What's in a name?

RHYS BOWEN: Tonight I was at my health club when a small boy ran into the locker room, pursued by his mother.

“Luca, come back here. Will you calm down,” she begged as he jumped on benches and generally ran amok.

“Luca, we need to get your swim trunks on. You’ll be late for your lesson, and you don’t want to upset your teacher, do you?” And so on.

I’m used to obnoxious children at my health club. Too many BMW driving helicopter parents live in Marin County. But this one hit home. I had planned to call an enigmatic and possibly romantic lead in my new book LUCA. Now this child has ruined it. Every time I see the name I’ll picture demon-Luca jumping off the benches as his mother tries to catch him.



I like the name. It’s just right for the man I want… but I’m not sure if I can use it now. So I’m curious, dear Reds and Readers: have your character names been colored by people you’ve known? Do names have negative or positive connotations based on your experiences? I know I’m really influenced that way. And I confess… I have named horrible evil characters after people I have disliked. I named a butler Huxtep, because my evil headmistress was called Miss Huxtep and I wanted to put her into the role of humble servant.

I have named mean girls in the Georgie books after mean girls of my childhood. I have also named good characters after people I have been fond of.

So what about you? Do you choose character names based on your life experience? Have you ever killed someone you detested in your books? Confession time!

HALLIE EPHRON: Yikes. This is reminding me, I named a villain in one of my novels after an old friend, and she was very put out about it. It never in a million years occurred to me that she’d be anything but flattered. Because I only name characters after people I like. And I didn’t know she’d turn out to be the villain when I started writing her.

So this has come up for me when naming my children. Names that I loved my husband had negative associations with so those names were out. Fortunately, he was very fond of his graduate school adviser whose name was Naomi, so we settled on that for one of my sweet baby girls.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: That is EXACTLY the problem! I often do auction names for charity--and the people start out as good--but then what can I do, they turn into bad. But whenever that happens, I just change the names to something totally fictional, and use the auction name elsewhere as a good guy.

As for real people as bad guys or villains,uh, no, I have never done that. I have chosen some names as secret signals only understood by me or my husband, but no one in the public would ever know. And I will never tell.

LUCY BURDETTE: I got into trouble in an early book (not the Key West series) when someone bid on his name in the book and I made the mistake of having him turn into an unsavory character. “What, he paid good money and now he’s a pedophile?” John asked. Which was really an exaggeration, but point taken.

I’ve also had the problem of wanting to give a real person a cameo as a special nod. Unfortunately, the name was Eric. So now there are three Erics in THE KEY LIME CRIME.

None of that helps you Rhys! I say use Luca, it’s a good name. If you can block the annoying people out of your mind!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I just auctioned off a character name to benefit my church, so naming is very much on my mind. I did once give a villain a real person’s name because the real person was a real SOB. Never heard anything about it, which is not to say I’d do it again, especially nowadays, when it’s so easy to Google names in a book!

I often slip in the names of friends and family members for spear-carrier roles - people who need to have a name to keep track of or have one or two lines before they vanish off-stage. It gives me a warm feeling to see their names pop up as I’m working.

One of the things I have to check myself on when making up character names is not slapping the wrong-era name on someone. As I get older (groan) I find my conception of young people’s/ older people’s names is increasingly out of date. I started to name a young woman Heather, and then thought… wait a sec. I looked up the name’s popularity. Guess what? Most Heathers are in their early forties now. And grandmothers have names like Karen and Cathy and Joanne, not Doris and Phyllis.

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, yes, I have a very long list of people whose names are saved for my villains or victims or, in the case of my unrequited crushes, my heroes. I think naming characters can be very personal and I do use it to exorcise some demons. But I’ve noticed that my strongest stories arrive in my head with the names already locked in. My July book PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA, came with every single character already named - Chelsea, Colin, Jean Claude, Marcelino, Jason, Zoe, Glen, Sheri, and Annabelle. Honestly, that’s never happened before. I’m going to take it as a good sign.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, I think Luca is a wonderful name. Forget about that annoying little boy and use it anyway!

My problem is that I have a really hard time giving bad characters names that I like. Some names, however, are neutral, and can be either a good or a bad character. And sometimes characters arrive full-blown, like Jenn’s in her new book, and I CANNOT change their names!

Julia, I always look up age appropriate names, and UK appropriate, too. But you can sometimes squeeze in an older generation name as characters might be named after relatives. Also, names that seem really old-fashioned are suddenly becoming popular again. Our neighbors baby girl is named Clementine!

RHYS: Another complication now that my work is in so many languages is whether names have a good or bad feeling in that language. (Like the Chevvy NOVA in South America where no va means it won't go!) I've no way of knowing

So how about you? Are your perceptions of names colored by people you've met? Do character names present themselves, like Jenn's or do you sometimes find you've called someone by the wrong name?