I just downloaded a book and discovered that the main character has my wife’s maiden name (it’s also my great-great-grandmother’s name). The name is not a very common one, though the author used it as a pun and pronounced it differently to make it work.
And I remembered that the title character of the movie “Max” has the same last name as mine.
Now I’m sure if your name is Jones or Smith or Johnson, it’s pretty easy to find examples. But how about less common names? Do you have any fictional namesakes?
Bonus if both first and last name match, but first name matches are probably too easy.
An exact match for the last name is highly unlikely, but a variant spelling has shown up in a number of novels and stories about Nazi Germany. Mom always said “I wish the SOB had been named Smith.”
There was a very popular doll that came out when I was 2 or 3 years old. The doll had my first and middle names, no last name. My family joked that we had invented the doll and named her after me.
The name on my birth certificate is the same as that of a once-popular male comic strip character, but it still sounds like a girl’s name. When I was growing up, telephone operators always thought I was a girl because of it.
My surname is that of a once-popular rock-n-roll singer. It sounds cool only when you pronounce it with a European accent, like in The Blue Max.
My surname is quite rare, and I’ve never actually seen it used in fiction… but there’s one science fiction story that has a name that’s close enough that in some places a typo makes it the same. IIRC, my almost-namesake is a dragon-breeder.
There’s also a slightly different Americanized version of my surname that’s a little more common, and borne by exactly one well-known person, but I’ve never seen that form in fiction.
My full name would certainly never show up in fiction, and to the best of my knowledge, I’m the only one in the US (though there might be one or two others in Germany).
I identify a lot more with my mom’s side of the family, though, and her maiden name is much more common (still not a Smith or Jones, but common enough that you’ll sometimes see it in the news). The only specific occurrence I can think of, though, is a minor character in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
My last name showed up in the classic The Far Side cartoon in which a student is raising his hand and asking his teacher, “Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.”
Oh, hell. I was a crime fiction editor from the early '80s into the early aughts. My authors were constantly using my surname in their novels.
James Ellroy, for one, had a Police Commissioner Malloy in THE BLACK DAHLIA (1987), and a prominent Central Avenue jazz club called “Malloy’s Nest” in THE BIG NOWHERE and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL.
You’d think I’d encounter fictional characters with my name all the time; I have a common first and last name. But there’s only been one time when I’ve seen my name used in a work of fiction; as a character in How the West Was Won.
There have been a number of fictional characters with my first name, which has two common spellings.
As for my last name, a well-known shock jock had a sidekick with that surname (which wasn’t his real name) and there was a series of adventure stories for boys in the early 20th century featuring a family with that name. Think “Hardy Boys” only with our name. There is also a committee-with-a-pseudonym that writes contemporary books for teenage girls and that pseudonym has my surname.