Monday, February 13, 2012

Naming Your Characters - First Impressions


Thinking of names for the characters in your stories can be very easy for some writers, with the names just popping into your head, while for other it can be a torturous and painstaking experience. Sometimes it may not even be that crucial to get the name just right, but there are a few things to remember when choosing names for the people you invent.
Names very often typify characters and conjure up certain images in the minds of the reader. If you need to know what impression a particular name can give, check out the better baby name books. Many of these types of publications inform you in detail how names mean strength or wisdom or beautiful and so on, but some baby name books refer to famous, and even infamous, people who may have had that name or remind you of characters in movies. Hollywood, of course, has been doing this kind of thing for decades. The given names of Archibald Leach, Marion Morrison, Betty Joan Perske, Norma Jean Baker, Maurice Micklewhite and Gladys Smith were all deemed to be surplus to requirements. To conjure up the right image in the minds of moviegoers, these actors respectively became Cary Grant, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Caine and Mary Pickford.  

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