Choosing Character Names

What I'm reading: Sleep Tight, by Anne Frasier (Nook), Gun Games, by Faye Kellerman

I was reading a book recently that inspired this post revisiting my character naming strategies. This book was by a well-known, award-winning author, and is someone I respect. I'm not trying to single her out, because it's a common enough "problem" in books I've read. And for the sake of anonymity, I'm not going to show the names of the characters.

I counted 32 named characters. That gave me 32 first names, but not quite as many last names, because some were related, so they had the same last name. For this post, I'm not separating first or last names. I just put them all in a single list, alphabetized them, and then counted repeats of the same initials.

What I found:
B: 3
C: 8
D: 8
H: 2
J: 7
K: 1
L: 3
M: 6
P: 5
R: 6
S: 5
T: 1
V: 1
W: 2
Z: 1

Also, there one character had the same first and last initials as the heroine.

What's With Those Names?

What I'm reading: Chasing Shadows, by C.J. Lyons.


Since the rights to my second published novel, What's in a Name? revert to me on Dec. 31st, I've been working on preparing it for digital release.

Of course, I wanted to read it for typos—no matter what, a few always sneak by. And I also wanted to update the technology. When I wrote it, pagers were the norm, and the basic backup for computer files was via CD ROMs. What I didn't realize was that when I wrote this book, I hadn't started using my name-tracking system. Considering the title, I decided to 'retro-fit' one, and made my basic spreadsheet using Excel. It takes no special skill – I just list every letter of the alphabet in two columns, one for first names, and one for last. I space them a number of columns apart, and then simply fill in the names as I create them. Note: This page of the spreadsheet doesn't keep first and last names together; it's simply a way to track the names appearing in the story.

Imagine my shock to find that not only was I terribly uncreative with names, but that my editors didn't seem to notice—not even when I had three characters named Henry! Some larger publishers have editors who actually write down every named character, and on what page they first appear, but I've never had that "luxury."

I think if you click on the images, they'll open in an enlarged format. If not, you can email me or leave your email in a comment, and I'll send them to you.