Trivia: in Die Another Day, when Bond first meets Jinx in Cuba and claims to be an ornithologist he holds up a copy of Birds of the West Indies by James Bond, the same book you note that Fleming used to give the spy his name.
“Carruthers…Peregrine Carruthers”
For one thing I wrote I used the names of “towns” in the area I lived when I was little. Fortunately several nice first names. I quoted “towns” since some of these places are little more than a closed gas station now. Had to skip over one now defunct town (it had a population of 2 when I was a kid) since it had the same name as a relative and I didn’t want to create any association.
One place has a two part name. I kept the first as a first name but translated the last name into another language to make it less obvious.
I’ve never published anything and probably never will. But the advantage of using such a system is that if anyone with one of those names makes a stink you can point out your system.
This would be the opposite of what Conan Doyle did. As I recall, he deliberately chose the first name “Sherlock” for his protagonist because he wanted it to be original. IIRC “Sherlock” and Mycroft (the name of the detective’s brother) were real names that predate Conan Doyle’s characters, but were excedingly rare.
Speaking for myself: my writing includes some fiction, including a completed novel which I am now revising pending another attempt to get it published. In most cases, the names I choose for my characters are not random. Specifically in the case of my novel, it includes fictional versions of people I actually knew (mainly schoolmates and teachers). I typically kept the original person’s first name but somehow modulated their surname. For one schoolmate, I gave him what I recall to have been his mother’s maiden name; for another, I simply used a linguistic variant of her actual surname. With teachers known only as “Mr. / Ms.” + surname, I usually gave said teacher a name similar to the one they had in real life; other times one which, while completely different, was somehow related in a more convoluted way. Even fictional characters in the novel tended to be named after real people who shared traits with them.
My second-longest completed work of fiction is a novella. All the characters there are fictional, but the key ones are inspired by real people, mostly Internet celebrities. The protagonist has a vanilla-white Anglo-Saxon first name that can also be a surname, and a Welsh last name. This is because she is partly inspired by a certain online content creator with the same kind of first name and a surname that is common in Wales. One rather base character in the story has the same first name as an uncouth schoolmate of mine. And so on.
I’m sure every author has their own way to do things. For example, Lynn Johnson, who drew the comic strip “For Better or For Worse” about a Canadian family called the Pattersons, used the name of a departed friend for Elly, the mother, and the middle names of her own children for Michael and Elizabeth, the two older children.
I just recently read a novel with the main character and her daughter having “similar” names like Maggie and Marti. More than once i had to reread a section to clarify who the hell was talking. Won’t be reading that author again. Surely somewhere in the editing process she would have noticed.
Edit. Added sentence
Ian Fleming often named characters after acquaintances. Felix Leiter used the middle name of one friend, and the surname of another friend. Hugo Drax used the first name of a friend, and the surname of an admiral Fleming had met during the war.
One of the characters in Diamonds Are Forever was named after a friend. The friend was an advocate for gay rights, but was not happy to have a gay assassin named after him.
Look up the Wikipedia pages for Fleming’s novels. The stories of where he got the names are fascinating.
Stan Lee loved alliterative names.
As did the Superman writers, especially with L:
- Lois Lane
- Lex Luthor
- Lana Lang
- Lori Lamaris
- etc., etc., etc.
For a while, Adam Sandler liked to give his female leads the initials “V. V.”
Screenwriters of the 1940s-60s or so had a penchant for last names taken from the Hollywood street grid. (“Willoughby,” “Melrose,” etc….)
Matt Groening named several characters on The Simpsons after streets in his hometown of Portland, Oregon: Flanders, Kearney, Lovejoy, and Quimby, among others.
Groening also use his family’s names for the Simpson family. But switch Bart for Matt. I guess he wasn’t afraid of them suing him.
Krusty the Clown’s name was based on a Portland kid’s TV show host Rusty Nails. In one episode they show a Macy’s-like parade with a balloon for “Rusty” the clown. Other than a similar name and being clown hosts of kiddie shows, they have nothing in common.
Making sure a name is actually something that was given during the babyhood of your character is a good idea.
Since Dick Wolf likes to name characters after family members, the two main detectives in SVU got named Olivia and Elliot, the names of his two younger children and popular 1990s names-- but not popular names in the 1960s, when those characters would have been born-- in fact, an Elliot born in 1967 would have been teased for a nerd name.
Agatha Christie used to give her characters somewhat outlandish, but what to me sounded like very English-by-way-of-PG-Wodehouse: Inglethorpe, Satterthwaite, Partridge, Weatherby, Edgeware-- and the Dickens touch-- Spenthrift for someone who watched her money, Badgeworthy for a police officer, Battle for a superintendent.
I know I have come across lots more that don’t spring instantly to mind.
It’s an economical trick to telegraph a character to your audience when you don’t want to bore them with a lot of detail for a character who won’t be around long.
And Christie had a light enough touch to get away with it.
nm… nm
Charles Dickens chose some of his character names to suggest traits, like the unpleasant Uriah Heep. F or Scrooge, supposedly he saw the name “Scroggie” on a tombstone, and changed it to Scrooge because it sounded meaner.
For “Tiny Tim”, he tried “Small Sam”, “Little Larry” and “Puny Pete” first.
As a college Freshman in a Creative Writing class, I tried to come up with names that would have some deep, deep meaning to either the story or the character. For example, in a one-act play I wrote, I named one of the characters 'Drusilla Convenire". Though I remember the name, I have no memory of what I was trying to go for. ‘convenire’ is Italian for “to agree” and “con venire” is Latin for “come with”. No idea what “Drusilla” was supposed to represent. There are a few Drusillas in history, fiction and myth. What a pretentious twit I was.
If I ever write a novel, I plan to give the characters the last names Thompson, Schneider, and Bendix. See if anybody makes the connection.
Are you saying he doesn’t seem like a guy who grew up getting teased, all simmering rage and something to prove, until he gritted his way into making the football team and joining up with the Marines, all so he can now walk around with a Just Give Me An Excuse look in his eye?
I remember an episode of L&O: SVU where the case involved a pharmaceutical company called Taucher-Leto. Dean Taucher and Peter Leto were crew members on the show.
As someone who gave up on War and Peace, because the characters’ names interrupted the flow. I always try to give mine easy-to-pronounce names.
On the other end of the spectrum names that are just written as a single letter annoy me. Sometimes the letter is followed by a blank line like M_____, but that doesn’t really help.
I wait for them to tell me their names. I thought that’s how everyone did it.