the sorts of names you only run into in your corner of the world, which is most likely not what you want.
I've often wondered about this. I been reading Harlen Coben lately. The names are all odd, nothing normal/mean of the name curve but always on the far reaches of the statistic curve.
Maybe it works for him? Break any rule if you have a good reason to!
I found a workaround for the loss of white pages phone books, but it’s already obsolete.
A news site had a database of a huge number of federal employees, searchable by last name, first name, organization, and work location. Someone must have figured that since the interface would not provide more than 10 records at a time, there was no danger of the data being used for evil. Silly wabbits! I wrote software to send multiple queries, saved the page results, and imported the cleaned data into our own database. Write another program to search for federal locations across the country, and *voila!* The company I worked for then (that sold insurance to government workers) had a database for mailing ads to federal workers in specific areas.
I kept a subset of the database with first and last names. Now if I need a character name I can get one with a first name that matches the last name (mostly — some of the women’s names show that intercultural marriages are alive and well in the federal employee system, or were 15 years ago).
However, I *love* the baby name search, Michelle! Awesome resource!💚
“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.” 💚💚💚
“One or two are great, but resist the urge to give every character an aptronym.”
Unless you’re Mark Starlin. Mark’s humor stories have outrageous character names; it’s part of his style. Probably annoys some people, but they probably aren’t into Mark’s humor anyway, so screw ‘em. @markstarlin