Names You Won't Forget

A Stodghill Says So blog:
Naming characters occupies quite a bit of time for anyone who writes fiction. Making them fit the person can be a challenge. At that Charles Dickens had few peers. Names should be distinctive and if they are memorable, that makes them all the better. They should not be preposterous, of course, unless they belong to a living, breathing individual.
A group of people in England with too much time on their hands has made a list of ridiculous names found on that pleasant but sometimes cantankerous island. I believe the parents could have been innocent of possessing twisted senses of humor when they named Barb Dwyer. They probably christened her Barbara. It is harder to be forgiving for the mom and dad of Mary Christmas. Can there be any doubt that old dad was chuckling when he insisted his son be named Justin Case?
There were others, including Hazel Nutt, Chris Cross and Paige Turner. The latter may have had a writer for a parent. But it took a pair of fiendish parents to name a kid Terry Bull. That was terrible.
This business of a writer naming characters not only is challenging, it can be risky. Since Google came along I have used it to check out names I have dreamed up. Doing so has taught me that it's unlikely there is a single possible name that somewhere in the world hasn't been taken by an actual person.
I made what I now consider an embarrassing mistake in a story written a year ago. It is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. For a really nasty individual, a through and through rotter, I chose the name Wally Shanks. I did so quite innocently, forgetting that Rob Lopresti has a series character called Shanks. Compounding this blunder, the latest story about Shanks appears in the issue one month before my evil Shanks shows up. My apologies, Rob.
Twenty years ago I was selecting a name for the protagonist of a series still running. In fact he is the man who got the best of Wally Shanks. I wanted the name to be short and rhythmical and I did not want the last name to be that of anyone I knew or had even heard of. I chose Jack Eddy. About the time the first story appeared in print I remembered a Ball State professor of my acquaintance named Diane Eddy. Then I recalled that Manton Eddy was a well known general during World War II. Soon after that, Eddy's Bike Shop in nearby Stow came to mind. Earlier this week we had lunch at Eddy's Deli & Restaurant. Where was Google when I needed it? Well, it's here now and I have discovered there are real people named Jack Eddy walking around somewhere.
Maybe I should have followed the lead of Bill Pronzini. For thirty years he has been writing books about a character and never has gotten around to giving him a name.

What does he call him?

"That One!"

Dick,
you might be safer using some foreign names. Names like, Shelagh or Ahad. Oops. I'm in big trouble now.

There are certain names unsuitable for doctors. Butcher or Savage or Cutter are a few and so is one here in town: Dr. Paine. Outhouse, that would be unsuitable for anyone. Imagine proposing to a girl, "I'd like you to take my name and become an Outhouse."
"Forget it, Buster!"

I have a good friend named Dr. (Tim) Smiley, he's a Dentist.

Larry

I have been having the same problem with a minor character in my third book. He is a psycholigist and the name I would like to use I want it to bring a smile to ones face and posssibly make him unforgetable. The name I have been considering is

Carmen Sychee

What do you folks think, to much, lousy, good choice?

Dr. Smiley is a brilliant name for a dentist.

Executive search company -- Heidrich and Struggles:

http://www.heidrick.com/About/

Abe F. March wrote:

Dick,
you might be safer using some foreign names. Names like, Shelagh or Ahad. Oops. I'm in big trouble now.

There you go, Dick, Irish is foreign.