By Any Other Name

Last week we finished reading Mrs. Dalloway in my Women & Literature class. First of all let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed Virginia Woolf's writing style. I can only envy her in that respect because her skill level and her ability to craft a sentence is beyond what a person can learn to accomplish. Another thing that I enjoyed about this book, and the credit for this can most likely be attributed to the era and area that Woolf was writing in, was the names.
 
Even though its a bit off the beaten path as far as things I've learned or taken from Woolf's writing I'd like to dedicate this post to one of my favorite aspects of story making(and yes, I have a lot of favorite aspects of writing if you a haven't noticed...): Naming Characters!

I picked up on the super excellent names pretty early on while reading Mrs. Dalloway. Here's the list I made (I may have missed a few but I tried to be complete):

Moll Pratt, Clarissa Dalloway, Lucy, Peter Walsh, Scrope Purvis, Mrs. Foxcroft, Lady Bexborough, Elizabeth, the Georges, Hugh & Evelyn Whitbread, Richard, Fraulein Daniels, Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton (Rosseter), Hatchard, Uncle William, Mullberry, Miss Pym, Edgar J. Watkiss, Septimus & Lucrezia (aka Rezia) Warren Smith, Queen Victoria, Princess Mary, Sarah Bletchley, Emily Coates, Mr. Bowly, Dr. Holmes, Maisie Johnson, Carrie & Percy Dempster, Mr. Bently, Mrs. Walker, Lady Millicent Bruton, Mortimer, Tom, Aunt Helena, William Morris, Ellen Atkins, Miss Cummings, Joseph Breitkopf, Sally Parker, Elise Mitchell, Sir William Bradshaw, Mrs. Filmer, Miss Isabel Pole, Betty & Bertie, the Kinderleys, Sally Rosseter, the Cunninghams, the Kinlock-Jones', Honorable Edith, Lady Violet, Mr Brewer, Amelia "What's-hername", Sir Roderick, Sir Miles, Sir talbot Moore, Mr. Dubonnet, Ellie Henderson, Mrs. Marsham, Milly Brush, Doris Kilman, Mrs. Hillberry, Miss Dolby, Edward Whittaker

 I considered underlining my favorites but realized that they are all so great. Obviously part of what makes this set of names so great is because they help paint a picture (I imagine) of the setting and characters of the Mrs. Dalloway.

You can't spend the same amount of time naming all of your characters but there are many aspects that can (and sometimes should) be considered when naming a character. Since Woolf was writing about a time that wasn't far removed from her own and a location that she was fairly familiar with she probably didn't have to do much research to find the right name(s). But with the interweb at our fingertips we can learn about the names of different cultures, different times, and different preferences.

Besides the obvious time and place questions I ask myself what kind of family a character comes from. Would their parents hear the name of a kid down the street and think "I like that" or would they dig back into their family tree to find a less popular name or would they be the kind of parents to flip through a dictionary and point at random (apple anyone)?

When naming characters some of my favorite websites to use are nameberry.com, nymbler.com/, and any of the links (by state, by year, name popularity search) on the ssa.gov/oact/babynames/ site. And obviously if you're looking for names from outside of the US there are a bunch of sites that can be searched for (and found). Some countries have similar websites to the ssa.gov site others are a bit less official (in which case I suggest looking on wikipedia for lists of the names of political leaders, sports athletes, whatever you can find).

Some like to base names only on the meaning of the name (which some parents do so that is acceptable) or the sound of the name (Coraline!) which is also important. Its really cool when you can find a perfect name, one with a great meaning for the role your character fills and with a sound that fits with the other names you've chosen and with a great sense of reality as far as the setting of your story.

Ultimately its important think about what names will be the most natural for the kind of story you're writing. What will help tell the story the best without distracting the reader? Remember that writing is all about communication. As writers we have a story to tell and naming characters is part of telling that story.

Thanks for reading!

Jessica