Names of the castaways in Lemony Snicket's book 13

I just finished reading The End, the last book in A Series of Unfortunate Events, and I have questions about the names of some of the characters.

For those who haven’t read the book, this post doesn’t contain any significant spoilers, just mentions the names of certain minor characters and the setting in which they appear. I won’t talk about plot elements or any major characters, or the amazing, incredible, surprise ending. But if you don’t want even these minor details spoiled, click the Back button now.

At the end of The End, the Beaudelaires end up on an island with a bunch of people who got there by being shipwrecked. As is his wont, our author has named these characters after real and fictional people somehow connected with shipwrecks or the sea.

I caught the most obvious references, like Ishmael, the leader of the island community (a reference to Moby-Dick); Friday and Robinson (Robinson Crusoe); Ariel, Caliban, and Alonso (Shakespeare’s The Tempest); Bligh, Fletcher, and Pitcairn (the Bounty), and so on.

But I didn’t recognize several others, so I headed over to Wikipedia to see if there were explanations for them. As it happened, there weren’t.

So I thought I might as well add what I knew to the Wikipedia page, and in the course of doing so, I really got into the Google groove and tracked down relevant connections to most of the names. For instance, several (Brewster, Larsen, Weyden) were references to Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, which I’ve never read.

Here’s the result of my efforts. (As of the date of this post, the Wikipedia section on the castaways is all my contribution.)

But there are a few that are rather weak. Namely, Finn, Omeros, and Willa.

Finn seems to be a reference to Huck Finn, but I’m not 100% convinced that that’s the only possible interpretation.

Omeros is an alternative version of the name “Homer” (and closer to the orignal Greek spelling) and there’s a clear connection between Homer’s works and shipwrecks. But why did Handler use Omeros and not Homer? Just to be cute? Is there another interpretation?

Finally, I found a quotation from Willa Cather that uses the word “shipwreck,” But that seems pretty tenuous, and I’m far from certain that that’s the right connection. Is there another Willa more closely connected to shipwrecks?

Do you have better suggestions for any of these three (or any of the others, for that matter)? Thanks.

I’m afraid not, but thanks for clearing up those others - I had been wondering about them.