The Name Game

It's not easy being a writer. Forget the anxiety of submitting your manuscript, editing it, reading the reviews. That all comes later. Go back to the beginning and you'll face one of the first challenges -- a challenge that parents and pet owners the world over can understand -- the problem of finding the perfect name.

Does that send a shudder down your spine?

Names are often our first introduction to a person and whether we admit it or not, they influence how we see them.

Now me, despite the lovely Tony's I've met, I struggle to be fair to any guy called "Anthony". It's irrational, but for two years when I started school they put me (the goody two shoes) next to the naughtiest boy in the school (I almost said world!) and there I sat until Mum suggested, at the start of the third year, that some other child be graced with Anthony's presence. Don't get me wrong, he grew up to be a nice guy, but too late for my subconscious. Just the name "Anthony" tells me I'm about to meet someone who deserves slugs in his sandwiches -- not that Miss Goody-Two-Shoes ever served him that sandwich.

Fortunately, the internet is overflowing with baby name sites and these are a rich hunting field for authors as well as parents. Pick a letter, any letter, then pick a name. Why do I say pick a letter first? Because I think it's less confusing for readers to have characters with different first letter names.

Then I hit Google and choose a surname appropriate to the character's ethnic background.

If I don't have a perfect name for my characters I find I can't write about them, can't make them walk, talk and live. Their names are the starting point. Get the name wrong and the character (child, pet, whatever) grows into someone quite different to what was intended.