Showing posts with label names. Show all posts
Showing posts with label names. Show all posts
Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors and followers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination through the YA Highway site and get everybody's unique take on the topic.
This week's topic: If you couldn't use your own name, what would your pseudonym or penname be?
Well, ahem, Angelica R. Jackson is already a pseudonym, for both my photography and writing. It's fairly close to my real name (close enough to cause confusion, actually, I wish I'd thought that through better), but my real one is common enough that there were published writers out there with the same name.
Back when I started writing as a teen, I created the nom de plum of Nikki Atoll. I have no idea what my reasoning was now, other than I wanted to be closer to the beginning of the alphabet and my maiden name started with a W at the time.
But this post is turning out to be rather dull, so I'm going to add a game I filled out on Facebook a while ago:
Everyone has 7 names
#1. Your name: Angelica R. Jackson
#2. Your detective name (favorite color & favorite animal): Red Raven
#3. Your soap opera name (middle name & street you lived on as a child): Rue Hampton
#4. Your Star Wars name (first 3 letters of last name w/ first 2 of middle name & first 2 letters of first name w/ last 3 of last name): Jacru Anson
#5. Superhero name (color of your shirt & item directly to your left): Brownmulti Wall
#6. Goth name (Black & one of your pets' names): Black Blue
(the actual list had no #7, so I think it was naughty and someone deleted it; I added this one)
#7. Secret name that wizards can use against you: Like I'm going to give that one out!
I love Rue Hampton; I would totally use that as a pseudonym. And if I wanted to be close to the beginning of the alphabet, I could use Jacru Anson. I'd be the suckiest superhero ever with a name like Brownmulti Wall.
What about you--ever put any thought into creating a new identity? Legally, of course.
For my new book, Crow's Rest, the main character's name jumped out at me right away: Avery Cash. But arriving at names for, not one but two, love interests was a little harder.
I settled on Daniel as the perfect boy-next-door name, and Lonan for the corbin (a type of pooka that usually crosses into our world by inhabiting crows) since it's Irish for "little blackbird". And because I like the way it sounds.
Pre-internet, I relied on a handful of books for finding character names:
Dictionary of First Names by Alfred Kolatch (though any of the baby naming books will usually do)
The Guiness Book of Names by Leslie Dunking (a good source on unusual and celebrity names)
The Writer's Digest Character-Naming Sourcebook (arranged by nationality or origin)
Now you can search online databases for the meanings of names, their origins, and use another tool that's useful to writers--the ability to check for the most popular names in a given year.
So if you know when your character was born, you can check for the most popular name and use it accordingly. Do you want an "everyman" name? Use one of the top 15. Want to show how unique your character is? Use one that falls way down on the list, or doesn't appear at all. Make one up.
And lastly, my favorite resource is an older (1984) numerology book called You Are Your First Name by Ellin Dodge. Using the "science of numerology," the author has created personality profiles for each name.
You'll notice that I put the "skeptical quotes" around science of numerology above, but there have been times where this book has been eerily accurate about real people I've met.
Here's a little of what it says about Angelica, so you can judge for yourself:
Ability to incorporate orderly system, levelheaded practical analysis, and formal conventions into career. Deals in facts, and employs gifted intuition. Extreme desire for perfection in self and others.
But just like Adrian Monk says, that desire for perfection is "A gift. And a curse. A gift."
So how do you come up with names for your characters? Researching the perfect match of meaning and personality traits? Just what sounds good?
I settled on Daniel as the perfect boy-next-door name, and Lonan for the corbin (a type of pooka that usually crosses into our world by inhabiting crows) since it's Irish for "little blackbird". And because I like the way it sounds.
Pre-internet, I relied on a handful of books for finding character names:
Dictionary of First Names by Alfred Kolatch (though any of the baby naming books will usually do)
The Guiness Book of Names by Leslie Dunking (a good source on unusual and celebrity names)
The Writer's Digest Character-Naming Sourcebook (arranged by nationality or origin)
Now you can search online databases for the meanings of names, their origins, and use another tool that's useful to writers--the ability to check for the most popular names in a given year.
So if you know when your character was born, you can check for the most popular name and use it accordingly. Do you want an "everyman" name? Use one of the top 15. Want to show how unique your character is? Use one that falls way down on the list, or doesn't appear at all. Make one up.
And lastly, my favorite resource is an older (1984) numerology book called You Are Your First Name by Ellin Dodge. Using the "science of numerology," the author has created personality profiles for each name.
You'll notice that I put the "skeptical quotes" around science of numerology above, but there have been times where this book has been eerily accurate about real people I've met.
Here's a little of what it says about Angelica, so you can judge for yourself:
Ability to incorporate orderly system, levelheaded practical analysis, and formal conventions into career. Deals in facts, and employs gifted intuition. Extreme desire for perfection in self and others.
But just like Adrian Monk says, that desire for perfection is "A gift. And a curse. A gift."
So how do you come up with names for your characters? Researching the perfect match of meaning and personality traits? Just what sounds good?
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